Lemon and Thyme Roasted Chicken

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Chicken a la Stephen

Trying to look like we were just having a casual conversation instead of gossiping in work, me and Stephen started talking about the best way to roast a chicken. His suggestion sounded fresh with a touch of spring, so I gave it a shot!

This recipe comes from Stephen but possibly he thinks via Jamie Oliver - but I might give Stephen credit. It’s a really wonderful dish.

Stephen is the namesake for Stephen my canary - so if you haven’t met him already here a photo of his cute little yellow self. He was found by Stephen M, who was working late, one cold Sunday evening in May. He was hopping up Pearse Street, cold and lost. He opened the door of our office and in he came where he revived well and I adopted him the next day. Seems strange to put a photo of him in the same post as a roast chicken recipe, oh well! He eats boiled eggs so it’s the same thing really!

Ingredients
1 medium chicken
1 lemon
small bunch of fresh thyme
3 oz butter
1 red onion
3 parsnips
2 carrots
3 sticks of celery
1/2 a turnip

Wash the chicken inside and out - then pat dry. Pre-heat your oven to Gas mark 5. Peel your veg and chop into large chunks . Put into a large baking dish along with a good grind of black pepper, some salt and a few sprigs of thyme.

Make the herb butter by combining the zest of the lemon with the butter and 3 tablespoons of fresh thyme. Then gently press the butter in between the skin and the top of the breast - the skin needs a small amount of convincing.

Place the chicken on top of your bed of vegetables - give the outside of the chicken a little seasoning also. Cover the whole thing in tin foil, then cook in the middle of the oven for 2 hours.

Remove the tinfoil, drain away the excess juice and retain for gravy later. Pop back in the oven for another 30 mins to brown and allow the skin to crisp.

After 30 mins - remove chicken and allow to rest for 10-15 minutes, while the meat is resting take the veg to the top shelf of the oven and crank up the heat to gas mark 8/9 to get a nice crisp finish to your root veg.

Prepare the gravy - in the roasting tin, throw a large dash of sherry, scrape of all the nice juicy bits with your wooden spoon. Then mix in one heaped tablespoon of plain flour. Mix well so that it forms a paste with the sherry. Then the juices from the chicken that you removed earlier would have separated. Drain off the excess fat from the top, then stir the juices into your flour mixture a little at a time, until well incorporated, continue doing this until you have a nice thick gravy. Check the seasoning.

Then carve your chicken, a good sharp carving knife is always good to have around. Serve on a bed of roasted veg drizzled with gravy, the lemon. A fresh and subtle lemon flavor will be throughout the meat and gravy, the edges of your veg will be caramelised and crispy - wonderful! The butter above the breast made it fantastically moist and tasty.

Thanks Stephen, Lola declared it - the best roast chicken she’s ever had

Roast Pear & Parsnip Soup

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The Bare Necessities

My sister in law Jessica is the healthiest person I know. She's a veggie who rarely indulges in sugar, wheat or dairy and as a result she is never sick, has a figure that I would kill for and perfect, skin, hair, teeth etc etc. Her two year old has never had a cold or any other ailment in her life. Go figure...
 

Anyway, Jessica is also a great cook and over the years has become adept at making delicious recipes with none of the naughty stuff included, but you would hardly know. I'm talking baked goods here, chocolate brownies, muffins and the like with no sugar wheat or dairy but still amazingly light and delish. (I'm angling for a guest blog from her some time soon!). I was telling her about our vegetable box and the fact that we had a surplus of parsnips, and she suggested I try making pear and parsnip soup. So I did, and here is my version of what sounds like a strange combination... its pretty sweet but if you don't eat any refined sugar I guess it could be a nice treat if you have a sweet craving. In typical me - style, I ate it with toast slathered in butter and melted cheese, which kind of defeats the purpose of such a healthy, satisfying and filling soup.
 

Ingredients

1 onion
6-8 parsnips
1 pear
1 ltr veg stock 

salt & pepper

Cut up the onion into 8ths, peel the parsnips and cut them lengthwise into quarters and then cut these quarters in half. Cut the pear in half and remove the core. Place everything on a roasting tray and drizzle with olive oil. Roast in a hot oven for about 3/4 of an hour until the parsnips are soft all the way through.

Transfer to a large saucepan and add the hot stock. Using a stick blender, whizz everything together until smooth. If you think it's too thick, add more stock. Season to taste.

Reheat and serve!

Roast Loin of Pork with apple stuffing and roasted winter vegetables

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We had 10 for a pre christmas Monday night dinner. Lu, Sarah & I ( all three residents of number 7) decided we would each cook a course and really wanted to do a big roast, so I asked if I could do the main event. Sucker for punishment, me.

Thinking we were going to be feeding 12, I bought two MASSIVE pieces of pork loin and asked the butcher to open them out so that I could stuff them. In the end we had 10 people but two were veggies. So between 8 of us we still managed to polish off almost all of the pork, which is a testament to how well it turned out!

We dressed up the table with green napkins, my green goblets from Habitat and some gorgeous green and pink woven fabric that Sarah had spare as she works as a textile designer. Then Pamela arrived with a big poinsettia which we used as a centrepiece. The whole thing was very christmassy indeed!

I made the stuffing the night before heres the recipe for it, first of all

Apple and rosemary stuffing:

4 oz butter

4 tbsps olive oil

1 bag breadcrumbs

1 white onion,

1 red onion

4 cloves garlic

1 handful sage

3 or 4 stalks rosemary

1 eating apple, diced.

Melt the butter with the oil in a large pot. Dice the onion and garlic finely and saute in the butter and oil. When almost soft add the diced peeled apple. Cook for 2 minutes or so but don't let the apple get too soft. add the chopped sage and rosemary and stir in for a few seconds, then add the breadcrumbs and stir well so that they absorb all the butter and oil. Season to taste. Leave to cool.

Roast stuffed loin of pork with roasted winter vegetables.

Loin of pork

olive oil

1 quantity stuffing

5 rashers of streaky bacon

8 cloves of garlic

parsnips & carrots peeled & cut into quarters or eighths.

Salt & Pepper

Open out the loin of pork where the butcher has cut or 'butterflied' it. using a rolling pin bash the meat to flatten it out a bit, then make a 'sausage' shape out of the stuffing and place in the centre of the cut. Bring the sides of the meat back together. Cover the join with the rashers and use string (not plastic string or it will melt!) to tie the whole thing together. You will need to ties 4 -6 lengths of string around the joint.

Place the parsnips, carrots and garlic cloves (unpeeled!) in a large oven tray and toss in about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Place the Pork, bacon side up on top of the vegetables. Rub salt, pepper and olive oil all over the joint. The meat will need to cook for 20 mins per pound so weigh it and place it in an oven at about 230c for however long you need. Mine took 2 hours and 20 mins!! so that tells you how ridiculously big it was! Have a peek at it every now and then and if you think its getting burned or dry on the top just put a bit of tin foil over it.

This makes the best gravy as roasting it on top of the veggies will produce delicious juices. When you are almost ready to serve, transfer the meat to a chopping board and let it rest in a warm place with some tin foil over it. Put the vegetables in a dish and put them back in the oven to keep warm. Take the roasting dish and place it on a low heat on your stove. remove any large bits of burned material, and take the roasted garlic cloves out of their skins. Using the back of a wooden spoon, mash the roasted garlic cloves into the juices. Add 1 or 2 tbsps of flour, depending on how thick you like your gravy and stir. Then add some stock & white or red wine. you will need about 1 pint of liquid altogether if you are cooking for 10 people. Stir the liquid in to the pan juices. Season to taste. I also like to add a bit of apple sauce when making pork. Stir until thickened and pour into a jug or gravy boat.

Serve with roast potatoes and apple sauce, which you can make by cutting up 4 or 5 apples and throwing the pieces in a pot with about 3 oz of butter. Stew this for about 10 mins, stirring all the time and add some salt to taste.

Roast Chicken with apricot and white clonakilty pudding stuffing

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Post pub roastiness

It was a Saturday afternoon. Lu and I were very much looking forward to a certain television show that will remain nameless, but for convenience I will code name 'The Y Element' (say no more, its shameful, I know), both our respective boyfriends were coming over and in a snap inspired decision we knew that a traditional roast was the order of the day.

This was the easiest ever to make, as we just stuffed it, surrounded it with vegetables, shoved the whole thing in the oven and repaired to the local for a few well deserved pre-prandial Guinnesses. We returned to a house that smelled amazing, made some gravy and were all sat down in front of the fire and the box by 8pm.

I'm going to go through it step by step, starting with the stuffing. A long post but worth it!

Stuffing ingredients:

1 red onion

4 cloves garlic

A few sprigs fresh sage

2/3 pack of breadcrumbs

3 oz butter

about 10 dried apricots

1/2 a Clonakilty white pudding

Begin by chopping the onion, garlic and sage. melt the butter in a saucepan and add the onion and garlic. Cover and sweat until they are soft and translucent. add the sage and breadcrumbs and mix well so that the butter soaks in to the crumbs. If you need more butter of crumbs, now is the time. Finely chop the apricots and mix them in. Then slice and crumble the white pudding and mix this in too. Allow to cool for about 15 mins and use to stuff your chicken.

Chicken prep:

Drizzle olive oil on the bird and sprinkle with salt. Then rub the salt well into the skin. This will make sure it is lovely and crisp. Slice 3 cloves of garlic in half lengthwise. Use the point of a knife to make 6 slits in the skin of the chicken, and push the garlic slivers in underneath the skin.

Veggies:

We used carrots, parsnips and new potatoes (which we didn't bother to peel).

Peel the parsnips and carrots and cut them into long pieces of roughly the same size. Get your roomiest roasting dish and drizzle it with olive oil. In the middle of the dish, build a sort of platform of parsnips and carrots, and place the chicken on top of this. Scatter the remaining veg, including the new potatoes (or peeled old potatoes, cut into smaller pieces).

Place the whole thing in the oven at 190c for 1 1/2 -2 hours, or until the skin is golden brown and crispy and the juices run clear when you poke a skewer in under the chicken's leg

Gravy:

At this point, take the chicken out and place it in a different dish. Ditto the veg. Put it back into a very low oven to keep it warm while you make the gravy.

Cook up whatever green veg you are using (Broccoli is my personal fave) and reserve to cooking water. Place your roasting tray which you used to cook the chicken onto a low heat on your stove. Sprinkle 2 tbsps flour into the pan juices and stir it around until its all mixed together with the juices, little burned bits, stray pieces of garlic and escaped stuffing. All of this will make your gravy more delish. add some of the water from the veg, and a good glug of white or red wine. Bring to a simmer and stir until it has thickened. I prefer my gravy to be nice an light and thin rather than gloopy and brown like Bisto. If you need to get more flavour in to the gravy, you can add half a chicken stock cube, a few drops of Worcester or soy sauce, and of course, salt and pepper.

Carve your bird and serve!

I love to use the carcass of the chicken to make a gorgeous roast chicken broth. Recipe to follow in next post!