Chicken for Kate.

K. is a little unsure about cooking chicken, so here is what I am going to show her in a little workshop a deux that her husband Giles has organised for her.

The ingredients that I have asked Kate to have ready:

1 large free range chicken

2 packs of chicken thighs, bone in -- assuming six in a pack.

The Roast chicken

There is plenty about this in my writing already, isn't there? Some further tips.

1. Make it a big free range chicken, organic if you choose but you'll have to pay the price. Note that freedom food isn't quite the same, so I urge you to do a little reaserch on labels and what these things actually mean. Your only guarantee, really, is that it explicitly says free range on the label. Or, of  course, if you saw the chicken. Now, I know I said big free range, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a fat one: a little scrawny chap may be very tasty and with plenty of flavour. Chickens may have slightly different builds or appetites, after all!

To begin cooking, bring the chicken to room temperature first and then cook it in a hot oven -- that's 200-- allowing 20 minutes for every 500g and then about 20 minutes more. In practice, you will probably cook most chicken for 1 and half hours. Your chicken is done when the juices run clear: test by inserting a skewer or sharp knife where the thickest part is -- where the side of the leg meets the breast. If you are in doubt, just use a meat thermometer and stick it in here and there -- including this thickest part.

It isn't essential, I suppose, but I cook my chickens upside down first. Which is to say, breast down. Turn it over after about 40 minutes. This is simply to allow the fat deposits, which are most plentiful in the back, to percolate down through the drier breast. So no stringy meat for you. Having said that, I don't mind a chicken I can get my teeth into. Never got the hots for capon for this reason. Don't get very excited about eating young lamb: rather chew on a hogget.

One last point. When the chicken comes out of the oven let it rest for ten minutes or so before carving it. That's to allow the meat to settle. If you go to straight away, lots of precious juices will escape: those would otherwise have been reabsorbed by the meat.

Variations:

1. For extra succour, put lots of garlic cloves, peeled or unpeeled, inside the cavity. Shove lots in the tin, too. I just pick them and eat them whole, skin and all. But you could squish that beautiful caramel-coloured garlic puree ont to your plate as you eat. You could also put half a lemon up the bottom of the chicken.

2.It can be nice to rub the chicken all over, inside and out, with olive oil (or a bland flavourless oil), sea salt and black pepper.

3. You might like to try making a spice paste and rubbing it into the chicken. Go Middle Eastern by trying this with sumac powder, salt and pepper; go Indian by doing the same with a mixture of cumin, coriander and, if yoiu like it, fennel. All of these ground or as powder. Or what about a mix of chilli flakes and Chinese five spice powder? Skin the chicken or not, as you please.

The chicken thighs: two suggestions.

1. Just chuck them in a roasting dish with thumbnail-sized pieces of peeled ginger root and lots of unpeeled garlic cloves. Add a few glugs of Kikoman soy sauce and a big fat pinch of red chilli flakes. Toss this around and put it in a hot oven for about 45 minutes.

OR

2. Do the same, but do not add the soy sauce, adding instead tablespoons of cumin and coriander powder, a fat pinch of asafoetida and a tablespon of nigella (otherwise known as kalonji and sometimes onion seed: both this and the asafoetida are easy to get in Asian markets or try the online supplier www.spicesofindia.com

3. Finally, using more South East Asian spices, keep the garlic and the ginger but tuck in four or five lime leaves,  a bashed and chopped up stalk of lemon grass, the juice of half a lemon and a good couple of glugs of Thai fish sauce. A teaspoon of sugar would be good to balance that addictive Thai mixture of sweet, sour, hot and salty.

The leftovers

1. That roast chicken would do a roast chicken dinner --all the trimmings or just roast potatoes and the juices! keep using the meat for a couple of days in a pilaf, a salad, soup, sandwiches.....Then make a rich stock by covering the carcass with water, add a few peppercorns, a stick of celery and a little onion, bring to the boil ann the simmer for slowly for about 1and a half hours. Season, strain and eat as a lovely broth with some tiny pasta, or freeze it and use in umpteen recipes or for soup.

2. Any leftover chicken thighs would make superlative sandwiches, if you pull the meat from the bones.

And for all these recipes, keep the juices and fat and use to roast some potatoes or winter root vegetables later in the week.

Feeling mnore confident?

xxx