Orvieto chicken, with fennel, garlic and lemon — a Rowley Leigh recipe

I first met Alastair Little at university, more than 50 years ago. When he died in August, I had not seen him for three years: he had migrated to Australia, where the pandemic and his own infirmity prevented him returning to his homeland. We had followed parallel paths for most of our lives, although Alastair always seemed to be leading the way.

By the mid-Eighties we were both making a name for ourselves, and while I was more conventionally versed in French haute cuisine and Alastair had a more eclectic approach, we were strongly influenced by the new wave of French cooks that had created nouvelle cuisine. We both drifted towards Italy. Once he started teaching there, he became obsessive. He would spend an hour or two talking — and gosh he could talk — about making pasta e ceci, a seemingly simple and rustic Tuscan amalgam of pasta and chickpeas in a tomato sauce. The Orvieto chicken was another obsession. Cooking it now, I am back at Alastair’s culinary school at La Cacciata, where the scent of abundant wild fennel fills the air, lazing in the pool as I gaze across the valley to Orvieto — and the glittering horizontal stripes of the duomo that dominates the town.

There was no middle ground with Alastair: he always spoke with huge and passionate conviction, and yet had the strength of character to constantly evolve: the recipe for Orvieto chicken is a case in point. Described as unimprovable in his Soho kitchen book, published in the 1990s, it was much adjusted in its last rendering on his website in 2019. When looking up the recipe online, I was shocked to find it replicated on half a dozen websites, all copying Alastair’s recipe word-for-word with no mention of the man himself. He would have had a word — or two — to say about that.

Orvieto chicken

Serves four

Needless to say, I have adapted the recipe somewhat. The chickens available in Orvieto — as in most of Italy — are excellent free-range birds, well muscled and full of flavour: try to find the best bird you can.

1. Peel the potatoes and cut them into generous centimetre cubes. Cover in cold water, add salt, bring to the boil and simmer for five minutes so that they are parboiled but not cooked through. Drain and refresh in cold water.

2. Cut through the centre of the gizzard, rinse it out and then pull off its tough outer skin. Cut into small cubes like the potatoes. Do the same for the liver and heart. Heat a large frying pan with three tablespoons of olive oil and add the giblets, turning them so they are lightly browned before adding the potatoes. Continue to cook them until the potatoes are well coloured and cooked though. Finely chop the fennel and two of the garlic cloves then add to the potatoes, along with the grated zest of the lemon and half the olives, roughly chopped. Season this stuffing well and leave to cool.

3. Season the interior of the chicken and then fill it with the stuffing. Generously salt the chicken skin and then coat with two tablespoons of olive oil. Place in a cast‑iron oven dish (or similar) and put it in a hot oven (230C) for 20 minutes, then add the remaining cloves of garlic and the rosemary. Turn the heat down to 190C and cook for a further 50 minutes. Remove the chicken from the pan and let it rest in a warming oven.

4. Pour the white wine into the garlic-laden dish and scrape up all the chicken juices, reducing the wine by half before adding the chicken stock. Let this simmer nicely for 10 minutes. In the meantime, trim the remaining chicken livers and cut into small pieces before frying them very briefly in a very little olive oil. Scoop the stuffing out of the chicken and keep warm in the middle of a large serving dish. Cut the chicken into eight joints and add briefly to the pan with the garlic and gravy along with the remaining olives and the livers. Check the gravy for seasoning and then arrange the chicken around the stuffing. Spoon garlic, olives, liver and juice over and around the chicken and take triumphantly to the table. No further accompaniment is necessary.

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