Thyme & Garlic Chicken Wings and Sage Roasted Nectarines with Goat’s Cheese

When it comes to chicken I am definitely more of a thigh, legs and wings kinda girl than breast. It’s all about the bones providing more flavour meat, and keeping and making the meat more moist and juicy. Don’t get me wrong, there are times I will use breast meat where it is more fitting for the dish, but this isn’t one of them.

Chicken wings don’t always have to be these scrawny pieces that consist of more bone than meat. The smaller, scrawnier ones are fantastic for making a great meaty gravy as you want, and need, the juices and marrow from the bones more than meat on them. But for this dish you want ones that you can grab ahold of and pick them up with your hands, if you want to.

You should be able to get decent sized wing from the butchers and they are really inexpensive. So this is a great dish to make if you have people over for dinner and aren’t feeling too flush for cash. And of course, it is a wonderful dish regardless of it’s price!

Enjoy!

The prep. part – serves 2

Thyme & Garlic Chicken Wings

4 chicken wings
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp cayenne pepper
4 garlic cloves, skin on
Dash of dry white wine
Juice of 1 lemon, and keep the lemon to lay the wings on when roasting
6 – 8 sprigs of thyme
Dash of extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to season

Sage Roasted Nectarines

3 nectarines, cut in half and destoned – you want them to be under ripe as they will soften when roasted. If they are ripe they will go all mushy when roasted.
30g Somerset Goat’s Cheese – I use Capricorn Goat’s Cheese for its tangy and sweet flavours
Juice of 1 lime
3 large sage leaves, roughly torn up
Dash of extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to season

The cooking/assembling part

Put the oven on to preheat at 180°C.
Place all the ingredients for the chicken wings in a bowl and mixture together.
Then add the chicken wings to the bowl and massage in the marinade.
Pull out the sprigs of thyme, lemon and the garlic cloves from the mixture and place on the base of an oven dish.
Now place the chicken wings on top and pour over any excess marinade.
Put the wings into roast for 20 minutes.
During this 20 minutes prep. the nectarines by cutting them in half and removing the stone.
Pour the extra virgin olive oil and lime juice over the nectarines, season and place sage on top in another ovenproof dish.
After the wings have been roasting for 20 minutes, turn them over
and spoon over any juice in the bottom of the dish.
Now also place the peach nectarines in the oven, with the chicken wings on the top shelf and the peach nectarines on the middle shelf, or on the same shelf if they can both fit.
After 15 minutes, keep both dishes in the oven, again spooning on any juices of the bottom of each dish, and turn the oven up to 190°C for a further 15 minutes. In this time, the chicken wings should crisp up and the peaches begin to caramelise.
After another 15 minutes, remove both from the oven.
Plate up and crumble the goat’s cheese over the nectarines.