This dish is often found in many high-end restaurants, but with quite a few things you can do to upgrade the flavor with common ingredients. Since the average person has to get their ingredients from supermarkets, Port Salut cheese is probably the best substitute for the difficult to find Reblochon. That said, you are MUCH better off using chopped Pancetta (which you won't have to drain) than bacon. A couple of cloves of garlic go very well in with the onions and bacon/pancetta. Also, I would recommend only half-pre-cooking the potatoes in step 1, then slicing them, and then frying them in withe the frying pan items before putting them in the baking dish. Perhaps most importantly, this dish was MADE for Thyme - add 1/2 tbsp of thyme to the cream and wine before baking too. Yummy! Great addition to the site!

Reviewed On: Sep. 16, 2009

This one baffles me as to why people liked it, as the recipe merely calls for putting seasonings into the chicken cavity and then doing nothing more with it. So little of what you put in the cavity of the chicken seeps into the chicken meat itself during roasting that the it's largely wasted. You might as well just salt and pepper the chicken and stick it in the oven - all you would lose is a nice smell while it cooks, but the affect on the meat would be unnoticeable. Now if you're going to use the droppings to make a gravy or stuffing, then the seasoning suddenly is leveraged and adds to the dish and this might be good - I made a gravy of it and it was perfectly tasty, albeit nothing unforgettable. As the directions stand now, however, all this is is a recipe for generic roast chicken that will smell nicely of rosemary and onions while cooking.

Reviewed On: Sep. 15, 2009

This recipe - slightly modified - was made by my grandmother for me and I've made for my kids with great regularity and has long been a family favorite. The changes in how I make it: no garlic or honey (garlic sounds good and I love it, but would imagine it takes away from the lemon/oregano purity), but yes to salt and pepper; use 2 lemons, cut in half and squeezed over the thighs, then put the lemon halves in the dish while it bakes; coat the thighs with a bit more oregano than this calls for so all thighs are evenly coated. This is the best use of lemons in a non-desert other than over fish.

Reviewed On: Sep. 11, 2009