Roast Chicken with Saffron and Cinnamon



finished chicken dish in a glass cooking pan

This recipe is from Norwegian chef Andreas Viestad, longtime host of the Tellus Works Television AS series "New Scandinavian Cooking" (1, 2), who adapted it from a mediæval (14th C.) Icelandic cookbook (1, 2), and featured it in 2013 episode "The Northern Way". For context, at the time (Middle Ages), chicken was a prestige dish in Scandinavia (livestock being primarily goats, sheep, and cattle), and the recipe's use of exotic spices clearly marks this as a dish for the wealthy.

The cinnamon amount shown will not overwhelm this dish, but will give it a subtle undertone.

If saffron (the world's most expensive spice!) seems extravagant, substitute an equal measure of turmeric powder and/or ground annatto seeds. Both are considered "the poor man's saffron": Annatto, aka achiote, gives foods a darker and more intense colour than does turmeric, more reddish than turmeric's yellow. Some commenters advise mixing, for use in savory dishes, a small amount of paprika with turmeric to best approximate saffron.

Instead of chicken livers, one can substitute ½ of a chicken bouillon cube, or similar.

It's best to bake the chicken with skin still on. Preparation time shown includes a day of marinating (optional).

Yields:

4 servings

Time Required:

Ingredients:

Preparation:

In a small bowl, combine the garlic, saffron, cinnamon, salt, flour, vinegar, and olive oil, stirring until smooth.

Rub chicken pieces all over with the spice mixture, and place either in a covered dish in a single layer or in a plastic zipper bag. Marinate at room temperature for 45 minutes, or up to 1 day in the refrigerator.

Cooking:

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Bake chicken pieces skin side up for 30 minutes.

Add wine and chicken livers (or ½ bouillon cube) to the pan, and bake 20 to 30 minutes more (stirring a couple times, if using the bouillon cube).

Check to see if chicken is done, by piercing with a knife tip the thickest part; juices will run clear when done.

Cook's Notes:

In place of saffron, I do substitute about ⅛ tsp. of turmeric with a bit less paprika. In place of chicken livers or bouillon, I use ½ tsp. of Summit Hill Foods's "Better Than Bouillon Chicken Base" concentrate paste, bouillon cubes being more about convenience than either food quality or value. (It would be also worth trying bone broth.)

As an aside, after a lifetime of not knowing one cinnamon from another, I learned that true cinnamon comes only from the inner bark of the "Cinnamonum verum" tree native to Sri Lanka, and has milder, more interesting, citrusy flavour compared to bulk, grocery-store cinnamon, which is made from cheaper, harsher-tasting non-verum Cinnamonum species grown largely in southern China, Vietnam, and India, and which technically isn't cinnamon at all, but rather is properly called cassia. I'm unsure whether favouring true cinnamon for this recipe would improve it noticeably, but the possibility bears pondering.

Recipe works splendidly as a gluten-free dish by subbing in any GF flour mix, such as King Arthur Baking's GF Measure for Measure Flour.

Collected and re-published at http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/recipes/roast-chicken-with-saffron-and-cinnamon.html by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> on Sep. 26, 2024. Individual recipes are free from copyright. Share and enjoy!

(If I have any copyright title in my own very minor contributions to this page — not my intention — they were created in 2024 by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. The image file (photograph) was taken on Sept. 26, 2024, also by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. I have thereby waived all copyright, compilation copyright, and related or neighbouring rights to this work. This work is published from: United States of America.)