Chicken drumettes with vegetables

Raquel, author of Los Tragaldabas, talks to us today about that always-simmering cooking, that way of cooking and flavors of yesteryear that we love to recover and savor. For this, she brings a not-at-all complicated recipe that, with just a few minutes of preparation and a bit of patience for it to finish cooking, can become an exquisite dish. I encourage you to try it!

Today I bring you a recipe that, besides being very simple, is extremely tasty. At home we love chicken; I think it's a meat you can get a lot out of, and we can prepare it a thousand ways depending on the part we're going to cook.

Personally I love the breast, although it's the driest part, it's the one I prefer. Unlike my children, whose favorite part is the drumsticks. The combination of chicken drumsticks with vegetables results in a simply delicious dish, a very traditional recipe cooked slowly like in the old days. That's really how food retains all its flavor — in cooking, as in most things in life, it only needs time and love.

To make the drumsticks I used my Le Creuset Mineral Blue casserole, it couldn't be prettier, right? Like the other cocottes: because of the type of recipe this is, you can make it perfectly in other cast-iron cocottes, whether the shallow casserole or the Shallow Casserole type. Cooking in a casserole gives you the reassurance that your dish will be made in the most traditional way, the heat will be distributed perfectly throughout the casserole and the cooking will be perfect. When you cook in this type of cast-iron vessel, keep the heat at medium to ensure a perfect final result.

The choice of ingredients is very important; I preferably always buy free-range chicken — its flavor is undoubtedly more intense and the meat's texture differs from regular chicken. The vegetables, like the meat, should be the best — a dish begins with the ingredients and the final result will depend on them. This recipe accepts all the vegetables we like most and, above all, we can adapt it to seasonal vegetables, because we can enjoy it all year round.

Ingredients

• 800gr de muslitos de pollo
• 1 zucchini
• 3 carrots
• 2 red onions
• 4 garlic cloves
• 3 ripe tomatoes
• Bay leaf
• Salt
• Pepper
• Chicken stock
• Extra virgin olive oil

Recipe preparation

1. Pour a generous drizzle of olive oil into our casserole to cover the base, heat over medium.
2. Add the vegetables, whole garlic cloves, onion cut into quarters, carrot sliced thinly, zucchini diced not too small, tomatoes cut into quarters. The idea is to end up with a thick sauce in which the vegetables are present.
3. Sauté everything until golden, add the chicken drumsticks, season with salt and pepper and add the bay leaf. Brown together with the vegetables.
4. Add the chicken stock until it covers the drumsticks. Set the heat to medium-low and stir from time to time until the sauce reduces.
5. Serve directly in our casserole. We can accompany it with some steamed potatoes.
6. These kinds of stews are much better if made the day before. You'll allow the flavors to settle and be much more concentrated.