An Autumn Roast

Now, following on from yesterday's vegetables, here's another idea: this was lunch for four today.

You need a good, big oven dish...
Picture of roast chicken by Elijah, aged 7. That's my boy.


Take a large free range chicken and roast it on its back for about half an hour in a hot oven. You do this --I go on about this all the time, as you may have noticed f you've reading the rest of the blog!-- to allow the fat from underneath the chicken to percolate down through the breast, assuring succulent meat. After the half an  hour,  turn the chicken right side up and surround it with some roughly-chopped potatoes, peeled or not, chunks of onion or whole shallots and lots of unpeeled garlic cloves. If you like, add some fat chunks of carrot, too. So you see why I specify a substantial sort of dish. Now, put the lot back into the oven and roast until the chicken is done. The vegetables, by this time, will be sticky and unctuous. Quantities? I didn't count, but I'd say about 8 potatoes, two large onions and twelve cloves of garlic plus three large carrots.

How do you know if the chicken is done? You allow about twenty minutes for every 500g of chicken plus an extra twenty minutes. It's done when the skin is burnished, it all smells wonderful and the juices run clear when you pierce the chicken at its thickest point -- where the thigh meets the body. Use a a meat thermometer if you need to get your confidence up?

I served my chicken carved into thick slices (with my young boys eating the legs and wings), accompanied by the vegetables to one side. In lieu of the gravy you might be missing, I just poured over the juices from the roasting dish. We had spinach, too. And we picked up the garlic and chewed it or squished out its beautiful golden paste with the back of our forks. The picture above was taken by one of my young boys: I'd already scooped out the veg by this point. Look at the colour of the chicken: that's what I mean by burnished.

This is the kind of lunch or dinner that happens a lot in our house. Experiment with the vegetables, using squash or pumpkin, beetroot in large chunks -- even whole fresh red chillis.Either way, this makes me feel like the good Earth mother, even if my children do have a propensity to eat with their hands as if ferral.