Roast lemon chicken with tagliatelle

On Sunday evening I made the roast lemon chicken with tagliatelle from the September 2009 issue of Olive magazine.  It was really straightforward to make and tasted delicious (I think I need to find another adjective or two to describe recipes that turn out to be extremely tasty!!).

I found the recipe after doing a search for 'basil' and 'chicken' as I had both ingredients in the house.  The basil was purchased for summer chicken and basil stew that I made for dinner on Thursday night last week.  I had some leftover and didn't want to throw it out.  Obviously as I had made the summer chicken and basil stew the week before, I was keen to find something that would taste quite different from the stew as we'd had it two nights in a row and I didn't want to bore my family.  So, after looking through the search results I picked the roast lemon chicken with tagliatelle and I have to say - I'm glad I did!

All the family enjoyed this meal and my son devoured it.  As the alcohol in the wine evaporates when cooking, it was fine to serve this to him as well as to the rest of the family.  He really enjoyed picking up the bits of tagliatelle and feeding them to himself!

Alterations
When I said I had chicken in - I had chicken breasts in.  The recipe calls for chicken thighs.  So, once again I used chicken breasts instead of chicken thighs.  As well as not having to buy chicken thighs for the meal, using the chicken breasts allowed me to reduce the roasting time as they didn't take as long to roast as the chicken thighs would have.

As I was only making this recipe for 2 adults and 2 kids, I only used 2 chicken breasts to keep the costs down a bit.  I stuck to the recipe with regards to the rest of the ingredients though as I fancied a lot of flavour and a bit more juices to tip into my tagliatelle than I would have had if I had halved all the other ingredients.

Cost
The chicken breasts cost €2, the basil was 50 cent, the lemons were 50 cent, the tagliatelle was around 80 cent and I have allowed 30 cent for the garlic and olive oil.  The wine I had in the house was bought on my last trip to my mothers house in Asda.  It was on offer 3 bottles for £10.  As the recipe only uses one glass I estimate that the wine cost around 80 cent.  This makes the total cost of the recipe €4.90.

Took this photo with my phone so it doesn't look great - sorry!