01roast
Roast Chicken with Lemon and Bay
The recipe everything else is measured against. Learn it properly and you have the stock, the sandwiches and the soup as well.
Ordered as they appear in the book — whole bird first, then legs, then breast, then wings, ending with the stock and what to do with it. Each ring shows the cooking time against a four-hour scale.
The recipe everything else is measured against. Learn it properly and you have the stock, the sandwiches and the soup as well.
No browning at all, and the most tender bird you will cook. The poaching liquid becomes the stock and the rice is cooked in it.
Flattening the bird halves the cooking time and doubles the crisp skin. Weight on top is what makes the difference.
One pot, almost no attention, and it improves overnight. The thighs give up enough fat to carry the whole dish.
Yoghurt tenderises where lemon juice only toughens. Borrowed, with respect, from the tandoor tradition of North India and Pakistan.
The long braise the whole tradition is built on. Made properly it takes two days, and the second day is where it happens.
The potatoes cook in rendering thigh fat and are better than the chicken. A weeknight dish with one tray to wash.
Flattened thin, crumbed, shallow fried. The whole thing is about thickness — get that right and it is difficult to ruin.
Breast meat is lean and unforgiving of high heat. Poach it barely below a simmer and it stays juicy without any fat at all.
Dried in the fridge, baked hot, glazed at the end. No deep fryer, and the skin comes out better than most fried wings.
Two roast chicken carcasses and four hours of near-silence make two litres of the most useful thing in a kitchen.
Where the whole bird finally ends. Built on the stock from the page before it, and finished in half an hour.
The ring on each card is the active cooking time drawn against a four-hour scale; a pink + means there is an unattended stage as well — a marinade, an overnight dry, or a rest.