My point was that Italian dishes rarely if ever contain both onion and garlic. Non-Italian dishes may differ. I don't see the point of using both onions and shallots in a dish. Shallots are onions. In fact, I use banana shallots instead of onions in most dishes. If you like crispy chicken skin, which I do, you'll like this one-tray dish. And it has garlic AND onion, but not as you know it.

Per person, you need either two large or three smaller free-range chicken thighs, bone-in, skin on. Not legs, which, unless part of a whole roast chicken, are cat food. You also need some best-quality salad potatoes, about 250g per person, scrubbed (not peeled) and cut into small chunks. You also need a few shallots OR onions, cut into big chunks or wedges. That'll do for now, but later you'll need one bell pepper per person cut into four large pieces, a generous amount of fresh parsley and two heads of garlic broken into unpeeled cloves.

Get one, two or three large oven trays. Your stuff needs to be spread out. Slick the chicken, onion and potatoes with extra virgin olive oil. Season. Chicken skin side up. That goes into a 200C oven for fifteen minutes. After that time, throw in the unpeeled garlic cloves and the pieces of red pepper. Slick them with the oil in the trays. You may need to loosen the spuds and onion pieces. Put the trays back in the oven for another 25-30 minutes.

Your chicken will be beautifully cooked and will have crispy skin. Sprinkle the whole lot with chopped parsley and serve up. It's gorgeous but will stink out an unventilated kitchen all the next day. Thanks to Nigella Lawson for the inspiration. Make sure everyone gets a fair share of the garlic cloves. You can suck out the incredibly sweet, soft middles with gay abandon. Now THAT'S how to eat garlic. And chicken skin, Mrrzy.