I went to Waitrose today with the intention of buying one chicken breast for a recipe I was testing. As I looked at my options in the organic section — I only buy organic chicken; I used to trust free-range but I don’t anymore; am not even sure you can trust organic but if I start on this path, I will probably end up eating nothing which may not be such a bad thing at least for a while — I realised that I could buy a whole organic chicken for only a little more than the price of the pack of breast filets I was looking at. They were more than I needed anyway, and I wouldn’t eat what I don’t use — breast is my least favourite part of the chicken. So, I bought the whole chicken and jointed it myself, deciding to marinate and roast the legs and wings to have for my lunch, use one breast for my recipe and freeze the other in case I needed to test the recipe again. Now, if I were roasting the chicken whole, I would have kept it plain finishing it with either lemon juice or sherry to have a tasty gravy. But for the pieces, I decided to make the marinade I use for  wings, with garlic,  spices, lemon juice and olive oil. Here is the recipe. As you can see from the picture below, I really enjoyed my lunch!

Barbecued Chicken Pieces 

Serves 4-6

800 g chicken pieces (I used the legs cut in two, half the back with the parson’s nose, my absolute favourite piece, and the wings which I also cut in two discarding the tips)

4 large garlic cloves, crushed

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

juice of ½ lemon, or to taste

pinch ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground allspice (or 7-spice mixture)

pinch cayenne

¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

sea salt to taste

Put the chicken pieces in a mixing bowl. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well. Let marinate for at least 30 minutes, preferably two hours or longer.

Preheat the oven to 450º F/220º C. Or prepare a fire for a barbecue.

Arrange the chicken pieces on a baking sheet and place them in the preheated oven. Roast the chicken for 30 minutes, or until crisp on the outside and tender but fully cooked on the inside. If you are going to grill the pieces over a barbecue, you will have to cook them for at lest 10 minutes on each side, or until the skin is slightly charred and the meat is cooked through. Let sit for 5 minutes then serve with a good salad.