Chicken with Lentils

Chicken with Lentils
with kudos for Jeff Smith

This dish has an unusual combination of herbs: oregano and dill.   It's really tasty! And there is a special and
easy sauce to top it with.   This dish goes very well with hot crusty bread and a dry red wine.

Ingredients:
An entire chicken cut into pieces
or the equivalent amount of the pieces you prefer
Two cups (500 ml) or one pound (500 g) of dried lentils
Four and one half cups ( ont liter) of chicken stock
OR
Four and one half cups (one liter) of water and one Knorr chicken bouillon cube
Two pressed garlic cloves
Two teaspoons (10 ml) of oregano
Two teaspoons (30 ml) of dill weed
One bay leaf
The juice and zest of a lemon

For the sauce:
A 24 ounce (750 ml) container of plain, unsweetened yogurt

Method:
Begin with the sauce because it will take some time.   The sauce is optional; this dish will stand alone without the
sauce, but the sauce really does add something.  Read on and decide for yourself whether to make it or not.
I recommend you do so.  Take an ordinary strainer five to eight inches in diameter, position it over a bowl and line
it with an ordinary coffee filter.  Spoon the yogurt into the strainer, filling the coffee filter.  Cover the strainer with
some sort of lid, perhaps the plastic lid that came on the yogurt container or a pot lid and place this entire
arrangement in your refrigerator.  Water will drip out of the yogurt into the bowl.  You will be amazed at the amount
of water that was in the yogurt!  Left overnight, a pint or more of water will drip into the bowl.  All you have to do
is pour the water out of the bowl and discard it every few hours.  What remains in the coffee filter is a thick yogurt
"cheese" that retains all the nutritional value and has concentrated the flavor.  This is the sauce.  It needs no further
effort other than to transfer it back into the container the yogurt came in.  The best way to do this is to peel away
the filter paper from the yogurt cake as you invert the whole mass over the container you want the yogurt cake
to end up in.  This is easier than it may sound.

Now that the sauce is made, let's get on with the main part of this dish.   Rinse and drain the lentils.  Put these in
a three quart (liter) saucepan and add the stock or the water and boullion cube and the dill, oregano, bay leaf and
garlic.  Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer for forty minutes.  While the lentils are simmering remove the skin from
the chicken parts.  Put the chicken pieces into a large casserole.  When the lentils have simmered for forty minutes
pour them hot over the chicken and bake covered at 325F (165C) for an hour or more.  The chicken should be
cooked until very tender.  The last thing to do before you serve is to pour the lemon juice and zest into the casserole
of chicken and lentils.  Mix the lemon in as you serve plates with a chicken piece and a generous amount of lentils
and top with a big spoonful of the yogurt sauce.   Here is the finished dish.