Mediterranean chicken thighs

I love chicken thighs. They are good value and so versatile - they can be used in curries, casseroles or roasted in a variety of ways. This recipe is also versatile - it's a bit of a mash up of a Greek chicken recipe I think I got from a magazine over 30 years ago, and a spicy chicken recipe I discovered about 25 years ago. Its similar to a dish I cooked as part of a family meal last year, when my nephew Joe asked for the recipe, probably not quite the same, as I didn't write that one down!

1. Pour some olive oil into a shallow roasting dish.

2. Add a shake of chilli flakes, 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped, 2 red onions, cut into wedges, and 1 pack of chicken thighs, skin side down.

3. Squeeze over the juice of half a lemon, sprinkle with sea salt, black pepper, 1/4 - 1/2 tsp chilli powder (to taste), and a shake of all purpose seasoning.

4. Place in the middle of the oven at 180 C.

5. After half an hour, take out the dish, turn over the thighs so they are skin side up.

6. Add a handful of black olives (I used Kalamata olives, but any kind of black or green olive will work) and wedges of lemon (use the other half of the juiced lemon plus one more, if you like a lemony taste).

7. Return to the oven for another half hour. Remove and check that the chicken is done by piercing and seeing that the juices are clear.

8. Serve to appreciative diners!

This would go well with a salad and fresh bread or roast potatoes (cooked at the same time as the chicken). As we're doing low carb, I served it with salad leaves and a pile of home made ratatouille, which was also good.

Variations:

If you wanted to make this more of a one dish meal, you could keep with the mediterranean theme and add some chunks of courgette or aubergine at the beginning, and some cherry tomatoes at half time. Add some extra olive oil too, as aubergine in particular tends to soak it up.

If you aren't into spicy food, then you could leave out the chilli flakes and chilli powder, and the all purpose seasoning is not strictly necessary either.

When I can recall the two original recipes that inspired this one, I'll post them up too!