Cook, enjoy, repeat: Braised Chicken with Artichokes and Olives

Chicken drumsticks and thighs turn into an easy-to-cook, big-flavored braise with bacon, marinated artichoke hearts, olives, garlic and lemon juice and zest.

WE’RE NOW ENTERING OUR FOURTEENTH YEAR OF DOING BLUE KITCHEN. That’s, give or take, with a new recipe almost every week, a lot of recipes. Some new recipes immediately get added to our go-to list and show up on our table again and again. Others, no matter how delicious, get unfairly forgotten. Like this one.

Our dear friends Roger and Bobbie are in town from Seattle. They’ve been on the road for a while now, mostly eating in restaurants, including with us a couple of times. So we thought it would be nice to just have them over to our place for a home cooked meal. They thought so too. Marion and I discussed a few go-to recipes in our arsenal that sounded good. Then Marion mentioned “that chicken dish you did with olives.” I kind of remembered it, fondly, as something I’d cooked maybe last year.  It was Braised Chicken with Artichokes and Olives, and it turns out I’d cooked it in September 2014!

It still sounded good, and easy to do while we all hung out in the kitchen talking. It uses canned olives (we like Pearls medium green pitted olives—they’re packed in water and sea salt, nothing more, and are readily available in supermarkets), marinated artichoke hearts (another off-the-shelf ingredient that always feels luxurious) and a handful of simple fresh ingredients—lemon, onion and garlic.

It was way more than good. It was why-haven’t-I-been-cooking-you-every-other-week good. It was you-need-to-cook-this-for-friends good. Do that. You’ll find the recipe here.