Chicken baked with 30 cloves of garlic

I thought I didn't make it for this month's Cook like a Star! Well, barely!!

So many things have been catching up at work and that pretty much left me with very little energy for cooking or baking which made me a tad sad as through cooking/baking, it is where I seek solace. Oh well, I'm doing it now so no complaints ;P

I had been looking at Delia's one-pot meals and seem to find this one pretty interesting - chicken baked with 30 cloves of garlic!! No kidding! 30 cloves. Erm, if you are going to use this to impress your date or something, you might want to give it a pass? Else, it would be a pretty good dish though - simple, one pot and yet, tasty. You may want to see her recipe from here.

Here's the ingredients used - mise en place.

Firstly, I put some butter and canola oil onto the casserole which I'll be putting into the oven later. And then, I begin to brown the chicken on all sides.

When the chicken is all browned, I took them out and set them aside.

Then I begin to lightly fry all the vegetables and button mushrooms. Although Delia's recipe did not include any vegetables, I thought since I'm going to make it a one-pot meal so might as well just throw in the vegetables and mushrooms and let them simmer and cook together instead of stir-frying another vegetable dish. Ok, that's how lazy I am :P

At this point of time, you can add some seasoning like chicken seasoning powder or some herbs if you like. Since Delia's recipe indicated only twigs of rosemary and chopped rosemary, I only added about 2 tablespoons of chopped rosemary after I added the chicken back to the casserole. Erm, don't forget to add the special ingredient, 30 garlic cloves!! And of course, add back to the chicken to the casserole too.

This is the best time to add any seasoning if you have since you would need to add the white wine now before putting the whole casserole into the oven.

After pouring the white wine, remember to turn off the stove and cover the whole casserole with aluminium foil unless you are bothered to do the flour covering Delia indicated which I'm not so I'm good with aluminium foil :)

Now the chicken casserole is going to get cooking for more than 1 hour. It's time for cleaning up!!

After about 90 mins in the oven, the chicken casserole came out in full steam and flavour. Whoosh!! I almost didn't watch the steam as I was too excited trying to check out the chicken!!

Tada!! Can you spot some garlic cloves in the inset of the picture above? It's gone all creamy and totally nothing garlicky about it. The white wine has simmered and soaked thoroughly through the chicken bones and even the vegetables, turning them so sweet. Awesome!! Today is indeed the day where I step up and overcome my fear of cooking or baking anything with wine - white or red. Kudos!! Maybe, I can attempt coq au vin next time ;)

This post is linked to Cook Like A Star, where this month's featured chef is Delia Smith, an event organised by Zoe from Bake For Happy Kids together with co-hosts, Baby Sumo from Eat Your Heart Out and Mich from Piece of Cake.

Last but not least, to end off this post, Mr G said, it's a long long while since you last cooked anything and this is really good :):) Yes, Mr G, I got it ;)