I was absolutely blown away! The roast chicken was crispy on the outside and so tender on the inside. When I say crispy, I mean the skin was crackling when I bit on the chicken thigh. And no, it wasn't because it was burnt! This was how the chicken looked when it was roasted to perfection after an hour and 15 minutes.
I have to admit that this was a Jamie Oliver work-of-art but still proud nonetheless! What I hate about roast chicken is normally the dryness of the meat on the breast. The trick was to pierce a lemon, which had been boiled with garlic (still in their skins), numerous times before stuffing them into the cavity of the chicken. I admit I wanted to say chicken's backside but I refrained myself..... Well, I guess I didn't:P
Once the chicken had come out of the oven and was rested for 15 minutes, the lemon was removed and smearing the garlic in the chicken all over the skin gave it that extra kick. The pungent smell of garlic had already been removed by the hour plus long roasting and all that was left was a wonderful 'mild aroma' and starchy garlic still dressed in its skin. It had soaked up the flavour of the chicken and the zest of the lemon! Smearing it all over the skin was unavoidable..
The potatoes.... Ah, the potatoes... I loved it but personally I think it could have been better. In what sense? Let me explain. I don't have a big enough baking tray to fit a whole chicken and potatoes at the same time. That was the issue. The potatoes had to be boiled in salted water for 10 minutes prior to being tossed in the chicken fat 45 minutes into roasting the bird. I could toss the potatoes in the chicken fat but I could not lay them around the chicken to worship it. The tray was to small and the potatoes had to be baked separately. If I had had the space to roast the potatoes together with the chicken, the result would have been crisp potatoes on the outside with a soft fluffy middle. More fat would have leaked out of the chicken to allow the potatoes to fry in the 'liquid gold' but the soft insides, a product of the boiling, would have been preserved nonetheless. So there, that is how you do it.
Gravy gravy gravy! Right, so I was planning on making the gravy when my 'always hungry' housemate told me, "I can't wait anymore, let's just eat!" Boy was she wrong! She shouted at me from the hall to bring in "more gravy for" her!! This was a simple experiment which proved to be quite a success and tasted so much like the mash potato gravy from KFC. Simple combination of the juice and fat of the roast chicken, flour, chicken stock, the ends of the chicken's wings and drumsticks, pepper and whatever else you want to throw in. It came out a milky brown colour, mildly spicy from the pepper and the delicious juices from the chicken made all the difference in the world.
Well, that was an extremely long post about and extremely amazing dinner I just had. But the saying goes, "winner winner, chicken dinner". Not really a saying but I feel like a winner anyway:)
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