Day 183: Lemon Roasted Chicken, Risotto, Green Beans, & Pound Cake with Ice Cream

My parents are on vacation still so they came over for dinner tonight.  My house is in shambles but I'd honestly rather eat in than take my kids out again for a while after a long week of eating out a lot.  And the cooking aspect of it actually provides a little bit of stability and "zen" for me amidst the chaos of packing and preparing for lots of other upcoming events we have.  Tonight I prepared a very simple lemon chicken.  So simple, in fact, that as I type this I realize I forgot to add the dried herbs that usually accompany this dish!  Sigh.  Oh well, it could be worse.  The chicken was still delicious!

Lemon Roasted Chicken
Originally, I think I saw this idea from an Ina Garten show.  It's very similar to a chicken piccata, but the sauce is prepared slightly different and the chicken doesn't need to be breaded like in most chicken piccata dishes.  But the garlic and lemon flavors are there.  The recipe calls for chicken breasts without the bone but with the skin.  Most grocery stores only sell either skinless breasts or breasts with skin AND bone.  So I buy the latter and then de-bone the breasts myself.  The skin just makes the chicken more flavorful, I think!

1 package of chicken breasts with the skin (about 5 lbs or 5 breasts is a typical package)

2 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 cup of olive oil
1/3 cup white wine
juice & zest of 2 lemons
1 lemon
salt, pepper
fresh thyme (optional-apparently) ;)
dried oregano (also optional, since I left out these 2 ingredients tonight) :/

Preheat the oven to 400*.  In a small saucepan over medium heat, cook the olive oil and garlic.  Cook until fragrant but not brown--careful not to burn it!  Turn off the heat and add the white wine and the juice from the 2 lemons and stir.  Pour the juice into a 9 x 13 baking pan.  Place the chicken over the sauce, skin-side up.  Sprinkle the chicken with the herbs, salt, pepper, and lemon zest.  Cut the remaining lemon into 8 wedges and place them in the pan throughout the chicken.  Bake for about 40 minutes or until just cooked through and the skin is golden brown.
I served this with risotto and green beans.  For dessert, I served the rest of the pound cake from last night and ice cream.  Delish!