So, we’ve had this organic chicken bouncing around the freezer for a couple of weeks and it spoke to me. It told me I should once and for all try roasting a chicken properly instead of just oiling it and sticking it in an oven for 2 hours. Enter Julia Child and Jamie Oliver.  Yes, if JC and JO roasted a chicken together, this would be their love-chicken.

Be aware that this recipe is not for those short on time and attention span as it requires constant attention and patience –a virtue that S. strangely lacks outside of the kitchen; try watching a 2 hour movie with her! (If it’s not in the cinema where she can’t fall asleep or pause the movie then it’s a hopeless exercise).

On a side note, because this is Christmas and we couldn’t possibly have Christmas without the cats getting involved (and believe me they are very good at getting involved. Another Christmas installation was just knocked over as I was typing this up) here are some pictures of them looking cute/completely ridiculous. I should point out that our tree gets knocked over or has its ornaments pilfered about half a dozen times a day.

Now a few notes before we get to the recipe; the careful basting and turning of the chicken is straight out of Mastering the Art of French Cooking while the upstart changes and additions I felt were inspired by a Oliver’s Twist episode I watched recently. For the roast potatoes see our earlier Coq Au Vin post here. I added sweet potatoes too because I’ll take any excuse to roast them (mmm…). The carrots were added in the last half hour before the chicken was done, to keep them crispy.

Happy Holidays!

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 12:15 am and is filed under meat, fish, poultry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.