It has been a week, and for dinner I had two slices of cold pizza scarfed down while manning the book fair cash register at Back to School Night. I am suddenly starving, but I can’t eat this late without repercussions. So, let’s talk about Roasted Chicken Breasts with Preserved Lemon instead. That’ll help.

When I made this weeks ago I was too busy eating it to actually take a picture of the finished product, but you can see from the above photo that the chicken was slathered in amazingly good goodness. This was another summer recipe from The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper. I made 2 breasts instead of 6, but I only halved the rest of the recipe. A third of a third was just more than I could calculate while hungry (which I almost always am when cooking). Hungry math is just bad math.

1/4 to 1/2 preserved lemon (rinse it lightly)
1/6 cup extra-virgin olive oil (I eyeballed half of a 1/3 measuring cup)
1/4 cup fresh coriander (cilantro) leaves
1 large garlic cloves
1/2 “generous” tsp whole cumin seeds
2 large bone-in, skin-on
Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. In a food processor, combine 1/4 of the lemon, olive oil, cilantro, garlic, and cumin. Pulse until “finely chopped.” Check for saltiness and add the rest of the lemon if you’d like.

Cover a large, shallow roasting pan with aluminum foil. Arrange the chicken on the foil and spread the lemon mixture over them. Pepper them generously.

Put the pan in the oven and turn the temperature down to 325. Roast the chicken for 30-45 minutes, basting with pan juices and checking for doneness (the original recipe calls for 45 minutes, but I started checking at 30 minutes since I only used 2 breasts). When a thermometer inserted in the chicken reaches 170 degrees F, it’s done.

Eat it and enjoy.