TGIFood

#6: Roast chicken thighs and drumsticks with gin and orange

Exotic flavour: Tony Jackman’s chicken portions roasted in an air fryer with gin and orange. June 2024. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

By Tony Jackman

15 Dec 2024

Let’s ring the changes with a fresh take on air fryer roast chicken. It’s all about orange and a most intriguing gin. This recipe is colourful and bold, yet despite its rigour the resulting flavour is surprisingly nuanced.

The bluish-purple bottle of mysterious gin had been staring at me from the liquor cabinet for three weeks. Use me, use me, it seemed to say through the gin-sodden ether. But there was more than gin in the air, something fynbossy, something sweetly scented. Out the window, green trees laden with navel oranges beckoned my ministrations. Use us, use us…

Oh sod it, all right, I growled at them, and took the bottle into the kitchen and went out and picked some oranges.

As I stepped back into the kitchen, I pictured us pulling up outside a small town hotel in the Sixties, and my mom and dad going in and ordering “gin and Oros”. It was the strangest drink, I thought even then and still do now, but that was their tipple. Gin and orange. Now, I have a colourful mind. And I pictured, and almost smelt, the combination of fresh orange juice and this strange gin redolent of protea and hibiscus, combined in a saucepan and bubbling down to a syrup. And then basting chicken thighs with it, and sticking them in the air fryer to see what would happen.

Well. Just look at that picture. That’s what happened. Glorious.

Note, though, that the thighs and drumsticks were lovely and plump, not those silly scrawny things that there’s no point in bothering with.

Also, you can’t be a wimp about the gin component. None of that “oooooh no, you can’t use that much!”. Yes, you can. Into the saucepan went 400 ml of fresh orange juice, and (sit down) another 400 ml of Whitley Neill handcrafted Protea and Hibiscus gin (to be precise, because another gin won’t have the same flavour profile and this is the one that had been glaring at me all that time).

The idea was this: to approach the baste/sauce as you would when making a wine reduction sauce. But using the gin instead of the wine. The two equal parts reduced as one, until the result was a flavour that tastes just as much of one as it does of the other. Please don’t just add a tot of gin to the orange juice and expect to have the best result.

There were a couple of other things in the mix. A few juniper berries to boost the gin-like component. A spoonful of coriander seeds. And the finely grated zest of one orange.

To go with it, I made some polenta, into which I stirred baby tomatoes and green peppers that I had braised with onion, garlic and chilli.

Tony’s roast chicken thighs and drumsticks with gin and orange

Exotic flavour: Tony Jackman’s chicken portions roasted in an air fryer with gin and orange. June 2024. (Photo: Tony Jackman)

(Serves 4)

Ingredients

Finely grated zest of 1 orange

400 ml freshly squeezed orange juice

400 ml Whitley Neill handcrafted Protea and Hibiscus gin (or another interesting gin, preferably with fynbos of some kind)

1 Tbsp coriander seeds

10 juniper berries

8 nice plump chicken thighs and drumsticks or any variation of those (6 thighs, 2 legs; 4 of each, whatever)

Salt and black pepper

For the sauce:

A splash of canola oil or similar

1 red onion, chopped

The remaining orange-gin liquor (it was about 100 ml)

300 ml homemade chicken stock (I used Nomu)

Another generous glug of gin (yes!)

Salt and black pepper to taste

For the polenta:

1 cup polenta

4 cups cold water

A little olive oil

1 green pepper, diced small

2 finely chopped garlic cloves

1 cup of diced baby red and/or yellow tomatoes

2 red chillies, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Put the juice, gin, zest, seeds and berries in a saucepan, bring to a boil and reduce down on a fairly high heat until there’s about 100 ml of it left. Strain through a fine sieve and let it cool.

When cool, brush it onto both sides of your chicken thighs and drumsticks. Keep the remainder (about two-thirds of it should be left over) to turn into a sauce later. Season them with salt and black pepper.

Preheat the air fryer to 190℃.

Cook them in the air fryer for about 25 minutes at 190℃, turning — first skin side down for 10 minutes, then skin side up for 15.

For the sauce:

Simmer the red onion in a little oil until softened, then add the remaining 100 ml or so of the baste.

Add 300 ml of chicken stock and another glug of gin (just to freshen it up) and reduce until it is a slightly thick sauce. If needed, you can stir in a little cornflour mixed with water and keep stirring while it thickens. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

For the polenta:

Heat oil in a saucepan and add the tomatoes, green pepper, chilli and garlic. Bring to a simmer and braise, stirring, until nicely combined and soft.

Pour the polenta into a saucepan, add the water, put it on a moderate heat and stir continuously while it combines and turns into nice creamy polenta. Season with salt and pepper.

Stir the vegetable mixture through the cooked polenta.

Serve a mound of the polenta napped by chicken portions and plenty of sauce. DM

Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Writer 2023, jointly with TGIFood columnist Anna Trapido. Order his book, foodSTUFF, here

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed on a plate by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.

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