Honey and Harissa Chicken Traybake
Most honey chicken recipes have the same flaw, and you only find out forty minutes in when you open the oven.
Honey burns.
Put it in a marinade and roast it at 200°C for the best part of an hour and the sugars are scorched well before the chicken is cooked through. You get bitter black patches where you wanted sticky caramelised ones, and the honey has contributed nothing but disappointment.
The fix is simply to add it late. The marinade does the flavour, the honey goes on for the last ten minutes only, and a second honey goes on at the very end, off the heat. One tray, and it more or less looks after itself.
Ingredients
Serves 4
For the chicken
8 chicken thighs, skin on and bone in
2 tbsp harissa paste
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp smoked paprika
3 garlic cloves, finely grated
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt and cracked pepper
For the tray
2 medium eggplants, sliced into thick rounds
Plenty of olive oil
To glaze
2 tbsp Coastal honey
To finish
150g feta
A large handful of coriander
Jarrah or Redgum TA20+, for drizzling
Lemon wedges
Method
Mix the harissa, cumin, paprika, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper in a bowl. Add the chicken and turn it through until every piece is coated. No honey at this stage. Leave it for thirty minutes, or overnight in the fridge if you're organised.
Heat the oven to 200°C, or 180°C fan. Line a large tray with baking paper.
Slice the eggplant into rounds about 1.5cm thick and toss them in olive oil. Use more than feels reasonable. Eggplant drinks oil, and an underdressed one comes out leathery rather than silky. Season and spread them across the tray in a single layer.
Sit the chicken on top, skin side up, with space between each piece. A crowded tray steams instead of charring, and the char is most of the point.
Roast for 35 to 40 minutes, until the skin is dark and the eggplant underneath has collapsed into the juices.
In the last ten minutes, brush the chicken with the Coastal honey and return it to the oven. This is long enough for it to go sticky and catch at the edges, and short enough that it won't burn.
Take the tray out. Crumble the feta over while everything is still hot so it softens slightly, then scatter over the coriander.
Now, off the heat, drizzle over the Jarrah or Redgum. The residual warmth will loosen it without cooking it, and this is the honey you'll actually taste.
Serve from the tray with lemon wedges.
Why two honeys
Coastal does the glazing. It's mild, floral, and at $12.75 for 400g it's the one to cook with.
Jarrah is deep and toffee-like, and against harissa and feta it gives you a caramel note that cuts the heat. Redgum TA20+ is the other good choice here, smoother with a faint smokiness that sits naturally alongside the smoked paprika and the char.
Neither of them survives a hot oven, which is exactly why they go on at the end.
What to serve with it
Warm flatbread is all it really needs, for mopping the tray.
Couscous or a herby rice works if you want to stretch it further. A cucumber and yoghurt salad on the side is a good idea, particularly if you've been generous with the harissa.
If you'd like more heat
Use the hot honey from our other recipe in place of the finishing drizzle. Chilli honey over harissa chicken and salty feta is a very good combination, and since it's made without heat it goes on exactly the same way, right at the end.