This Valentine’s Day, make a romantic dinner with Ina Garten’s famous Engagement Chicken. As the story goes, a group of women working at Glamour magazine made Ina’s recipe for their boyfriends and were engaged within 24 hours. Whether that’s true or not, Ina does often joke, “Make a roast chicken, a man shows up!” This year will be my 10th anniversary with my husband and, like Ina, I really love cooking for him. After all, I get to enjoy it, too! 

I really went on an Ina Garten bender recently after devouring her latest book, Be Ready When the Luck Happens. Not a cookbook this time around – but her memoir. What a truly fascinating life, and I am thrilled that she chose to share her story with us. Many fans know that Ina worked at the White House writing policies for nuclear energy budgets before becoming a food icon, but how she decided to leave a stable job to follow her passion is even more impressive. My favorite part of the book was the kismet story of when Jeffrey first saw Ina from across the campus of Dartmouth College. A story of love at first sight never gets old.

If you love Ina’s cooking show, Back to Basics, you can watch her make Engagement Chicken in Season 2, Episode 13: Chicken 101. For a magic recipe, it is surprisingly simple. It is essentially a roast chicken with vegetables and a lemon-garlic-wine sauce. I like to serve this with a toasty baguette and a green salad. For success, follow a few of Ina’s chicken tricks. Ina suggests to salt the whole chicken right when you get it home from the grocery store. She believes that it permeates into the chicken and gives it great flavor. She also suggests drying the skin of the chicken very well with paper towels so that it browns nicely. I take one departure from Ina’s recipe. After roasting, I remove the garlic from the chicken and add it to the sauce to allow the garlic flavor to shine. Other than that, I follow her recipe implicitly.

Engagement Chicken (Serves 2-4)

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken (4-5 pounds)

2 lemons (quartered)

2 sweet yellow onions (sliced thick)

1 head of garlic (not peeled, sliced in half, crosswise)

Olive oil (for coating the chicken and tossing with the vegetables)

1/2 cup dry white wine (I use Pinot Grigio)

1/2 cup chicken stock (of course Ina makes her own perfect stock)

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

Plenty of salt and black pepper

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. In a large roasting pan, place the chicken in the middle. Pat the chicken dry with paper towels, inside and out. Discard any giblets.
3. Coat the skin with plenty of olive oil, salt and pepper. Season the inside of the cavity as well. Cut 1 lemon into quarters and add to the cavity, along with the garlic.
4. Using kitchen twine, truce the legs together.
5. In a bowl, mix the sliced onions and lemons with more olive oil, salt and pepper.
6. Arrange the vegetables around the chicken in the roasting pan.
7. Roast for an hour and 15 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 160-165.
8. Remove the chicken to a platter and allow to rest covered with foil for at least 20 minutes before carving.
9. In the roasting pan, bring the stove top to medium heat and put the roasting pan directly over the heat. Add the white wine and deglaze the pan, stirring with a wooden spoon to release any brown bits of flavor. Add chicken stock and flour. Stir for a few minutes until thickened. I strain the sauce over a fine mesh sieve over a bowl to keep out the solids. Serve sauce in a gravy boat along with the platter of chicken and vegetables surrounding it.