Chicken

This is a post for Karen’s pimp my menu project

Yes yes, roast chicken. Not a pimped menu, but a staple; I love a meal that makes three (at least: roast on the Sunday cold-with-veg* on Monday, sandwiches for lunch and I always but always make stock; just call me Martha). However, I decided to tart it up a bit this weekend. Not a total success in that the children were highly suspicious of the spicey bit, even though I omitted chilli of any description, and Tamsin doesn’t like couscous this week, but there was plenty of unmucked-about-with chicken meat to satisfy their carnivorous tendancies – I have odd children – and broccoli on the side is always safe. And followed with a rice pud so there weren’t too many complaints overall.

Anyway. I took one chicken, defrosted rapidly in the sink because I forgot until I was already in bed on Saturday and couldn’t persuade myself to do the sensible thing and go back down to get it. I put a halved lemon inside and poured olive oil all over then coated the skin in a crushed-up mixture of sesame, coriander and cumin seeds, salt, pepper, and orange zest. It’s a bit of a Jamie recipe done from memory (so possibly little resembles his). In the oven at 200C to roast in a normal fashion. An hour before it was due to come out, added a cut-up red pepper and a couple of quartered red onions to the tin.

When it was ready I hoiked out the chicken, poured off most of the fat and squeezed the lemon bits into the tin. I added about 300 ml water and brought it all to the boil then poured it into a saucepan to which I added 250 g couscous, some chopped dried apricots and cranberries, the chopped-up onion and pepper, some salt and a bit of crushed coriander seed. 5 mins with the lid on over a very low flame, and bob’s your uncle.

*Sadly never nice bubble-and-squeak-type veg because, regardless of how many roast potatoes I make, we never fail to eat all but one.

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