Baked Chicken Breast with Onion, Garlic, and Rosemary

I've been somewhat anti-chicken lately, but all day I couldn't help think about this dish from The Joy of Cooking (1997), which I hadn't made in a few years. On my walk home, I stopped at two grocery stores looking for fresh rosemary (a very nice touch it would have been, too) and was disappointed. I also wanted to serve it with kale but, alas, no kale was to be found. But everything turned out well -- I had dried rosemary at home, sweet potatoes, and found some lovely green beans that I steamed and served with butter, lemon, toasted almonds and tart dried cherries. Dessert was broiled grapefruit -- warm grapefruit is a bizarre experience! But not bad, either. I'd like to try it again with better (read: sweeter, ruby red) grapefruit. Here's the recipe for the chicken, which turned out quite moist and delicious.

Ingredients
1 1/2-2 lbs. bone-in chicken breasts, or a mix of white and dark meat pieces, with skin
1 large red onion, sliced into rings
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tbsp. good quality olive oil
1 tsp. dried rosemary, or 2 tsp. fresh
Kosher salt
Fresh cracked black pepper

Directions
Preheat oven to 400 F. In a medium bowl, combine onion, garlic, and rosemary, and drizzle with 1 Tbsp. olive oil. Rinse chicken and pat dry, then sprinkle with salt and black pepper. Some folks would say to remove the skin, but I say no! Because the skin (I think, anyway) keeps the meat from drying out. I don't actually eat the skin, but find it's crucial for cooking. If you feel an urge to remove it that cannot be tamed, simply beware that you may have dried out chicken, particularly if you're cooking white meat. In a medium size baking dish -- I use a 10-in. square pyrex dish -- spread 1/2 the onion-garlic-rosemary mixture. Set the chicken pieces on top, and cover with remaining onion mixture. Drizzle with 1 Tbsp olive oil, and pop into the oven for 45-55 minutes. I use the hack method of checking if the meat is done by cutting it open (gasp!). It's very uncouth and I don't recommend it if you wish to impress guests. Better to use a meat thermometer or something like that.

One problem I found this time around (but not always, strangely) is that the onion and garlic on top of the chicken start to brown and char a bit. I like charred onion, but burnt garlic is terrible. It didn't actually get burnt, but I was nervous. That said, I might recommend covering the dish with foil or a lid for 1/2 the cooking time, to avoid burnt garlic. In the end the garlic and onion on the bottom get all soft and delicious, almost -- but not quite -- carmelized, and who can dislike that? So tasty.

Despite this last caveat about the onion and garlic, I really recommend trying this dish out. It's serves 2 very hungry people, or 3 normal ones.

Jessica