It had been a rough week for the cook, fraught with emotional minefields, punctuated by giddy moments where I just didn’t give a fuck. Often at times like those I channel my energy into making something. Not unlike my fore mothers in the days before Oprah and Cerapax, I like to think.
When despair comes a knocking we cheerfully bake it a pie, ‘what’s that you say, my husband has a mistress? Delightful invite her in she can have hers a la mode’. ‘My teenage daughters gone and got herself pregnant, what joy, this calls for brownies’. But Ladies and Gentlemen, when the shit really hits the fan, a girls gotta roast herself a chicken.
I have elevated visions of roasted chickens, beautiful crispy salty skin and evenly textured tender flesh with the perfect roasted vegetables to go with it. The vegetables I could always do, I could live nine lives off what I can do with a potato if you’ll excuse the bragging but I could never get the chicken right. It was alright once you hacked into it and covered it in gravy but that was never enough for me. I have to have things perfect or at least they have to resemble my idea of perfect.
My Dad does a very nice roast chicken and though I’d never tell him this I always wondered how he did it, and a roast chicken somehow always seems so hospitable, I guess that’s because they aren’t often served as restaurant fare and seem perpetually relegated to the domestic kitchen. And so this week, when doom seemed to have me on speed dial, my thoughts would often turn to what I was going to cook for Australia day. This maybe the fault of an overly sentimental advertising campaign for red rooster, but when I think of Australian dinner I don’t think of bbq’s or prawns I think of a roast chicken, cooked on a Sunday while the kids are out in the back yard running under the sprinkler and dad has a beer and reads the racing pages.
The kind of chicken that is carved in slow motion so the slices fall effortlessly to the side ready to be served. The kind of chicken that some poor woman who has had the life sucked out of her by her self obsessed husband and kids, has slaved hours over only to have them devour it in seconds and then argue over whose going to help her do the dishes. But it doesn’t matter, no; none of it even raises a wrinkle on her brow because she made the chicken. Golden, roasted, succulent chicken, and one day if she’s very good and if her brood aren’t careful, one of them will choke on a bone.
No I jest, I’m sure the thoughts of the dedicated post war housewife never turned to homicide, instead she just went quietly mad. Probably made a cracking sponge though.
My Dad does a very nice roast chicken and though I’d never tell him this I always wondered how he did it, and a roast chicken somehow always seems so hospitable, I guess that’s because they aren’t often served as restaurant fare and seem perpetually relegated to the domestic kitchen. And so this week, when doom seemed to have me on speed dial, my thoughts would often turn to what I was going to cook for Australia day. This maybe the fault of an overly sentimental advertising campaign for red rooster, but when I think of Australian dinner I don’t think of bbq’s or prawns I think of a roast chicken, cooked on a Sunday while the kids are out in the back yard running under the sprinkler and dad has a beer and reads the racing pages.
The kind of chicken that is carved in slow motion so the slices fall effortlessly to the side ready to be served. The kind of chicken that some poor woman who has had the life sucked out of her by her self obsessed husband and kids, has slaved hours over only to have them devour it in seconds and then argue over whose going to help her do the dishes. But it doesn’t matter, no; none of it even raises a wrinkle on her brow because she made the chicken. Golden, roasted, succulent chicken, and one day if she’s very good and if her brood aren’t careful, one of them will choke on a bone.
No I jest, I’m sure the thoughts of the dedicated post war housewife never turned to homicide, instead she just went quietly mad. Probably made a cracking sponge though.
Roast Chicken.
The big thing for me in making this one was balancing the salty crispiness of the skin against the moistness of the chicken and as I’ve learned from trying to get anything crispy, water is the enemy of crispy things. So I got myself a nice chemical free chicken and I bathed him and then I patted him dry with kitchen towel and then I seasoned him outside and in and I chopped up some thyme and sliced up a lemon and stuffed him with them instead of breadcrumb stuffing because I find the breadcrumb stuffing a little stodgy and I would assume that my faithful companion rusty feels the same. I didn’t need to truss him as he was a modest chicken and dutifully kept his legs together, note that is the chicken I’m talking about and not the charming Rusty, though he too would never need to be trussed. But if you come across a slatternly chicken you may find the need of a little bit of unbleached cotton twine to restore some semblance of dignity. I got my oven on to about 190C and I peeled some onions and wrapped them in foil to roast with the chicken, a little olive oil and balsamic on the onions makes them roast nice too. Then I prepared some pumpkin for roasting, a lot of pumpkin or Rusty will make his you never make enough pumpkin face and then I roasted everything in the oven for about an hour and a half. The trick to checking if a chicken is cooked is whether or not the juices run clear so you can either stab it gracefully with something if you are so inclined or just check the little crook between the body of the chook and its leg, usually they collect there and if their clear then you’re usually safely out of salmonella country.
I’ve given you my recipe for roast potatoes before so you can follow that for this one as well there’s no need for me to repeat myself. Rest your chicken in a warm place for about 20 mins before serving, everything needs to rest when you roast it, let it relax, play it some music, light it an aromatic candle, whatever floats your boat just leave it alone. Serve with the vegis and a little light gravy you made from the pan juices and lets face it probably gravox. We’re emancipated people we shouldn’t be afraid to use powdered gravy, oft times it’s delicious. Don’t wait til tragedy strikes; roast yourself a chicken today, because at the end of the day misery only feeds you for so long.
P.S You might have noticed there’s no chicken in that photo…Sorry but we ate it. It was lovely I assure you.
I’ve given you my recipe for roast potatoes before so you can follow that for this one as well there’s no need for me to repeat myself. Rest your chicken in a warm place for about 20 mins before serving, everything needs to rest when you roast it, let it relax, play it some music, light it an aromatic candle, whatever floats your boat just leave it alone. Serve with the vegis and a little light gravy you made from the pan juices and lets face it probably gravox. We’re emancipated people we shouldn’t be afraid to use powdered gravy, oft times it’s delicious. Don’t wait til tragedy strikes; roast yourself a chicken today, because at the end of the day misery only feeds you for so long.
P.S You might have noticed there’s no chicken in that photo…Sorry but we ate it. It was lovely I assure you.
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