The other night, we had the in-laws round and always keen to show their son bagged a good one, I cooked a lemon roast chicken with lemon and parsley stuffing, followed by an apple and blackberry crumble. Absolutely delicious and totally satisfying! As a commuter I had to make sure I came home that bit earlier from work because if there is one part of cooking I am absolutely rubbish at…it’s my timings, but I will talk you through my recipes:
1 Chicken (mine was 1.750 kg) 1lb 7oz dessert apples (braeburn or cox
2 lemons orange pippin)
5 slices of bread (crusts if possible) Punnet of blackberries
1 onion diced Granulated sugar 1oz (30g)
30g of fresh parsley chopped Squeeze of lemon juice
1 egg Plain flour 4oz (100g)
White wine (50ml) Butter or marg 3oz (90g)
Salt & Pepper Demerara/brown sugar 2 oz (60g)
Porridge Oats 2oz (60g)
Drizzle of golden syrup
The Main
· First of all, if you have your chicken in the fridge, take it out half an hour before you put it in the oven to let it warm up to room temperature.
· Prepare your stuffing. Gently fry off your onion in a little oil until soft and while it is cooking, blitz the bread into bread crumbs with a hand blender or food processor.
· Chop the parsley finely and combine with the bread crumbs and onion and squeeze in the juice of 1 lemon.
· Add a beaten egg and mix the whole lot until it has combined nicely, you still want it a little loose, not clumped together in a gooey mess.
· Next take your chicken and place in a roasting tin, from the neck end (with the big flap of skin) using a spoon, wiggle it underneath the skin to ease it away from the body of the chicken to create a pocket in which to place about half of your stuffing.
· Once the stuffing is underneath the skin, place the other half in a small oven proof dish (you can cook this off in the oven for 20 minutes and serve it as an extra side).
· Now take your other lemon and slice it up placing the lemons on top of the chicken, just resting on the bird. You can secure them with cocktail sticks if you like, but this is not necessary.
· Finally pour 150ml of boiling water and the wine into the bottom of the roasting dish and cover with tin foil. Place in the oven on 180 degrees for 1 hour, after which you remove the foil and cook for a further 20-30 minutes, until the skin is golden and crispy and the juices run clear when pricked with a fork. Take the chicken from the oven, cover with the foil and leave to rest for half an hour to let the meat relax, making it more tender.
Sides
I did roasted veg with my chicken. I always find this an easy side when entertaining because very little effort is involved. Always keep your veg big and chunky because they will shrink when roasted. If using potatoes or other hard veg, I would par boil them for half the time they usually take to cook, then toss your veg in a drizzle of sunflower oil, salt and pepper. Cook in the oven for 30-40 minutes on 180 degrees.
The gravy
When doing a roast of any meat, always using the roasting tin to make your gravy in because that is where the real flavour is. For this recipe, I moved the chicken to a warm plate, to allow it to rest. Meanwhile I moved the roasting tin to the hob and put on a low heat. Once all the scraps and meat juices begin to sizzle, you want to de-glaze the pan with wine (or water if you don’t want to use alcohol)….this simply means you add a few glugs of wine (white for chicken/white meats and red for beef/dark meats) to the pan and stir with a whisk to get all those meaty fragments and juices mixed in. Make some instant chicken gravy up, by following the instructions on the packet (I used good old Bisto) and add this to the pan. When it has all heated through, strain into a serving jug. Using the meat juices enhances this gravy ten-fold; it will have bags more flavour and elevates the whole dish.
You want to prepare this in the first hour of your chicken being in the oven. The essential ingredients above come from Mary Berry’s cook book on puddings, but I have added my own little twist.
· Peel and core all your apples then thinly slice them.
· Place in a bowl with the granulated sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice and toss so that everything is coated. The lemon juice prevents the apple slices from going brown when they become exposde to the air.
· Find a suitable oven proof dish, about 8 inches wide and 2-3 inches deep. And layer up the apples, dotting the blackberries in and amongst and then get on with the crumble topping.
· Put the plain flour, brown sugar and butter in the same bowl and rub together between your fingertips until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.
· Now add the oats and stir through.
· Finally add a drizzle of golden syrup, I add this to my crumbles to get a little bit of a chewy top, it is completely optional, it is just the way I like my crumbles.
· Cover the fruit with an even layer of crumble mix then bake in the oven for about 40 minutes on 180 degrees or until the top has gone brown and the fruit is bubbling around the edges of the dish.
Tips for a good roast
1. Always plan and read the recipe in full, before you begin, so that you can allocate enough time to prepare your meal.
2. Wash/clear up as you go along, especially if you have a small area because a roast takes up a lot of room.
3. The meat in the tin is heavy, bear this in mind when lifting it in and out of the oven; unlike me who overcompensated when lifting and burnt my arm on the tray above, I now have an impressive memento on my forearm.
No comments:
Post a Comment