Spanish chicken fricassee

This recipe hails from one of those Fine Cooking anthologies I keep buying even though I already have all the recipies tucked away in back issues somewhere -- they sure seem handy when you flip through them at the grocery store. This one (77 easy recipes for every night -- not the best subtitle I've ever seen, but whatever) has a couple of nice dishes in it. My favourite by a country mile is this one (it goes by the name garlicky chicken thighs in red pepper sauce, but I like my name way better.)

A fricassee is half way between a saute (which has no sauce added during cooking) and a stew (which is sauce city all the way) -- this is Julia's definition anyway, and I'll take it as gosphel. I love the name since it makes me think back to those heady days of childhood when every Saturday morning some character or other was threatened with being fricasseed on Looney Tunes. (It also makes for great cooking!)

For this recipe you'll need 8 bone in chicken thighs with the skin on (important!). 6 cloves of garlic (I planted all but one yesterday, so I went with one), a few sprigs of fresh thyme (or dried, it works too), about a cup of chicken stock, 3 jarred roasted red peppers (I go for Bulgarian, Hungarian, or Polish -- people who know their red peppers!), 1 or 2 medium potatoes, and a tablespoon of sherry vinegar.

Get some salt and pepper on the skin side of the thighs -- you can season the other sides when they hit the pan.

Heat some olive oil over medium-high for a bit, then add the thighs skin-side down. Do this in two batches so they can brown properly. Turn the heat down to medium, and let them sizzle away for about 3 minutes undisturbed.

While that's going on you can chop your garlic, potatoe(s), and peppers. Go for two spuds if you want to make a heartier meal, and stick with one if you aren't so hungry. Dice them fairly small so they can cook through fast enough.

Flip them over (SO AWESOME!) and sizzle the other side for a minute. Move them to a plate and then do the second batch.

While all this is going on crank your oven up to 425 F, and heat your chicken stock if you happen to keep it in the freezer like me.

Once the thighs are all done, toss the thyme and garlic in the pan and let them sizzle away for a minute or two. (There are people out there who would remove some of the oil at this point -- I'm not one of them, but it's your call.) You can spend a century trying to separate the leaves from the thyme stalks before they go in the pan, or you can do it after everything is cooked like me. Personally, I find it FAR easier to fish them out at the end of cooking, since all the leaves pretty much fall off on their own.

Now you have to get the spuds and peppers and chicken in there. You can do this in one of two ways: put the chicken in and then nestle the other stuff around it, or put the other stuff in a nestle the chicken down into it. I've tried both ways and neither is all that fun -- you will make a mess here no matter how gentle you are with all that nestling.

ANYWAY, get it all in the pan somehow, and fill the empty spaces with chicken stock. Add the tablespoon of vinegar too. Stop pouring when the stock gets to the skin -- you want to keep this out of the liquid so it gets nice and crispy in the oven (and by nice and crispy, I mean delectable beyond belief!).

I should have warned you to use an oven proof pan by now. I went for my 10 inch de Buyer which fits 8 chicken thighs perfectly. Just remember to pop-out the cool little "B" before it goes in the oven -- maybe it can take the heat, but I'm not taking any chances. Another advantage of this cool pan is that it is supposed to help keep your iron levels topped up -- who knew?!

Pop the whole mess in the oven and let it braise away for 30 minutes. Take your creation out of the oven and say "Oh yeah!" I like to serve this over a bed of egg noodles, but it would also be great with rice, or even just some chunks of great bread. (Don't forget to fish out your thyme stalks!)

¡buen provecho!