Some friends came to dinner recently and they were a tad early…early enough for me to lose my last half hour and therefore for them to lose their dessert. As we sat around the table post the lamb tagine, I suddenly remembered a recipe, and a cookery writer, that I’d come across years ago when living in the US. Rozanne Gold is, as far as I can tell, not published over here (her name comes up on Bloomsbury’s website but there seems to be no information about the books) but in the States she has published several books, all based around the idea of using just three ingredients. The one I remembered on that almost dessert-free evening was strawberries roasted with a little butter and sugar. It took no more than five minutes so, although it wasn’t quite what I had planned, it was better than nada. And it inspired me to look her up and try some more of her recipes. Having tested this roast chicken with crème fraîche, mentioned on her blog, I can highly recommend her: this was as easy as it looked, it tasted just brilliant and you barely need a bag to bring home your shopping. Okay, it’s possibly not great for eating tonight, since there’s some planning involved but how about tomorrow? I’ve converted it to UK measurements and adapted it to make two portions.

Rozanne Gold’s Chicken with crème fraîche, mustard and thyme (adapted from this)

You will need:
Cupboard (or things you may already have)
1 large garlic clove, peeled and crushed
30ml (about 2 tablespoons) Dijon mustard
Sea salt and black pepper

Shopping list
About 125ml crème fraîche
About 800g chicken portions (sounds a lot but includes bones; also skin-on chicken legs are good, poxy thin chicken breasts are not)
2 teaspoons (a couple of sprigs) fresh thyme, plus a sprinkling to serve

How to
1. Mix the crème, mustard, thyme and garlic together.
2. Put the chicken in a non-metal bowl, tip over the creamy mustard sauce, cover and leave either in the fridge for up to six hours or at room temperature for about two (obviously the suitability of room temperature will depend on the time of year; the idea is not to leave it to get high…). I left mine at room temperature for about two hours on a relatively cold day.
3. When you’re ready to cook it, heat the oven to 200°C/180°C fan/gas 6, put the chicken pieces into a shallow baking tray (the marinade should be thickly stuck to it by now) and roast until cooked (for about 45-45 minutes). Sprinkle with a tad more thyme and serve. It’s strangely more moist than rich but it still needs something plain like steamed new potatoes to go with it. Dead easy and dead yummy.