Baked chicken thighs and vegetables with flavours of anise

When making a chicken bake – a family favourite, always – it makes sense to give it a stamp of individuality. You could use curry spices, or go Moroccan, or use a thousand other spice mixes from the world of cuisines available to us – or you could do what I did this week: seek out a small range of spices that have something in common. Like anise.

For this simple weeknight bake, I chose star anise, fennel seeds, and fresh fennel from the garden. Then I used ground fennel to season the chicken, and a few more fennel seeds on top of them for luck. Together, they would bring that aniseed bang to the dish, a pleasant focus to make it stand apart from other similar chicken and vegetable bakes.

The vegetables go at the bottom of a casserole or baking dish just big enough to hold all the chicken thighs above them.

The vegetables couldn’t be simpler: carrots, potatoes, and celery.

Everything is being cooked in air fryers in my new home at the moment, in the absence of a working hob, but this dish could just as well be cooked in a big old conventional oven. And of course there’s garlic too.

A note on differing air fryers: two of mine are “old-fashioned” ones (who would have thought we could already say that about air fryers?), the kind that has a drawer you can pull out, called a basket, and a rack at the base of that. My new one (a 25l Kenwood) is more like a conventional oven — a countertop one with a door with a window in it, and a light inside the oven, which has two elements, above and below. So it’s much more like a big oven, only smaller. This is the machine that I baked this dish in, so this recipe applies either to this kind of oven or your old stove.

Tony’s baked chicken thighs and vegetables with flavours of anise

(Serves 4)

Ingredients

3 Tbsp butter

2 star anise

1 tsp fennel seeds

8 chicken thighs, bone in, skin on

1 large or 2 small onions, cut into wedges

4 large carrots, peeled and sliced into long strips lengthwise

3 large potatoes, unpeeled, cut into large cubes

1 celery stalk, diced

4 garlic cloves, smashed, husks removed

A handful of fresh fennel fronds, broken up

Ground fennel, for the chicken

Knobs of butter for the chicken thighs, about 1 dessertspoon each

Salt and black pepper to taste

Fresh fennel fronds for garnish

A pinch of fennel seeds for each thigh

Method

Bake this either in a conventional oven or a countertop air fryer oven big enough to hold a moderately large casserole dish. The recipe is not designed for a standard smaller air fryer. Choose a deep dish that can hold all the ingredients and fit into the oven you’re using.

Prepare your vegetables: peel and slice the carrots, cube the potatoes, peel the onion and cut into wedges, and smash the garlic cloves.

Preheat the oven or air fryer oven to 200°C.

Put the butter in and put the dish into the air fryer. Turn it on for 2 or 3 minutes for the butter to melt.

Take the pan out and add the fennel seeds and star anise. Roll the pan this side and that for the melted butter to take up the seeds.

Place the carrots, potatoes and onion all over the bottom of the pan, and add the garlic cloves and diced celery.

Put the pan in the oven for 30 to 40 minutes at 180°C for the vegetables to cook through, shaking and tossing the basket every few minutes. Remove from the oven.

Season the undersides of the chicken thighs with salt, black pepper and ground fennel. Turn over and season the top sides with the same seasonings.

Put a generous knob of butter on top of each chicken thigh.

Place the thighs edge to edge on top of the vegetables in the pan so that they are well covered. Scatter more fennel seeds on top of the thighs.

Place in the oven or air fryer and bake for 30 minutes at 180°C, turning once, or until the chicken is tender and golden. Test for doneness by pushing a skewer through the thickest part of a thigh near the edge of the pan. Squeeze, and if the juices run clear they’re done; if pink, cook, for 3 to 5 minutes more.

Garnish with fresh fennel. DM

Tony Jackman is twice winner of the Galliova Food Writer of the Year award.

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.