Spanish chicken with garlic (pollo al ajillo)

I'd become a bit bored of cooking over the last couple of years and it took me a while to figure out why. The answer was surprisingly simple: I was no longer making the dishes I wanted to make but was instead trying to second-guess the somewhat more conservative tastes of my children. Chicken is a case in point. Whenever there was a whole chicken in my fridge, I felt under pressure to do roast chicken, but what I really wanted to make was a chicken curry with handfuls of fresh coriander, some Szechuan fried chicken, or this Spanish chicken cooked with garlic. Oddly enough, my more selfish approach to cooking doesn't seem to have an impact on my kids, who enthusiastically ate the risotto that I hadn't made since 2014 for fear of offending their delicate palates!

I thought I already had a recipe for this on my blog but was surprised to find that I didn't. Then I turned to Moro (by Sam and Sam Clark) and there was my recipe - in the form of a heavily annotated version of the original (including annotations, additions and deletions). The Moro recipe is actually very good but I feel it is a little too restauranty (a few details that don't add much but help make a simple recipe seem daunting). And my version is definitely closer to the pollo al ajillo that I used to eat in a bar off Plaza San Antonio in Madrid back in the late 1980s with my friend Richard.

Ingredients
1 medium chicken (approx 1.5 kg)
salt
black pepper
olive oil
2 bulbs of garlic
6 bay leaves
200 ml of white wine

Method

1. Cut the chicken into small pieces and season with plenty of salt and black pepper. (I use a cleaver, so I cut the thighs and drumsticks in half and even get a few meaty portions from the back. If you only have an ordinary kitchen knife, then satisfy yourself by cutting the legts through the joints and cutting the breast lengthwise and then crosswise to get about 10 pieces, including the wings.)
2. Separate the garlic into cloves but don't peel or chop.
3. Put plenty of olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed frying pan, add the garlic, and gently fry until the garlic is golden.
4. Remove garlic to a bowl, turn up the heat, and fry the chicken in batches until it is crispy and golden.
5. Remove the fried chicken, pour off most of the oil, return the garlic to the pan, add the bay leaves and wine, and simmer for a couple of minutes.
6. Return all of the chicken to the pan, stir well, cover and cook on a low heat for about 20 minutes.

Szechuan fried chicken

When I go to the Wing Sing Inn in Edinburgh, I always order the spicy Szechuan chicken - little pieces of chicken, on the bone, fried with vast quantities of dried chillies and Szechuan pepper. The chillies are spicy and the Szechuan pepper provides a tingly, numbing sensation.

Tired of roast chicken, I finally decided to have a crack at making it at home. The following recipe is adapted from Fuchsia Dunlop's version of this dish. Although none of the stages is particularly difficult, it's quite involved as it requires you to dismember a chicken, chop it into small pieces (with the bone still in) then double-fry it, in batches, (You will need a cleaver to chop the chicken into small segments.) The quantity of chillies looks a bit scary, but the Chinese ones are not as spicy as their Indian cousins, and they are not meant to be eaten, just to impart flavour to the chicken pieces.


Ingredients

1 chicken (approx 1 to 1.5 kg)

marinade
30 ml Shaoxing wine
40g ginger, thickly sliced
1 tsp salt
2 spring onions, roughly chopped

frying
500 ml vegetable oil (preferably groundnut or rapeseed), plus 4 tbsps
1 tbsp Szechuan chilli bean paste
20g ginger, peeled and sliced
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
4 spring onion whites, sliced
100g Chinese dried chillies
25g Szechuan peppercorns
1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
4 spring onion greens, sliced
2 tsp sesame oil

Method

Part 1: chopping the chicken

1. Mix the marinade ingredients in a large bowl.
2. Separate the wings and legs from the body of the chicken.
3. Cut off and discard the wing tips and ends of the legs. (I use them to make stock.)
4. Separate the wings into two pieces by cutting through the middle joint, and separate the legs into thighs and drumsticks by cutting through the middle joint. With a cleaver, chop each wing piece and each leg piece crosswise into 2 cm segments.
5. Separate the breast from the back by cutting through the ribcage. Lay the breast section flat.skin side down, cut lengthwise through the breastbone to separate it into two, then chop the breast meat crosswise into 2 cm segments.
6. Lay the back flat, skin side down, and cut lengthwise through the ribs as close to the backbone as possible. Discard the backbone or set it aside to make stock. Chop the two meaty back sections into 2 cm segments.
7. Place the chicken pieces in the bowl with the marinade, mix well and leave for 15 minutes.

Part 2: frying the chicken

1. Heat the oil in a wok until it is very hot (about 190oC).  Add chicken pieces to the oil, one at a time, discarding the ginger and spring onion as you go. Don't overfill your wok - depending on the size of your wok, the size of your chicken and the size of your segments, you will probably need to fry the chicken in three batches, bringing the oil back up to its original heat before adding the next batch. Cook each batch of chicken for 3 to 4 minutes, until golden, remove from the wok and leave to drain in a wire strainer or on a wire rack.
2. When you have fried all of the chicken once, reheat the oil, fry each batch again until crispy, remove from the wok and leave to drain in a wire strainer or on a wire rack.
3. Transfer the used oil to a heatproof container, and brush the wok clean to remove any burnt pieces of chicken. Add 4 tbsps of fresh oil to the wok, and return to a medium heat. Add the chilli bean paste to the oil, stir and fry for 30 seconds, Add the ginger, garlic and spring onion whites, stir and fry for 1 minute. Add the dried chillies and the Szechuan peppercorns, stir and fry for another minute or so. Add the chicken pieces, Shaoxing wine, salt and sugar, and stir well to coat the chicken.
4. Remove from heat, drizzle the sesame oil over the chicken, sprinkle with spring onion greens, and serve.

Pot roast chicken

Gemma bought a big orange casserole dish the other day, and I have been rediscovering the joys of pot-roast chicken with vegetables.

Ingredients
1 whole chicken
potatoes
carrots
onions
olive oil
bay leaves
garlic
butter
English mustard
salt
pepper
water

Method

1. Set the oven to 190oC. Peel and roughly chop the vegetables, and put them in the casserole dish. Drizzle with olive oil, add salt and pepper, and a couple of bay leaves.
2. Finely chop a couple of cloves of garlic, mix with plenty of butter, some mustard, and some salt and pepper, and smear generously over the chicken.
3. Place the chicken on top of the vegetables, add a little water, put the lid on and roast for about 2 hours.

Mild chicken curry with coconut milk

This is a simple curry, mild enough for kids to eat and easy enough for them to cook.

Ingredients
vegetable oil
1 kg of chicken breast or thigh meat, cut into large chunks
250g onion, finely chopped
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp minced ginger
2 tbsps mild curry powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tin of coconut milk

Method

1. In plenty of vegetable oil, gently fry the chopped onion until it is almost done.
2. Add the garlic and ginger, and fry for another minute.
3. Add the curry powder and salt, fry for another 30 seconds.
4. Add the chicken, stir well so that is coated in the onion and spice mixture, and fry for about 10 minutes.
5. Add the coconut milk, bring to a boil, reduce heat to minimum and simmer for 30 minutes.

Southern fried chicken

I haven't always been a food snob. When I was growing up in Stirling in the 1970s, I remember that McDonald's and Burger King seemed like the height of luxury and sophistication. Whenever we went down to London to visit my grandparents, my brother and I would insist that we immediately be taken to the nearest branch of McDonald's for a Big Mac and large fries with chocolate milkshake. My children, however, appear to have more sophisticated palates. Even when we find ourselves in an airport and the choices are limited, they refuse to succumb to the blandishments of Burger King.

In general, I admire the fact that their tastebuds are impervious to the marketing pressures of the culture in which we live. However, when they start making snide comments about Kentucky Fried Chicken (or KFC as it is now called) I draw the line. Nobody, but nobody, will ever convince me that that "oh so crispy on the outside, moist and tender on the inside" chicken is actually "slimy", let alone that the name change was the result of Col Sanders' close encounters with deep-fried rodents. I may have given up trying to persuade my kids to go to a branch of KFC, but I decided it was time to try and recreate the finger-lickin' taste at home.

Ingredients
one whole chicken
1 l water
4 teaspoons salt
300 ml milk
1 teaspoon vinegar
two eggs
300 g plain flour
50 g fine polenta
3 teaspoons dried oregano
3 teaspoons salt
vegetable oil

Method

1. Joint the chicken into at least 10 portions. (Two wings, two thighs, two drumsticks, four breast portions)
2. dissolve 4 teaspoons of salt in the water and soak the chicken in the salted water for at least two hours.
3. Add the vinegar to the milk and leave to stand for at least an hour.
4. In a large bowl, mix the milk and eggs.
5. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, polenta, oregano and salt.
6. Drain the chicken, and dip the pieces in the milk and egg mixture, then in the seasoned flour.
7. Heat about 1 cm of oil in two lidded frying pans to a medium heat. Add the chicken pieces to the hot oil, reduce heat to minimum, cover pans and fry gently for 5 minutes. Turn the chicken pieces, cover pans again and fry for another 5 minutes.
8. Remove lids from pans, and cook for another 10 to 15 minutes. Turn pieces again and cook for 10 to 15 minutes more, until the chicken is done.

Chinese steamed and roasted duck

We all went to a Chinese/Japanese noodle place the other day, and Carmela was very disappointed when the duck she ordered didn't come shredded and served with pancakes, so I promised to remedy this at the earliest opportunity. Yesterday we went to the Edinburgh Farmer's Market and picked up a whole duck from Gartmorn Farm. Apparently making authentic Peking duck is a complicated process, involving scalding, pumping air between skin and flesh, and air-drying over several days, among other things, so I settled for a slightly simpler (and quicker) steam-and-roast routine.

Ingredients
1 large duck (2.5 to 3 kg)

dry marinade

1 tbsp five spice powder
2 tsps demerara sugar
2 tsps salt
stuffing
peel of 1 orange, sliced
6 thick slices of fresh ginger
6 spring onions, peeled and chopped into 2cm lengths
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced
basting sauce
50 ml rice vinegar
100 ml clear honey
100 ml dark soy sauce

Method

1. Mix the dry marinade ingredients together. Dry the duck thoroughly with paper towel, and pat the marinade all over the outside and inside of the duck. (You can do this the day before if you are feeling leisurely.)
2. Mix the stuffing ingredients and insert into the cavity of the duck.
3. Place the duck on a V-rack in a roasting tin, pour a little boiling water into the bottom of the tin, and cover the whole assemblage with tinfoil (sealing to make sure it is reasonably steamproof), Place the tin on top of the stove, on a gentle heat, and steam for 45 minutes. Check the water level from time to time, and top up if required.
4. Set the oven to 200oC.
5. Meanwhile, mix the basting sauce ingredients in a small saucepan, bring to a boil, reduce heat to minimum and simmer gently for about 10 minutes until the sauce thickens.
6. Once the duck has finished steaming, remove the foil from the top, baste generously, and transfer to the preheated oven.
7. Bake for 1 hour, basting every 20 minutes.
8. When the duck is cooked, remove from oven and allow to rest for 5 minutes. Carve and serve with Chinese pancakes, spring onions, cucumber sticks, and plum sauce.

Ducks and dogs
We also took our labrador, Ronia, to the farmer's market, where she was petted by all and sundry, and ate out royally on fried onions (at the burger stand), some bits of pork crackling (from the hog roast), a stray sausage, and a pork bone. The next day we went to Cramond, where she promptly dived into the water in pursuit of some fresh duck. She came back empty-mouthed, but I decided to give her the neck and giblets from this one as compensation.

Carmela's BBQ chicken kebabs

As Sammy has his own kebab recipe, I thought it only fair that Carmela should have one too, so this is what we came up with. We took these camping with us and we didn't get any shots of the food, but I did catch Carmela loosing off an arrow.

Ingredients
1 kg skinless chicken breast
4 tbsps tomato sauce
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp sesame oil


Method

1. Cut the chicken into chunks.
2. Mix the tomato sauce, soy sauce, honey and sesame oil together.
3. Pour over the chicken pieces, mix well and leave to marinade (anything from 30 minutes to overnight).
4. Preheat the oven to 220oC, and line an oven tray with lightly greased foil.
5. Thread the chicken pieces onto skewers, and cook in the hot oven for 12 minutes.

Sammy's chicken kebabs

Sammy and Carmela are gradually doing more and more cooking, and right now this is Sammy's favourite thing to do with chicken.

Ingredients
1 kg skinless chicken breast
juice of 1/2 lemon
6 tbsps of natural yoghurt
2 tbsps of chickpea flour
1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped
4 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp salt

Method

1. Cut the chicken into chunks, put in a bowl and mix well with the lemon juice.
2. Mix the yoghurt and the chickpea flour, then add the ginger, garlic, spices and salt, and mix well. Pour over the chicken pieces, mix well and leave to marinade (anything from 30 minutes to overnight).
3. Preheat the oven to 220oC, and line an oven tray with lightly greased foil.
4. Thread the chicken pieces onto skewers, and cook in the hot oven for 12 minutes.

Barbecue sauce chicken kebabs

A quick chicken kebab recipe.


Ingredients
500g chicken breast
3 tablespoons tomato ketchup
1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon chilli paste
1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon sunflower oil

Method

1. Skin the chicken breast and cut it into chunks. In a large bowl, mix the marinade ingredients. Add the chicken to the bowl, mix well with your hands ensuring that all the pieces are basted in the marinade, cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave in the fridge overnight (or for as long as possible if you are making this on the day of the barbecue).
2. Shortly before you are ready to start cooking, thread the pieces onto skewers - 4 or 5 pieces on each skewer at most. Grill over a nice hot barbecue.

Roast goose

This is the second time I've made roast goose for Christmas. It's a really easy meat to cook. The fat on the outside stops it from drying out, and the meat is tasty and tender, and quite lean. The recipe I've used both times is from Gordon Ramsey, and involves zesting lemons and limes, rubbing the zest onto the skin, then stuffing the cavity with the fruit and with some fresh herbs. However, I'm beginning to suspect that the purpose of this is just to fool the diners into thinking that the cook bears more responsibility for the end result than he really does. I don't think the fruit and herbs make much difference at all to the flavour, so next time round I will just be seasoning the skin with salt and pepper before roasting the bird.



Ingredients
5 kg goose
salt
pepper

Method

1. Heat the oven to 240oC (220oC fan).
2. Remove the giblets and any loose pads of fat from the bird, dry the outside and inside, and score the skin lightly in a criss-cross pattern. Season generously with salt and pepper.
3. Place the goose on a trivet or wire rack, over a large baking tray.
4. Cook for 10 minutes, turn the oven down to 190oC (170oC fan), and cook for a further 140 minutes. Baste the bird with some of the fatfrom the baking tray every 30 minutes, and strain the excess fat off into a heatproof bowl. (You will get about 1 litre of fat from your goose. Strain it and keep it for roasting potatoes in.)
5. After the goose has been in the oven for 90 minutes, cover with tinfoil to stop it from getting too brown.
6. Once the cooking time is complete, remove the goose from the oven, and leave to rest for 20 minutes before carving.

Cooking times
Allow 30 minutes per kg of goose (including the 10 minutes of 'hot oven' time in your total).

Chicken with cucumber in a garlic and vinegar sauce

My love affair with cooked cucumber continues. This is a really simple dish, with just a few, clear flavours. The idea of using vinegar was inspired by pickled cucumbers.



Ingredients
500g of chicken breast
4 cloves of garlic
1-inch piece of ginger
6 spring onions
1 cucumber
4 tablespoons of white wine
2 tablespoons of rice vinegar
2 tablespoons of light soy sauce
vegetable oil

Method

1. Peel and chop the garlic and ginger. Top and tail the spring onions (removing only the very ends) and cut into 1cm sections. Cut the ends off the cucumber, and cut the cucumber into 3 or 4 segments crosswise. Cut each segment lengthwise into slices - neither wafer-thin nor too thick - discarding the outside slice on each side to reduce the amount of cucumber skin. Then cut the pile of slices in half, lengthwise to give you narrow rectangles. Trim any fat off the chicken breasts, then cut into thinnish slices.
2. Heat the wine in a small saucepan to boil off the alcohol, then remove from the heat and add the vinegar and soy sauce.
3. Heat a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil in a wok until it is smoking hot, then add the chicken and stir-fry until it is just done. (It should be cooked but still juicy - not dry.) Remove the chicken to a bowl.
4. Pour away any oil left in the wok, wipe clean then add a little fresh vegetable oil (a couple of teaspoons), and heat until smoking hot. Add the garlic and ginger, fry for a few seconds, then add the sliced cucumber and spring onions and stir-fry until the cucumber pieces are hot. (Take care not to overcook them. The cucumber should still taste crunchy and fresh.)
5. Return the chicken to the wok, together with any juices which have collected in the bowl, add the sauce ingredients and cook over a high flame for a few seconds until the sauce has heated through. Serve with noodles or rice.

Chicken kebabs

Spain (or at least Cadiz) has a surprisingly primitive barbecue culture. For somewhere where the weather is reliably good for 6 months of the year and intermittently so for the other 6 months, I can never understand why there is not much tradition of outdoor cooking and that most gaditanos limit their barbecues to tossing some sardines onto a grill.



Despite this, a lot of Spansh food is actually well-suited to barbecues, and these little chicken kebabs are really just my version of the pinchitos de pollo which are commonly found in both butchers' and restaurants.

Ingredients
1 kg of chicken breast
4 teaspoons of mild curry powder
4 tablespoons of sunflower oil

Method

1. Cut the chicken breast into large chunks.
2. Mix the curry powder and sunflower oil in a large bowl, cover the chicken chunks in the mixture, cover with clingfilm and marinade in the fridge for at least 4 hours.
3. Thread the chicken chunks onto wooden skewers (3 or 4 pieces per skewer) and cook over a hot barbecue.
4. Serve in a hot tortilla wrap (toasted over the barbie), with some salad and sauce.

Playing with fire
No doubt this defies every rule in the health and safety manual, but I think kids should be allowed to barbecue too. Here is Carmela expertly placing some kebabs and sausages on the grill.



And here is grillmeister Sammy, checking to see whether the flames have died down yet.

Chinese chicken and aubergine

I'm trying to expand my aubergine repertoire beyond just deep-frying them and putting them in ratatouille (which is great) or making aubergine puree. There's a brilliant Chinese restaurant in Edinburgh called the Wing Sing Inn and they do a great aubergine dish (spicy, saucy and with a bit of minced pork - although they obligingly left out the pork last time we went with a vegetarian friend, Nacho). This is nothing like the Wing Sing dish, but it's simple and very tasty.



Ingredients
1 lb of chicken breast
1 large aubergine
6 Chinese mushrooms (soaked for 30 minutes in hot water)
vegetable oil
1 teaspoon of minced garlic
1 teaspoon of minced ginger
2 tablespoons of oyster sauce
2 tablespoons of hoisin sauce
1 glass of white wine
1 teaspoon of sesame oil

Method

1. Cut the chicken breast into bite-sized chunks, cut the aubergine in half lengthwise and then cut into slices, and cut the mushrooms into 4 or 5 slices.
2. Stir-fry the chicken chunks until they are cooked. (Unless you have a very large wok, you will need to do them in two batches to ensure they fry rather than stew. I use two medium-sized non-stick frying pans.) Remove the chicken to a bowl.
3. Fry the garlic and ginger for 30 seconds or so, then add the aubergine. (Again, you may need to do it in two batches at the beginning.) You will need to use plenty of oil, as the aubergines tend to soak it up.
4. Once the aubergines are soft (but not mushy - probably about 5 minutes), add the oyster and hoisin sauces and the white wine, bring to a boil and simmer for a little, then return the chicken with its juices to the pan, cover, and simmer for a few more minutes until the flavours have blended. Drizzle with a little sesame oil just before serving.

You Tube
I'm not sure if "You Tube" is an insult anywhere else in the English-speaking world, but in Scotland a 'tube' is an idiot, not a telly. Anyway, this recipe here is based on one I found there, although I've adjusted the proportions, ingredients and cooking times quite a bit so I feel I'm more than justified in including it here.

Roast chicken soup with knaidlach

Making your own stock is really easy. Good quality bought stock is fine for general cooking purposes, but for soup you really need to make your own.

Knaidlach are just little dumplings, made from matzo meal. There is a lot of debate about the best way to make these, including all sorts of ridiculous magical ingredients (club soda, ginger ale etc.), and endless family anecdotes about Auntie So-and-So, whose knaidlach were like cannonballs, as opposed to Auntie-Such-and-Such, whose knaidlach were as light as a feather. Actually, they’re very easy to make, and it’s quite hard to go wrong. My recipe is adapted from the one which appears in Evelyn Rose’s Jewish Cookbook. If you want to, you can add other embellishments – some chopped parsley, a bit of ground ginger or whatever.




Stage 1: making your stock

1. Put your roast chicken carcass and the juices from the roasting dish in a large pot. (Don’t worry if the juices are oily.) Set aside any leftover meat from the bird (breast, legs, oysters from the back) but remove any skin and bones to add to the pot. Cover the carcass with water (but only just). Bring to the boil, reduce to minimum and simmer for at least an hour.
2. Allow to cool, strain the stock through a colander or sieve into a large bowl, cover and leave in the fridge. Discard the carcass. The next day you should have a bowl of jellified stock, covered with a thin layer of solidified fat.

Stage 2: rendering your chicken fat

1. Skim the fat off the top of the bowl and place in a small saucepan, for which you have a lid. (This chicken fat is the original schmaltz which has made its way into the English language with the meaning sentimental.)
2. Place the saucepan over a low heat, and as soon as it starts to spit, place the lid over it, but leaving it slightly off so that the steam can escape as any water trapped in the fat evaporates. Once the fat has stopped spitting (probably after about 10 minutes), pour the fat into a small bowl, leave to cool, and transfer to the fridge so that it solidifies completely. This chicken fat was a basic cooking ingredient (as were a range of animal fats across Europe, including goose, pig and beef fat). It’s not the healthiest cooking medium, but helps adds flavour to the knaidlach below.

Stage 3: making your knaidlach

Ingredients
2 eggs
3 tablespoons of chicken fat
4 tablespoons of chicken stock
1 teaspoon of salt
4 tablespoons of ground almonds
10 to 12 tablespoons of medium matzo meal (in Spain, I use breadcrumbs, which are sold in all supermarkets and bakeries)

Method

1. Fill a large saucepan with water, add salt and set to boil.
2. Beat the eggs thoroughly with a whisk. Stir in the rest of the ingredients with a spoon, leaving out the last two tablespoons of matzo meal, just in case. The mixture should now be just stiff enough to easily be formed into balls. If the mixture is too loose, then add some more of the matzo meal. If it is too stiff, then add a little more stock. (It’s important that the mixture is not too stiff at this stage.)
3. Once the water in your pan is boiling, reduce the heat to medium, roll the knaidlach mixture into marble-sized balls, and add them to the water as you go. Once you have added all the knaidlach to the water, cover the pan, reduce to a simmer, and cook for 30 minutes before adding to the stock (see below).

Putting it all together

1. Heat the stock in a large pan. Using a slotted spoon, remove the knaidlach from the water in which they have been cooked, and add to the chicken stock. Simmer gently for another couple of minutes and serve.

(You can add carrots and other things to the stock if you want, but I think it is best served just the way it is.)

Slow-roasted chicken

Roast chicken is one of those dishes where there is a conflict between the visual appearance and the taste. While nothing looks nicer than a golden, oven-roasted chicken, to my mind the classic way of roasting chicken leaves the breast meat a bit dry. There are ways of mitigating this – stuffing the chicken, roasting it breast down and turning it halfway through, basting it etc. – but I think the method below produces a far tastier result, for less work.



Ingredients
1 chicken
seasoning mixture (see below)

Method

1. On a large chopping board, place a large sheet of silver foil crosswise, and another one over it lengthwise. Then place the chicken on top.
2. Make several cuts in the chicken (to the breast, back and legs) to allow the flavours of your seasoning to penetrate the meat.
3. Rub the chicken all over with your seasoning mixture (see below).
4. Close the foil over the chicken, and wrap it in another layer of foil before placing the chicken parcel breast upwards in a roasting tray.
5. Place the chicken in the oven and turn it on at 150°C.
6. Cook for at least 6 hours.
7. Remove the chicken from the oven and leave to rest for 5 minutes before carving and serving. The legs and wings are best eaten with your fingers.

If you have time, do steps 1 to 4 the day before you plan to cook the chicken, and leave the flavours to soak in, but this is not essential. Similarly, the cooking times are not precise. My timings here are based on putting the chicken in the oven at breakfast time and having it ready for a late Spanish lunch. My mum cooks it for longer at a slightly lower heat – it can even be cooked overnight.

Whatever you do, resist the temptation to uncover the chicken for the last 20 minutes or so to brown the chicken, as you will undo all your hard work and dry out the white meat.

Seasoning mixture
You can season this with just about anything. Because the chicken is wrapped in foil, it stays moist, so you don’t need to use oil, but you should use plenty of salt to help make the skin nice and crisp. Here are a few suggestions:

• mustard, garlic, salt and pepper
• salt, pepper, rosemary and balsamic vinegar
• a good quality curry powder or spice mix
• ginger, ground coriander, garlic and salt
• lemon juice, cumin, salt and pepper
• 
  

This method is basically one I learnt from my mother. I assume that the original method was to cook it covered in a pot, and I’m sure it was the only way to roast a (relatively young) bird back in the days before modern farming produced the soft slobby chickens which are generally sold today. Chicken is one thing which I think it’s really worth spending a bit more on in order to buy free range. When I bought my chicken from the butcher in the market and told him not to cut it into portions because I was going to roast it whole, he blanched and politely told me that he really didn’t think it was a good idea. “This is a country chicken,” he explained, “not like the ones you get in the supermarket. You can’t roast it – it’ll be too tough.” But it came out perfectly – meaty but tender, with lots of flavour.