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Among the list of much too late discovered foods in my life, is roasted olives. I met these intensely salty, crunchy nuggets when my daughter brought home leftovers from a notable restaurant in LA. Olives, like beets, cilantro and capers, are polarizing. You either have the palate for them or you don’t. If you’re in the latter camp, omit olives in this insanely easy, sheet pan dinner or you can make friends with tiny bits of the charred olives combined with of bite of succulent dark meat poultry. Flavor explosion.

I dwell on olives, but the glory, really, is in having a one-pan meal. It’s flatter and faster, but has all the hands-off relief of a slow-cooker.

Just a few ingredients, including a basic spice mix of fennel seeds, red pepper chili flakes and bay leaves, jack up flavor only to be perfectly balanced by olives and lemon zest.

We grind spices down to powder and rub into chicken skins. If you don’t have a spice mill (mine is an old coffee grinder), use whatever tool in your kitchen works best – mortar/pestle, blender, processor, knife, fingernails.

After a nice splay of ingredients on a sheet pan, this dinner will wait in the refrigerator all day long, until you’re ready to roast.

Forty minutes later…

Serve with a simplesalad. Simple.