Jul 8, 2008
Jaison’s Chardonnay Roast Chicken. Very Easy, Never Fails. If you have never cooked, try this.
Get yourself an old time roasting dish, with a lid. You can pick them up at the Op Shop for a few bucks, or you can cover an ordinary roasting dish with some aluminum foil.
Put a couple of good slurps of olive oil in the bottom of the dish. Peel and roughly chop some hard vegetables and put in the dish. These keep the chicken off the bottom and act as a roasting rack.
Suggested hard vegetables are potato, kumara, onion, carrot and pumpkin. I like to add some red chili and red capsicum, as well as a good hand full of fresh Italian parsley, chopped. Include thyme leaves and rosemary (if you don’t have fresh, dried is ok, remember dried is much stronger so use less), plenty of fresh ground pepper and some sea salt. There is a secret ingredient I use, which is a couple of stalks of celery chopped into 10mm lengths or some celery salt. This, and a hand full of de-stoned and sliced black olives add some background complexity. Pour in a 440g can of chopped Italian tomatoes and mix all these ingredients together in the dish so they are coated with the oil, tomatoes and herbs. Down the side of the dish pour a cup of Kerr Farm Limited release Chardonnay for a golden sauce. Red wine will give a dark sauce. It should look a bit like this.
Before and after the tomato added.
Now for the Chicken
I use a size 18 , this is good for four or two greedy ones. For more people just add more vegetables.Insert into the cavity a large peeled onion. Coat the outside of the chicken with olive oil, salt and pepper and some Rosemary leaves and sit the chicken on the top of the vegetables.
Put the lid on, it does fit honest! Roast at about 170 to 180 degrees C for 1.5 to 2 hours depending on the speed of your oven. The lid keeps everything juicy; take the lid off for the last 10 to 15mins if you want for a nice crispy brown skin. Check the chicken is cooked by making sure the juices from the thickest parts are clear
When you take the chicken out to carve, give the vegetables a spoon over and you will find there is a lovely rich sauce at the bottom of the dish. Serve with spring peas.