Pan Roasted Chicken Thighs with Lemon & Leeks

Clearly I haven't been the best blogger! I go through great times when I post, then I leave it alone. I'm going to try and be better through the winter because I really need to keep track of the meals we are eating! We're almost done with the third week of us eating very well, much more limited wine and in general behaving! I'm incredibly impressed with how well Keith is doing. I made a promise that he would like the food and wouldn't be hungry, which I have kept.

One of the things that helps with him is that I make dried fruit & nut bars for him to snack on. My favorite recipe is from Martha. The recipe can be found here. The servings say 8 bars, but we probably get 25 or so out of a batch. A little goes a long way. 

I thought I'd start keeping track with a dinner that I made up after reading many magazines in the past few weeks! (I have stacks to catch up on...)  We have really started to like using chicken thighs in many recipes that call for chicken. I did end up using bone-in, skin-on for this recipe so that I could render some of the fat and use it to cook in.

Ingredients: (2 servings)

• 4-5 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
• 1 tbspn veg or grapeseed oil
• s&p 
• one lemon, thinly sliced 
• 2 med leeks, rinsed, cut in half and sliced
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 3/4 cup of white wine
• 1 1/2 cups of chicken stock (preferably homemade as it thickens better)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Heat a cast iron skillet over medium to medium hi heat. Add oil to pan. Cut off some of the skin from the chicken and trim any excess fat. Season both sides of chicken with salt & pepper. Once oil is shimmering add chicken, skin side down. Let cook for about 10 mins without moving it. The skin should start to crisp and the chicken should be cooked partly through. Remove to a plate. Add leeks and soften slightly. Add 1/2 of lemon slices in with leeks, place chicken on top of lemons, skin side down. Place remaining lemons on top of chicken. Roast in oven 10-15 minutes until cooked through to 165.
Remove pan from oven and place back onto burner at medium heat. Place chicken, skin side up, onto plate. Add garlic to leeks & lemons in pan for 30 seconds, until fragrant. Deglaze pan with white wine. Cook until almost gone. Add half of chicken stock and bring to a boil, reduce this to half. The sauce should be thickening at this point. Add remaining broth and chicken back to pan to heat through.
Serve chicken with sauce over it. YUM!

Sidenote: We ate this with steamed broccoli and a salad.