French-Style Chicken & Peas

📝 Ingredients

• 4 chicken legs (about 250 g each)
• 400 g small potatoes
• 600 g frozen peas
• ½ lettuce (about 200 g, preferably the heart)
• 6 spring onions
• 1 chicken stock cube + 300 ml hot water
• 20 g unsalted butter
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• 1 tsp cornstarch
• 3 sprigs fresh thyme
• Salt, black pepper

🍴 Utensils

• Flameproof casserole dish with lid
• Wooden spoon
• Chopping board
• Kitchen knife

📖 Steps

1. Pat the chicken legs dry with kitchen paper, then season both sides with salt and pepper. Wash the potatoes without peeling them and halve the larger ones so they're all about the size of a walnut. Dissolve the stock cube in the hot water.
2. Trim the roots off the spring onions and cut back the green part, leaving just 5 cm, then halve them lengthways. Remove any damaged outer leaves from the lettuce, rinse the heart and slice it into 2 cm strips.
3. Heat the oil in the casserole dish over a medium-high heat. Add the legs skin-side down and leave to brown for 8 to 10 min without moving them, until the skin is deep golden and releases on its own. Turn them over for 3 min, then set aside on a plate.
4. Spoon off the rendered fat, leaving only about 1 tbsp in the casserole. Fry the spring onions in it for 2 min over a medium heat, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom with a wooden spoon: they're what give the sauce its flavour.
5. Return the legs skin-side up, add the potatoes all around, then the thyme and the stock. Bring to a simmer, cover and cook gently for 25 min over a low heat: the liquid should simmer gently, not boil hard.
6. Add the still-frozen peas, the lettuce and the sugar around the chicken, without covering the skin. Cover and cook for 10 to 12 min, until the peas are meltingly soft, the lettuce has wilted and the potatoes are tender when pierced with the tip of a knife.
7. Mix the cornflour with 1 tbsp cold water. Remove the thyme, pour the cornflour into the liquid while stirring gently, add the butter in pieces and simmer for 2 min uncovered, until the sauce coats the spoon. Adjust the seasoning, then serve.