Chicken, Carrots & Sage

I’m all about easy recipes whipped up with a little style. This one for roasted & sage-infused chicken thighs and carrots has less than five core ingredients and filled up my husband’s belly in an oh-so-stylish way last week. He wanted a week day lunch that was more than just the same old turkey sandwich. I wanted to use up those fresh natural chicken thighs before they hit their expire date. Our desires meshed beautifully and we both were back to our respective jobs feeling quite satisfied and almost indulged, albeit, briefly.

While in Nice last month, I picked up various spices, among them a small bag of just-dried sage leaves. I’m a sucker for herbs, and especially sage. It’s luxuriously musty scent is perfect weaved through so many things, not just the same old poultry. I actually prefer sage chopped into all sorts of fresh farm vegetables, but especially root vegetables.

While I adore sage, my husband adores carrots. They’ve been his favorite vegetable since childhood. These carrots, cute and stubby, were part of this week’s farm share, and the husband must have them cooked until fork-tender; he’s not a raw carrot kind of guy. (I’ve always hated carrots. It has something to do with the horror that my Mom claimed were carrots when I was a child, but in fact, they were frozen stand-ins for the real thing. I grew to despise the frozen variety, and am only now revisiting the charming vegetable via my farm share.)

This dish was so fast, roasting in a 350 degree oven while my husband and I were working from home. It was also a one-pot meal, a glass dish, to be precise. I piled a bunch of chicken thighs and a handful of chopped carrot spears into the dish and doused them with a heavy hand of olive oil, salt and dried sage. After a quick toss to ensure every inch of each main ingredient shined, I set the dish in the oven and returned to my real job. About 35 minutes later, the husband and I met in the kitchen for what had melted into Chicken, Carrots & Sage. It wasn’t fancy, but it was quick and quite pretty on the plate, appealing to my palate and my eyes. Don’t you just love when that happens?

It also happened to be the perfect marriage of both our loves – carrots and sage – and I really love when that happens.