Tuscan Roast Chicken

True Italian Rustic Comfort.

Cosi-Tabellini-Italian-Pewter-Tuscan-Roast-Chicken

A roast chicken meal has to be up there in the all-time food-favourites for most people, usurping the regal roast beef to the legendary lunch status.  Tender tasty white breast and brown leg meats (are you a leg or breast man/woman?!?!) succulent, healthy, and, if free-range, conscience-clear and easy to cook – a simple sprinkle of splash of oil and a shake of salt & pepper will often do…

However, sometimes we fancy something a little more, but most often time and foresight is not on our side – the solution is a Tuscan roast chicken.  This is a Mediterranean meal with minimum management; simply with the addition of a few extra kitchen cupboard staples and very little extra effort, the humble chicken can be transformed from tasty bird into an Italian beauty!!

True Tuscan cookery is traditionally simple, honest and hearty and full of strong flavours.  Tuscan cooking is most often generously seasoned, with liberal salt (traditionally from the salt merchants of the North East), ample garlic and freshly grown herbs – notably basil, rosemary and sage, as well as heavily flavoured olive oils freshly pressed from the surrounding ancient gnarly groves.

Cooking is often conducted using rustic methods, utilising whatever is to hand; such as the renowned Pollo al Mattone, meaning literally ‘chicken roasted under a brick’, an ancient technique of cooking chicken under heated stones, which is featured in Etruscian frescos, resulting in tender flavoursome meat, with ‘expressed’ juices squeezed out under the pressure to produce wondrous gravy juices. Historically, locally-produced terracotta tiles were used to weigh the chicken down so it was evenly exposed to the heat.  Today a heavy pan will suffice if you don’t fancy using an ambiguously sourced house brick!!  For this recipe however, we are keeping things more mainstream, and just using a conventional domestic oven!

What you need…
(Serves 2 – 6, depending on how hungry/greedy they are…)

• 1 Whole free-range chicken
• 7 – 8 Fresh rosemary sprigs
• 2 Lemons
• 1 tsp Paprika
• 1 Garlic bulb split into cloves, peeled and finely chopped
• Olive oil
• Coarse sea salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

METHOD

  1. Pre-heat your oven to 190C/375F/Gas Mark 5
  2. Sprinkle olive oil generously onto the chicken and rub into the skin then season really well with salt & pepper, leave to come to room temperature while you wait for the oven to come up to temperature.
  3. In the meantime finely chopped half of peeled garlic cloves and mix with half of the rosemary, sea salt, paprika and one of the lemons juiced
  4. Spoon the garlic mixture over the chicken
  5. Quarter the remaining lemon and place in the cavity of the chicken, along with the remaining rosemary and garlic cloves
  6. Cook for about 45 minutes, covering once skin has browned to ensure the garlic mixture crusts but doesn’t catch.
  7. Once juices run clear from the thickest part of the flesh, take out of the oven and place on a chopping board and leave to rest for 5-10 minutes to settle the juices – cutting it sooner will allow the juices to escape and the meat may be dry.

SERVING

If it is cold outside, serve with piles of roasted vegetables; potatoes and parsnips, and a wonderful gravy rustled from the roasting tin.
If it is warm, serve with some boiled new potatoes tossed in the roasting pan juices and a simple green salad.

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