Roast Chicken with Saffron, Hazelnuts and Honey

Another winner from Ottolenghi……..juicy and a little tart and sweet with those flavours coming from unexpected sources: tart onions and sweet hazelnuts!

As with all of the other poultry/meat dishes I’ve tried from this book, the marinade ensures moist and flavourful meat. For this recipe, the chicken pieces are roasted in the marinade; the flavours don’t penetrate the bird much so it’s important that you spoon the onions and pan juices and over the chicken pieces before serving, that way you also rescue the delicious honeyed hazelnut and rosewater topping that doesn’t adhere very well when you move the chicken (though if I'd chopped the nuts more finely so that this mixture was more of a paste, I may not have had this problem).

Who knew that a dessert topping would taste so good on chicken?

Brilliant! The chicken was tender and juicy (and it didn't matter at all that I left it in the oven for a little longer), the sauce was full of different flavours and textures, soft and crunchy, sweet and flowery and spicy, just brilliant.

One little point: You are first told to chop the hazelnuts roughly, then to make a paste of the nuts together with honey and rosewater - this won't work, at least not with what I call roughly chopped hazelnuts. Chop them finely, but don't grind them.

We served this with Baked Vegetables with an Aubergine Sauce and plain couscous, and it went together extremely well.

Edited 21 November 2013: We served this dish to guests in June, and it went horribly wrong - the chicken wasn't cooked, and it took ages until it was. So gave it another try last night, and we ended up with a total roasting time of 1 hr 20 min. Just like in June, we used chicken legs. I'm not quite sure what we used the first time we made this; I suppose it might have been thighs. Will have to test that some time.

I served the chicken with a salad, and a couscous flavoured with cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, salt and raisins - basically this was a nice idea, but because the hazelnuts, honey and rosewater in the chicken, the main dish is already slightly sweet, so it's better to use something less sweet than raisins.