Roasted Chicken Legs with Smoked Paprika

Once again I took Melissa Clark with me on vacation, and this time it turned out really well. Sadly, there is no photographic evidence of the meal, so let me show you where I cooked it.

This is the gîte, or vacation house, that our friend Nadine rented to celebrate her birthday with friends and family. It's in south-central France in a small town called Servas. The house was huge and gorgeous, and the location was also not too shabby.

We could look out our windows and see the hills and the small medieval towns and the olive orchards in the area. It was too cold to enjoy the pool, so instead we played a lot of card games and did some sightseeing and ate. And drank. And enjoyed being together in such a lovely place.

 Somehow I found myself spending a good deal of time in the kitchen, which was no hardship (especially since that got me out of most of the dishwashing). I had remembered my knives this time, and the equipment was otherwise really great. I cranked out a lot of "exotic" meals: pancakes (for Claire's birthday), couscous (because it feeds a crowd), scalloped potatoes with hot dogs on the side (again, Claire's special request), and the roasted chicken recipe.

 Many of the others at the house had never had pancakes or couscous before, but everyone was willing to give this strange food a try, and they all seemed to really like it. Therefore, I figured I could go ahead and fix the spicy chicken. There were two chickens, so I did one "classic" roast chicken with mustard and butter, and then I had Sami butterfly the other chicken (with many exclamations of awe and surprise from the others) so that I could marinate it in the strange ingredients I had brought. Ginger, chili, smoked paprika, cilantro: these are all still not an everyday part of the French pantry, and when I combined them with orange, salt, and olive oil, everyone seemed a bit skeptical. Especially when I sliced in about three chiles, realizing that they had no heat at all.
So the chickens went in the oven, the wine for the evening was opened, the snacks came out, and we played some cards while the chicken roasted. Once Sami had carved the chickens and we had brought them out with the leftover couscous, the taste testing began. Everyone wanted to try the "strange" chicken, and they all seemed to like it a lot--there was none left. What amused me, though, was that our American friend Jean preferred the classic French-style chicken while Nadine's French mother, who had been the most skeptical of all about my cooking decided that the "spicy" chicken was more to her liking.
In any case, this recipe was quite a success. It's sweet and a little spicy (your results will vary depending on the chiles you use) and very flavorful, without one flavor dominating. And while it would (and will) make a great weeknight dinner, for me it's now all about sitting around a giant table with a lot of good people, relaxing and enjoying life.