Roasted garlic and rosemary chicken with fig and port sauce

One phone call to my dad the chef was all it took to turn my simple mid-week roasted chicken into this masterpiece of culinary perfection. It's definitely company food!

This is the kind of thing that happens to me in the middle of the week. I’m minding my own business, just trying to roast an easy chicken with some veggies and I get an idea: How about some figs roasted in with those veggies — can you roast dried figs? I sure don’t know the answer but I’m betting my dad does.

A call to Steve Degon with a cooking question is never that simple, and instead of knowing whether or not I can roast a dried fig (answer: not unless you reconstitute it, and then I’m still not convinced), I’m left with the makings for an amazing fig and port sauce.

I’m hardly complaining, because it was super-easy and more delicious than I could have possibly imagined. I can just feel it — this is going to be one of our new go-to sauces. It’s that good. It probably helped some that it complemented the garlicky chicken perfectly. You really need to try this one, and even though it’s a piece of cake to make, you can serve it to company and let the ooing and ahhing commence.

The roasted chicken is inspired by a Cooking Light recipe in an old cookbook I have of theirs. I’ve never tried it until tonight, but I love the way the chicken comes out when you cook it on a high heat for 30 minutes. It sort of sears the skin and makes for a really moist chicken.

Roasted Garlic and Rosemary Chicken with Fig and Port Sauce

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Ingredients:

For chicken

a whole chicken
8 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon dried rosemary
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
olive oil
2 onions, quartered

For sauce

1 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup port wine
4 large dried Turkish figs, chopped
2 tablespoons tamari or soy sauce
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
2 tablespoons butter

Preheat over to 450 degrees. Place chicken breast side up in a roasting pan and push the garlic and rosemary under the skin of the breast and drumsticks. Also put some inside the cavity. Brush the skin with olive oil and salt and pepper the skin and the cavity. Bake at 450 degrees for 30 minutes. Then, turn down the oven to 350 degrees, add the quartered onion to the roasting pan, and cook for approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until chicken reaches an internal temperature of 180 degrees and drumsticks move freely in their sockets.

When you’ve got about a half hour of cooking time left, put all sauce ingredients into a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes or until figs are mushy and breaking apart. Remove from heat and stir in the butter.

Carve your chicken and serve over a bead of spinach with the roasted onions and the sauce. You could also include onions of shallots in your sauce, or chop the roasted onion and add it to the sauce before serving. Mine tasted so perfect the way it was that I didn’t want to mess with it, but it accompanied the onion wonderfully.

I’ve got quite an advantage over most of you reading this post, because you can’t call up Steve Degon any old day of the week and get inspiration like this. It’s my duty to pass on his brilliance!