I am, largely, a lover of vegetables, grains and the like. But, as my friends have observed, I do roast a lot of chickens. Well, I've been out teaching tonight and come home to a few glasses of red wine and so I've come over all sentimental-like and feeling like writing a recipe for the estimable Giles and Kate.
You may shy away from cooking a chicken with stuffing in it. Maybe this is because you're concerned about getting them both at the right temperature and fretting about it. In which case, man up. But hey: there is another way. You just put hot stuffing in the chicken. Makes it less fiddly to ensure that both are properly hot and cooked through and it's also kind of sexy and earth-mothery to produce this big pan of golden stuffing and bird and just dole it out. So this is what you do.
Take a proper chicken - which is to say an organic (and free range) bird. Put it upside down (thus, breast side down) in a large roasting tin, having rubbed it with olive oil and salt and pepper. Now cook about 500g of couscous and, when done - but barely thus - add a tablespoon of olive oil, a teaspoon of crushed red chilli, lots of freshly ground black pepper, a good pinch of sea salt flakes, a handful of fresh parsley, roughly chopped, a finely chopped garlic clove and the zest of a lemon. Squeeze the juice of the lemon over the chicken just before you put it in the oven. Oh - having first stuffed the bird with this mixture, well turned over and amalgamated. The oven should be on 200 and you roast the chicken on its back for half an hour, then you turn it over and cook it until its juices run clear when you pierce the bit where the thigh meets the breast.
I should say that there will be plenty of stuffing to fill the bird and go around it, so you get some couscous which is soaked in all the delicious juices and very soft and some which has crisped and caramelised in the heat. This is all fabulous. You could serve some green vegetables alongside, but I'm not sure I could really be bothered. One idea is to roast some green beans with olive oil and chopped cherry tomatoes plus a couple of garlic cloves (which you then squish into the ad hoc sauce that's produced) and lots of black pepper. This will take about twenty minutes to cook and I will leave proportions to your discretion.
Serve in mighty helpings. Easy, hands off and sexy as f***. (I did say about the wine, didn't I?)
You may shy away from cooking a chicken with stuffing in it. Maybe this is because you're concerned about getting them both at the right temperature and fretting about it. In which case, man up. But hey: there is another way. You just put hot stuffing in the chicken. Makes it less fiddly to ensure that both are properly hot and cooked through and it's also kind of sexy and earth-mothery to produce this big pan of golden stuffing and bird and just dole it out. So this is what you do.
Take a proper chicken - which is to say an organic (and free range) bird. Put it upside down (thus, breast side down) in a large roasting tin, having rubbed it with olive oil and salt and pepper. Now cook about 500g of couscous and, when done - but barely thus - add a tablespoon of olive oil, a teaspoon of crushed red chilli, lots of freshly ground black pepper, a good pinch of sea salt flakes, a handful of fresh parsley, roughly chopped, a finely chopped garlic clove and the zest of a lemon. Squeeze the juice of the lemon over the chicken just before you put it in the oven. Oh - having first stuffed the bird with this mixture, well turned over and amalgamated. The oven should be on 200 and you roast the chicken on its back for half an hour, then you turn it over and cook it until its juices run clear when you pierce the bit where the thigh meets the breast.
I should say that there will be plenty of stuffing to fill the bird and go around it, so you get some couscous which is soaked in all the delicious juices and very soft and some which has crisped and caramelised in the heat. This is all fabulous. You could serve some green vegetables alongside, but I'm not sure I could really be bothered. One idea is to roast some green beans with olive oil and chopped cherry tomatoes plus a couple of garlic cloves (which you then squish into the ad hoc sauce that's produced) and lots of black pepper. This will take about twenty minutes to cook and I will leave proportions to your discretion.
Serve in mighty helpings. Easy, hands off and sexy as f***. (I did say about the wine, didn't I?)
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