Lemon-Roasted Chicken with Green Beans and Potatoes

Sometimes it is easy to be prepared; you create a meal plan, or thumb through a cookbook ahead of time. Other times, you open the fridge in a panic and throw whatever is in the crisper in a pan and cook either rice or noodles. Somewhere in the middle is where this meal landed. SO grabbed some chicken from the freezer and put it on the counter to thaw during the day. This is pretty common for us, grab a random frozen protein and then, if we have time, look up a recipe or otherwise think up sometime to do with it. We will email each other the idea by EOD.  In this case SO also found a recipe, emailed it to me, and then I modified it as per what ingredients we had and what I felt like doing. Sometimes something sounds wrong or doesn't feel right, so I go on a tangent. Speaking of which (tangents, that is) I'll go on a brief one:  why is it that recipes call for so much darn garlic all the time. I like garlic, and have occasionally roasted a head, but often I'll see recipes calling for three, four, or even more cloves diced up. I personally think that is a lot. I'll usually cut the three or four down to one and it turns out fine to my taste. Anyway. Here is what the before picture looked like. It usually looks nicer.

Lemon-Roasted Chicken w/Green Beans & Potatoes (before)

The prep time is 10-15 minutes, but the roasting takes a while so don't try this last minute. I was surprised at how much the lemon infused its flavour into everything. As a matter of fact, I should warn you - if you don't like really lemony dishes, this is not for you. Also surprisingly, the chicken didn't dry out like I thought it might. The green beans were a bit mushy, but they were lemony. Still edible in any case.  Particularly tasty were the potatoes. Wow they turned out awesome. Here is the after photo:

Lemon-Roasted Chicken w/Green Beans & Potatoes (after)

Next Time: maybe some fresh herbs

Me: 8/10
SO: 8/10
SSO: 5/10

Lemon-Roasted Chicken with Green Beans and Potatoes
This is for two people (well, two and a half), it is easily expanded to more, just increase ingredients appropriately.
Ingredients

• 2 skin off, bone-in chicken breasts
• 3 or 4 potatoes, srubbed or peeled and cut into smallish pieces
• big handful of green beans, washed and ends trimmed
• couple of lemons
• garlic clove (or more, to your taste)
• kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
• 5 Tb vegetable oil (e.g. grapeseed)

Method

1. Heat the oven to 450, and spray or coat some sort of roasting pan with oil
2. Thinly slice up one lemon and layer in the bottom
3. Squeeze the other lemon into the oil, as well as the garlic (through a garlic press). Add S&P.
4. Alternatively toss the beans and potato pieces into the mix. Layer the beans over the lemon, and arrange the potato pieces around the edges. 
5. Finally, coat the chicken with the mix and place it in the middle. Pour the rest of the sauce over the whole enchilada.
6. Put the lid on and cook for 50-60 minutes. Check near the end and test for doneness.
7. I like the potatoes browed a bit more, so I plated the chicken and threw it back under the broiler for a few minutes.