Back to Basics – 20/05/2016

Faced with a very cooking heavy weekend we’ve gone for basics and old favourites today.

For lunch we simply reheated some runner beans in passata and served it on toast.

It’s a very quick dish that scores high on speed, allotment content and freezer content.

For dinner we had out very favourite roast chicken.  We’ve served this to loads of people; in fact it’s our default chicken.  It is particularly good for a single oven since it includes potatoes and doing proper roast potatoes with chicken runs a heavy risk of cold chicken or less than crispy roasties.

You’ll need 250g of potatoes per person you’re feeding, peeled, in 1 cm slices, and boiled for about 5 minutes – assuming they went into cold water.

These then get layered in the bottom of the roasted tin with bacon lardons/pancetta/cubed bacon.  It is possible smoked paprika and pistachios might make a suitable Halal alternative, but we’ve yet to play with that properly.  Essentially you want some flavour to go into the potatoes and a little bit of texture.

In a food processor mix one whole bulbs worth of peeled garlic cloves, the leaves off two sprigs of rosemary, zest of a lemon and ½ tsp of coarse salt.  Give it a whizz, and then add a good grind of pepper and a large knob of butter.  Whizz again.  If it looks like it’s got a bit warm, shove it in a fridge for a bit, it will make life easier.

I speak from experience; trying to push nearly melted butter under chicken skin is an utter mission.

Your size of chicken is up to you, but it will obviously effect cooking times.  We generally use a 1.5kg to serve four people, or, as we did today, serve two people with plenty left over for salads.

Take the chicken and, starting at the neck end, slide your fingers between the skin and flesh, trying not to tear it.  Smear all the butter paste between the skin and flesh on both the legs and breast, but mainly on the breast.  Wipe your fingers on the outside of the chicken and then place on top of the potatoes.

Wash your hands with lots of soap.  The butter is a bugger.

Pour 300ml of white wine over the top of the chicken and place in a 200°C (180°C fan) oven until cooked.  A 1.5kg chicken will take about 1.5 hours, but it is not a direct correlation.  Rest for 5 minutes at the end.

Drink the rest of the white wine.

We also had an utter failure of an ice cream.

Since we had so much Stilton in the freezer we thought we’d try Stilton Ice cream. Yeah…

Hot melted Stilton? Yum.

Room temperature Stilton? Tasty.

Very, very cold Stilton?  Just no.

There is a reason we bring cheese boards to room temperature and this dish capably demonstrates the folly of not doing so.

Not even with port.