Rosemary and thyme roast chicken - and why I always buy free-range

Confession: I have never roasted a chicken.

I understand that absolutely everyone everywhere has roasted a chicken but I am a complete rookie. I don’t really understand how it works. Pretty much whenever I cook meat I make sure it has the texture of Clark’s boot leather in case I poison someone. This includes meats that are meant to be pink such as lamb and beef. If I see the slightest rosy tint they go back in the oven for another half hour. It’s dreadful I know but I’d rather chew roast beef for forty minutes than get botchulism. I don’t help myself by reading Daily Mail articles about men who ate a steak and very quickly became paralysed until their hearts stopped. So roasting a chicken - a meat that can absolutely not be pink - terrifies me. But tonight I overcame this hurdle by, you know… putting a chicken in the oven…

I am a little bit obsessed with Waitrose rotisserie chickens. Especially the rosemary and thyme ones. They stopped doing them in the Ealing Waitrose for a while and when I asked why the answer was “health and safety reasons”. I have absolutely no idea what this means but no matter: they’re back now. So when planning my first roast chicken this was obviously something that I had to try.

Grub (who I realise I’ve cooked for quite a bit recently – I think I’m starting to know his kitchen better than my own) summoned me round on Saturday evening to celebrate his lady’s football team’s 9 - 2 win. We made a deal that he would buy the ingredients and I would cook us dinner. After texting him a shopping list that included ‘a free-range happy chicken that never even LOOKED at a shed’ he panicked and bought two. One was a standard Waitrose chicken and the other a Tesco’s free range chicken.

Having spent an awful lot of time recently reading the Channel Four Food website I’ve gathered that even a standard chicken in Waitrose has had at least a vaguely good life; once in a while seeing the sun and pecking at the odd worm. I’m sort of (read: not brilliantly) boycotting Tesco as they refuse to get rid of their standard, awful, battery-farmed chicken rubbish because lots of horrible people like them.

My mum is basically a pescetarian (having started eating fish when she was pregnant with me) who stopped eating meat because she found it cruel. To her that’s just a personal choice but she doesn’t have a problem with anyone else eating it. She’s always cooked meat for me and does a fantastic roast. But I’ve been brought up always eating organic and free-range meat. She thinks – and I strongly agree – that if you are going to eat an animal it should have had a good life before it goes to slaughter. And I honestly think that free-range meat tastes a lot nicer than an animal that has been cooped up for the whole of its life.

I think the big argument against free-range food is the price and that’s fair enough (I’d hate to meet to sort of person who would eat battery hens if they all cost the same) but when you eat factory farmed chicken for instance, what are you letting yourself in for? How good can a bird that has been reared in a shed packed to the rafters, some of them dead, fed until it could burst and rarely being given darkness in which to sleep, be for you? In my mind it can’t be healthy. I would rather eat a meat once week than twice and pay the same amount for it and know that I wasn’t putting money towards giving something a terrible quality of life as well as putting lower quality food on my plate.

I don’t want to sound like some middle class hippy – as I’m really, really not – but I think things taste better when you know that the meat you’re eating has had a good life or that the vegetables you’re munching on haven’t been sprayed in a load of chemicals. Maybe it’s just me but I would never buy battery chicken or eggs (or anything but British pork) because I believe it’s not worth how ever much money you save – in all honesty I think that if you really look at what you’re eating you’re not saving anything at all.

But ANYWAY: roast chicken.

The packaging on your obviously free-range chicken will tell you how long it should be cooked or the butcher will give you an idea. I always thought you could just stick chicken in the oven but I’ve found this isn’t the case. You should rinse your chicken out. Please don’t take this as kosher but I basically stuck mine under the tap and filled the cavity up with warm water. Then, while shuddering massively, I stuck my fingers in and did disgusting things for a bit. Some red bits came out with the water – I didn’t look too closely – and I did this a couple of times.

I stuck the (Waitrose) chicken on a roasting tray - I’d heated the oven to around 200°c - and stuck half a lemon up its bum (just to keep it moist – promise.) and some rosemary and thyme stalks. I chopped up a few handfuls of both these herbs and then attempted to get my hands under the skin. You have to be a bit rough to do this but gentle enough not to rip the skin. Stuff the chopped herbs between this and the breasts and try and even them out. Rub a tiny bit of olive oil over the chicken with a bit of salt to crisp the skin up and sprinkle over the rest of your chopped herbs.

Roast this in the middle of the oven for as long as you’ve been told to and you should end up with a lovely succulent, flavoured chicken. And the moral high ground.

Piri piri chicken

The clocks went forward on the 28th of March to mark the start of summertime. And what better way to celebrate than to have a barbecue? Of course we are talking British summertime here which meant it was absolutely chucking it down outside. So rather than taking my eyebrows off during an unfortunate incident involving lighter fluid and delirium tremens I dragged my griddle pan to Hammersmith to cook indoors for Grub and Charlotte.

For your piri piri marinade you need:
6 to 12 red chillies
3 cloves of garlic
½ a tablespoon of paprika
½ a teaspoon of oregano
Around 1 teaspoon of salt
50ml of red wine vinegar
100ml of olive oil

If you find this makes more marinade than you need don’t worry as it’ll keep for a couple of weeks if it’s been nicely sealed up in something.

I arrived to find Grub bellowing down the phone at his internet provider, Charlotte shrieking down my phone about where she could park (half seven on a Saturday – ANYWHERE!) and got in to trouble with the oven. You see it’s got lots of knobs on it and I don’t know what any of them do. Even Grub has to light the stove by a process of elimination. While he bollocked web geeks I stood looking a bit lost and finally just turned a selection of dials and hoped for the best. If you know how to work an oven heat it to 180°c / gas mark 4. I managed this after Grub came in to say hello and ask why I had the grill on.

Stick the chillies on a baking tray and roast them for 10 minutes. How many you use depends on how long you want to spend with your mouth open, fanning it with your hand going ‘eeeh ooooooh ohohohoh’. I thought they smelled rather lovely but Charlotte repeatedly asked if they were burning. Out they come a lovely ruby red with crispy brown splotches, all wrinkled and hot. Once they’ve cooled enough for you to handle them roughly chop them up.


The garlic part of the recipe I had involved a quick Google (thank God Grub had put those internet chaps in their place and got it working again) as it said to use blanched garlic. Apparently you do this by placing the peeled cloves of garlic in some cold water, bringing it up to the boil, draining and repeating twice more. This leaves you with something that I imagine feels like just a warm eyeball and needs chopped up.

Now very simply put the vinegar, olive oil, salt, paprika, oregano, garlic and chillies into a pan and simmer for a few minutes. The photo isn’t brilliant but this was such a wonderful mix of colours and it smelt amazing.



Let this all cool down and then pour it into a food processor or a blender and purée it. Let the chicken marinade in it for an hour minimum before cooking.

I shoved some baked potatoes in the oven while this was going on and hastily stuck some sausages under the grill to stop Charlotte stuffing her face with sneaky bits of the baguette I’d bought to go with dinner. I did these in the bourbon and Tabasco glaze I mentioned in another post (4 tablespoons honey, 10 drops Tabasco, two tablespoons bourbon) and they were lovely.

I used a splash of oil in the pan when I cooked the chicken but wouldn’t again as there’s enough in the marinade.

Once this was nice and browned I chucked it onto plates with a potato and some salad. If it’s a bit too hot for you squeeze over some lime juice.

Due to the fact I’m a complete idiot and can’t really time anything well we ate at 11 o’clock so if you’re as special as me I’d suggest doing all this and marinading the chicken the day before you need it.

I also tried my hand at mayonnaise but the less said about that the better.

Cooking with middle class students

I’ve just finished the first week of my scary new job so decided to finally write about the last thing I cooked as I was too lazy to do it before.

After leaving Zoo on the 12th I was technically unemployed for a week. I had decided to spend my time preparing for my new position and trying out a lot of recipes but instead I went to Manchester and gave myself a two-day hangover.

My friend Asha is in her third year of a drama degree there and is currently in the middle of her dissertation. So obviously I thought that this would be the best time to go up and demand all of her attention. Intent on giving the poor student a taste of the high life I crashed through her front door with four bottles of champagne and expected to be knee-deep in Pot Noodle and empty pizza boxes. In actual fact I was greeted with a fridge full of fresh food, green tea and fancy cook books. In the end I was the only real student there at all: drinking beer at the crack of midday, watching two week’s worth of Neighbours on the internet and eating chips for breakfast.

I arrived on Shrove Tuesday and the plan was to make pancakes for lunch. To relax before this challenge we cracked open a bottle of Bollinger and I helped Asha learn some lines. I absolutely love doing this and get far too in to it. Unfortunately I went mental and was unable to do my crap American accent for one of the characters so did the whole thing in my crap Australian accent instead. I realised it was time to stop once Asha told me she was ready to punch me in the face. By now we were well and truly squiffy and pancakes were replaced by a trip to Pizza Express, washed down with a bottle of their rose cava. After dinner we weaved our way to a fundraiser for Asha’s play where within two minutes I had paid £3 to have a penis drawn on my hand - which only came off on Thursday evening. After a few more drinks we trotted home where it seemed essential to open another bottle of bubbly while Asha taught me when to use ‘who’s’ and ‘whose’. I thought I’d mention this as a word of warning to anyone else who thinks leaving school at 14 might be a good idea. There really isn’t anything more embarrassing than reaching 21, still not knowing and having to ask your friend to explain it.
Apart from the two of you then Googling ‘whom’.

Wednesday was a bad day for the both of us. Having managed not to be sick Asha sloped off to a rehearsal and I decided the best thing for my hangover was to drink four cans of Coke. I was wrong and spent most of the afternoon twitching and unable to concentrate on the high-brow documentary I was watching (http://snipurl.com/uf8wp). Later we recovered enough to make it to the cinema where we saw A Single Man. I cried through out most of it and I’m still unsure if that’s because it was very sad or my body was just doing anything it could to get all the alcohol out of my system. Cooking had once again fallen foul of the demon drink.

Waking up with a (vaguely) clear head on Thursday meant it was finally time for pancakes. In to a bowl went 100g of plain flour, a pinch of salt, one egg and 300ml of milk. It started to look like batter once Asha snatched the bowl from my grasp and beat it properly. Out of the corner of my eye I had seen her hovering by my shoulder, hopping from foot to foot, itching to say ‘shall I do that?’ so prolonged her agony for as long as possible. We had planned to go shopping that morning but after our slightly undercooked breakfast lazing on the sofa all day seemed a much better idea.

That evening we pulled our socks up and planned a lovely farewell dinner. We picked an invention of Asha’s based on a Nigella Lawson recipe.

I suppose you would call it a Thai red chicken and mango curry. Apart from the fact it isn’t red. The list of things you need seems rather long but when you’re as middle class as Asha most of the ingredients are in your kitchen anyway. And they are:

1 tablespoon of wok oil
1 spring onion, finely sliced
½ - 1 red chilli, deseeded and finely sliced
Diced chicken
2-3 teaspoons of red Thai curry paste
2 cloves of garlic
200ml of coconut milk
250ml of chicken stock
2 teaspoons of fish sauce
Assorted veg (we used mange tout, baby corn, courgette and broccoli)
The juice of half a lime
Diced mango
Fresh coriander

Heat the wok oil in, surprisingly, a wok and add the spring onion, chilli and garlic. Brown these off and add the curry paste.

Throw in the chicken and give it around five minutes to start to cook properly.



Pour in the coconut milk, chicken stock and fish sauce before bringing to the boil. Chuck in whatever vegetables you’re using and simmer for fifteen to twenty minutes, adding some coriander five minutes before it’s done.

Squeeze the lime juice over everything, add the mango and give the curry another five minutes or so for it to soften. Serve with some more fresh coriander on top. I would have uploaded a picture of it but I took it on my phone and it looks a bit unappetising.

I realise that this was very, very long and I could have just skipped straight to the curry but this saves me having to repeat what I did on my week off to anyone who bothers to ask.