Tonight I brought home a cornish hen for each of us.

Cornish hens are just small chickens, typically under 2 lbs. They’re just right for an individual, but they do require some effort to eat.

For this dish, I used:

• 1 lemon per hen
• 2 cloves garlic per hen
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Preheat your oven to 425.

I started by quartering and juicing the lemons. This is not a hardcore juice-wringing operation – you want the quarters to retain some of their juice.

I wound up with about 1/4 cup of juice, so I added a roughly equal amount of olive oil. You’ll use it a little later.

Unwrap your hens, drain off the excess liquid, and pat each one dry inside and out. If there are any parts in bags, pull them out.

Shove the garlic cloves and lemon quarters inside the body cavity. It can be a little bit of a challenge to fit four lemon slices and two garlic cloves into such a small bird, so if you have to leave a piece of lemon out, that’s fine.

You can see the lemon poking out.

Stir or whisk the lemon juice and olive oil together. Rub the mixture into the skin of your birds and dump any excess inside the cavities. This helps the skin crisp up and brown. If you like very crisp skin, use more olive oil and less lemon juice.

Toss the birds in the oven and turn the temperature down to 375.

While the birds were cooking, I prepped a side dish of potatoes, zucchini, and mushrooms. I didn’t cut up the potatoes, since they were small, but I should have – I wound up having to microwave them for a couple of minutes after everything came out because they were still somewhat firm. I did dice up the mushrooms and zucchini. These got tossed with a little olive oil and finely cut fresh rosemary, and sprinkled with sea salt.

(Pre-cooking)

My chickens were done at the 45 minute mark, and while the potatoes needed a quick stint in the microwave to soften them up, everything was still ready to eat at the same time.

My husband took a picture of a finished plate for me: