Organic Roast Chicken & Potatoes With Lemon, Garlic And Sage

Organic Roast Chicken with Potatoes with Lemon, Garlic and Sage

Ingredients

• 1 x 2kg free-range organic chicken• sea salt and freshly and ground black pepper• 2kg new potatoes with skin on• 1 large, preferably unwaxed, lemon• 1 whole bulb of garlic, broken into cloves• a handful of fresh sage• olive oil• a handful of fresh rosemary sprigs.

Method

Rub the chicken inside and out with a generous amount of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Preheat your oven to 190ºC. Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil. Cut the new potatoes (skin on) into golf-ball-sized pieces, put them into the water with the whole lemon and the garlic cloves, and cook for 12 minutes. Drain and allow to steam dry for 1 minute (this will give you crispier potatoes), then remove the lemon and garlic. Toss the potatoes in the pan while still hot so their outsides get fluffy – this will make them lovely and crispy when they roast.While the lemon is still hot, carefully stab it about 10 times. Get chicken out of the fridge, pat it with kitchen paper and rub it all over with olive oil. Push the garlic cloves, the whole lemon and herbs into the cavity, then put the chicken into a roasting tray and cook in the preheated oven for around 45 minutes. Remove the chicken to a plate. Some lovely fat should have cooked out of it into the roasting tray, so toss the potatoes into this with the rosemary leaves. Shake the tray around, then make a gap in the centre of the potatoes and put the chicken back in. Cook for a further 45 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked and the potatoes are nice and golden. (You can tell the chicken is cooked when the juices run clear.) Then I remove the lemon and garlic from inside the chicken, squeeze all the garlic flesh out of the skin, mush it up and smear it all over the chicken, discard the lemon and rosemary and carve the chicken at the table.

Yummy, Bon appetit!