THE ONE HUNDRED AND SECOND WAY TO ROAST A CHICKEN!

I'm on a bit of a Barefoot Contessa run at the moment, along with Tiffany.
Was just the 3 of us for Sunday dinner so, to Alan's disappointment I did not do my regular roast chicken ( I say 'mine', the recipe it is based on is Delia Smith's). I made Ina's 'Perfect Roast Chicken', how can you resist that title??  Main difference is that this has no stuffing, seemed appropriate for  a summer evening,  you stuff the cavity with lemon and garlic, sounded good to me!
Verdict is 'pretty good'.  You roast this bird at a higher temperature, with no foil  protecting the breast.  The result is a delicious, crispy skin BUT the breast meat was a little dry.  The gravy was very tasty which compensated for the dryness of the breast meat.  Alan and I debated various methods to achieve both - hopefully I will be successful at that and will be publishing a book of my own!
While I was breaking all the traditions tonight, I did not do any roasted vegetables.  I made Roatsed New potatoes in parchment and steamed green beans.  The potatoes were from a recipe in the NYTimes which I cannot find right now but easy enough to include here.  Worked well with the chicken as the oven temp worked for both.

• Fingerling potatoes ( or a mixture with red, white and purple pots)
• virgin olive oil
• garlic cloves, peeled and left whole
• herb of your choice: rosemary, oregano or sage
• chopped parsley to serve

You can figure out quantities, depending on how many you are serving, be generous with the oil.  Mix the potatoes in a bowl with oil, garlic and herb, season well.  Put contents of bowl onto a sheet of parchment  which is on a baking sheet.  Make a parcel by folding the top and tucking in the sides.  Bake at 450 degrees C for about an hour, can adjust depending on whatever else is going on in your oven. Transfer parcel to serving dish, open parchment and sprinkle parsley.
I happened to have some purple and fingerling potatoes, so mixed them.  Visually it was pretty appealing but I have to say that the fingerlings taste so much better than the purple potatoes, shame, wish it weren't so!

ROAST CHICKEN - AGAIN BUT DIFFERENT

It was a rainy late September day, and Alan requested roast chicken for dinner - shocker! I grabbed a few Gourmets and Bon Appetits when I took Joseph to his riding lesson, hoping to find something vaguely along the lines of roast chicken but that I would be excited to cook. The first issue I flicked through was Bon Appetit from Feb 2009 and it had SPECIAL SUNDAY ROAST CHICKEN. Not that different from my old standby, but different enough. I changed a few things, of course:

Added stuffing, with sage, which the recipe used anyway.

Made a giblet stock which I used for the gravy instead of white wine.

Market did not have mustard greens so used Arugula.

Did not like the idea of putting chicken fat on the Arugula so used my gravy instead.

It was pretty good, not sure I will switch this for the old standby but I love the idea of serving on a bed of arugula, will definitely do this again!

22 March continued - Dinner

Alan bought the chicken on Friday, he does love roast chicken on Sunday! I do too, but we have had the same old with sage & onion stuffing so often lately I decided to do something different.
My sister Dixie ( she calls herself Dee these days but she will always be Dixie to me) had given me a cookbook about 4 years ago. It is Tamasin Day Lewis and to be honest I don't think I have cooked anything from it. Caught my attention a little while ago and I regretted not using it, lots of things look great. Found Roast Chicken with Sweetcorn and ginger stuffing. Can't find a link to the recipe but here's the book its in:
Tamasin's Weekend Food
I thought it was pretty good but had major complaints from Alan & Joseph, just not the same.........
Did roast potatoes, parsnips and carrots and cauliflower cheese, they were appreciated.