Sunday Roast

One of my friends has been quite persistent of late in inquiring as to when I would be preparing her a Sunday Roast, after a few recent roast chickens proved popular. Roast dinners are such a home comfort and people tend to avoid making them as they're considered quite troublesome but its such a nice feeling to gather around a big roast together, and creates quite a sense of occasion!

We had planned to do Roast Beef with all the trimmings but fate conspired against us! After spending the afternoon in Hyde Park, we realised the supermarkets had closed (why do they do this in the UK?!) and were thus tasked with doing our shopping in a Sainsbury's Local. Topside of beef is not exactly de rigeur in such establishments so we settled for roast chicken, once again!



We ended up buying two medium chickens (for six people) as they specified "serves 3-4", and they were only £5 each in any case. This is clearly an absolute swizz on Sainsbury's part because we ended up having enough chicken to feed an army!

Myself and my lovely sous chef got to work immediately in the kitchen. I'm quite lauded for my roast chicken around these parts, mostly because I think for such an occassion, its worth a bit of extra work. Ironically, I'll probably never think anyone's chicken tastes better than my Mum's and she'd the queen of "can't be bothered" when it comes to frills in the kitchen!

First, I made the stuffing. My stuffing recipe is stolen from my Mum with a few modifications of my own. Lots of wholewheat breadcrumbs (any will do but we happened to have wholewheat), milled quite coarsely- what we did was blitz about 5 slices and then tear up a couple extra quite roughly as I think the combination of textures really adds something. Then I added sauteed onions with some garlic my mum only sautees the onions at Christmas!), chopped fried bacon (would use pancetta if I had it!), lots of parsley, thyme, some lemon peel and S&P. I stuffed it up the chicken and then stuck half a lemon up to plug it all in, and trussed it up! I also mixed together some lemon peel with butter and rubbed it underneath the skin of the chicken- I honestly think this is the best thing you can do for a chicken, as it adds so much flavour and moisture. I don't bother oiling/buttering the outside of the skin as it will brown up nicely regardless, just season well. Stick those bad boys in a preheated oven at 180"C (how do I do degree symbol?!) as its a fan oven (200 for normal oven) for an hour and fifteen minutes. I figured they might take longer as they were stuffed, and actually got distracted and didn't take them out until 1 hour and 25 at which point I could tell they were perfectly cooked (juices ran clear) and so juicy. I made then gravy by reducing the juices in the roasting tin over a high heat, adding a little flour to thicken and straining into a jug and voila, no bisto neccessary! I carved up the chickens and placed on a serving platter as the dining table was far too small to undertake such endeavours and it saves time anyway!

In the meantime, my sous chef had been working on the veggies and yorkshire puds (she insisted that even without the beef, the YP's were neccessary! We parboiled the poatates and drained them, before straining them and returning to the pot where I put the lid on and shook violently- this creates a really rough surface area which makes them crispier when they roast. Unfortunately, Sainsbury's local stocked neither goose nor duck fat so we had to use oil. I had preheated the roasting tray and we chucked the potatoes, basted them and put them in the oven in to roast for about 40 minutes!

To make the Yorkshire puds, my sous chef got to work beating up 4 eggs, 140g flour and 200ml milk to make a batter. We had poured some oil in the baking tin and put it in the oven to heat up, so she simply poured the batter in and stuck it back in the oven to cook for about 20 mins. I know its "against the rules" to open the oven while yorkshire puds are cooking but rather hilariously, we noticed that half of the puds weren't rising as they were situated directly under the potatoes, and were blocked from the heat, so we had to reshuffle the oven a bit and put the puds on top!

In no time at all we served up our feast (rather late as we'd been strolling around Oxford Street all day instead of slaving over the oven) but it was a delicious meal with great company and definitely worth the wait and all the hard work! In our haste to eat we forgot to take any pictures unfortunately, so I included one from our LAST Sunday Roast which was basically the same! (I hope you appreciate the high class gravy boat!)