Olympic Food Challenge: Armenia - Garlic and Lemon Baked Chicken

Having baked fish with some lemon and orange last night for the Olympic Food Challenge, tonight I'm upping the citrus steaks with Chicken Cooked with Garlic and Lemon in the Oven from Armenia.  I was tempted by a couple of the dishes on the Armenian Cuisine website, but having stuffed vine leaves for Lebanon and not knowing where to get soujouk, I decided on chicken.

I actually felt like a contestant on The Great British Bake Off.  I had a list of ingredients but it felt like half of the cooking instructions were missing.  I did what all of the best contestants do and made it up as I went along. 

The juice of three lemons, three large garlic cloves, allspice, salt and some harissa as a pepper paste substitute, were all blended together with olive oil and poured over the chicken.  This was then baked for half an hour covered and half an hour more uncovered, basting all the while.  The finished result was some of the juiciest chicken I have eaten in a long time.  We served it with crushed new potatoes with olives and green beans.

Armenia won a silver and two bronze medals in the Olympics but neither of their Paralympians have picked up a win. This baked chicken dish was well worth a gold medal though.  We will be cooking it again but possibly with a whole spatchcocked chicken.