Chicken with Olives & Artichokes

A little while ago I purchased an obscene amount of chicken thighs and threw them in the freezer knowing they would work their way into our bellies soon enough. I was having a craving for salty, briny olives and thought how wonderful they would be with those chicken thighs. As with most of our recipes we kinda just invented the recipe as we were doing it, which is the fun of it!

After cutting off excess fat/skin from the thighs, we rinsed and patted them dry and seasoned them just with salt & pepper and a bit of smoked paprika. In our dutch oven, we seared them in batches (don’t want to crowd them!) in some olive oil. After wiping out the excess oil (but keeping some of the brown bits of goodness), we added some fresh olive oil and sauteed one frenched onion and 5 chopped garlic cloves. After cooking for 5 minutes, we added roughly 8oz of sliced mushrooms, and let those cook down.



Now come the stars of the show in my opinion!! About 40 olives (half Kalamata and half giant green ones) are halved and thrown in with ¼ cup of capers, a few sprigs of thyme and a small bunch of oregano.



We then deglazed the pan with about 2 cups of chardonnay, and cooked that for about 5 minutes more. We returned the chicken to the pan with 5 cups of chicken stock. We topped off with 2 16 oz cans of drained quartered artichokes, brought it up to a low boil and threw it into a 350 degree oven for an hour.

We served this delightful Mediterranean dish over some Pecan and garlic couscous, and toasted with a glass of Chardonnay as well! Bon apetit!