Roast Chicken with Saffron, Hazelnuts and Honey and Playing Catch Up!

Roast chicken with saffron, hazelnuts and honey is one of my all time favorite chicken dishes. Very easy to make and fragrant with cinnamon, honey and saffron, plus a touch of rosewater, this will quickly become a favorite!

And what, by God, does this have to do with chicken? Trust me, I always seem to know where I’m going; I just don’t know how I’m getting there! My recent foray at Costco found me deciding which Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook to buy. I already have Jerusalem and I’ve shared many of those recipes with you. I was all set to buy his new one, but it was the old one, the very first one, that caught my eye; so that is what I bought.

Trust me, I have bought very few cookbooks in the last 10 years. Luckily, I have many cookbooks and the library has been a great resource, too. In the last ten years those two have kept me fed, so to speak! The truth is I love cookbooks. I devour them like novels.I sleep with them by my bed. In my opinion, one can never have too many cookbooks. If you are ever wondering what to buy me, well, flowers and cookbooks will suffice!

And so it is I found myself facing “Ottolenghi” at dinnertime. On a cold winter night. In a cold house. It was snowing outside. I was hungry for more than a PB and J! Have I set the scene properly? So I opened the book to the middle. Truly, the page I opened to is page 123 and there are only like 283 pages in the book, so that is about the middle, isn’t it? This recipe, roast chicken with saffron, hazelnuts and honey, was on that page. And on the opposing page is another chicken recipe with za’atar that I am dying to make, too!

Now if you are smart, you will deduce from my photo that I had not planned to make this for a blog post. I planned to make this and eat it. I did not count on this being so good. I did not count on the aroma of chicken with ginger and cinnamon and saffron with plenty of black pepper and rosewater to bring Manservant up from his office and say, “That smells really good. When are we eating?” I did not have a plan on plating this and making it beautiful. I just planned on serving it with a salad and rice. But my last minute inner voice told me to take a picture, even though it was totally dark outside. My inner voice told me that something that smells so good, has got to taste great. Trust me. I have developed a very good inner voice. My intuition is quite good.

Well, this roast chicken with saffron, hazelnuts and honey, rocks! It will knock your socks off. It will send people running from all avenues of your home to see what you are making. It is special. It is simple. It is worth waiting 10 years for, when I could have made it way back in 2008, when this cookbook was published! My intuition tells me you will love it. But my intuition also tells me that you may wonder about this odd sort of ingredients that aren’t very American, so to speak. To this I say, “It is the new year. Time to try new things. Escape your box. Live a little. Catch up. And trust me!” I have great intuition!

Other great chicken dishes:

Lots of Nut Dishes from Sumptuous Spoonfuls!

Don’t Lose This Recipe!

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