Super Chicken

Found this other easy, straight-forward baked chicken recipe by Jamie Oliver, in his "Jamie's dinners - the essential family cookbook", and decided to try it out for dinner yesterday.

"Super Tasty Spanish Roast Chicken" was a hit with the family - they loved the tender, juiciness of the chicken, coupled with a tangy lemony flavour. Heh, thanks to JO, this will be one of my "specialties" from now on. Easy and tastes good!

In case you are interested, here's how:

1kg potatoes, peeled and cut into 1 inch dice

4 lemons

A handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped

1 x 2kg chicken

Sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper

300g good chorizo sausage

Olive oil

2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped

1. Preheat oven to 220 degrees celsius.


2. Place potatoes and 2 of the lemons into small pan of water and boil for 5 mins. Drain, and then prick lemons all over with a knife. (The lemons, when stuffed into the chicken, will release their juices when cooking, bursting with flavour and fragrance.)


3. Remove the parsley leaves from the stalks.


4. Stuff the hot lemons and parsley stalks into chicken.


5. Season chicken and potatoes with a little salt and pepper.


6. Slice chorizo at an angle, 0.5cm thick.


7. Place potatoes and chicken into either baking tray lined with damp greaseproof paper or in my case, I used a huge pyrex casserole dish. Sprinkle over with the chorizo and a little of the chopped parsley leaves.


8. Drizzle with a little olive oil.


9. Cook in preheated oven for around 1 hr 20 mins.


10. While chicken and potatoes are cooking, finely chop the zest of the 2 remaining lemons, mixing it with the chopped parsley and garlic.


11. Season lightly, toss together to create a really fragrant seasoning-type garnish.


12. Remove the tray from oven, put aside chicken. Give potatoes a shake about and put them back into oven for a few minutes to crisp up.


13. Carve chicken and divide between the serving plates, with the potatoes. Sprinkle over the lemon zest/parsley/garlic garnish - it will hit the hot juices and smell fantastic!

Made a light salad as well, from one of the recipes in Maya Angelou's Hallelujah! The Welcome Table recipe book. This was a book given by a Christian friend, and it has anecdotes of the author's lifetime stories and related compilation of her recipes. Very heartwarming book. Think Chicken Soup for the Soul, complete with recipes.

Oh, I had no clue on how to carve a chicken. Heng-daddy had to do it. Are there any courses on "How to debone a chicken"?


J&J: Jen with 2 weeks more to her delivery of our baby nephew!