Another Food Blog

I enjoy making massively customised salads out of whatever I have left in the fridge. Otherwise, I’m sufficiently disorganised when I go shopping that there would be huge amounts of waste. This time, it was the following collection of entertaining treats:

Two pieces of ham, served, of course, with mustard (this time English, as the Dijon had run out). Alongside was some red onion, which I first sliced and soaked in balsamic vinegar. Then I quartered two small tomatoes. I also boiled an egg, for precisely six minutes, then cut it in half and put salt on the runny yolk halves. The filler was a bit of lettuce, and there was some ‘Christmas chutney’ leftover. For the finishing touch, I put some pumpkin seeds and some almonds alongside. It took less than eight minutes to prepare, and that was largely because of the egg, during the boiling time of which I prepared the rest. Who said healthy eating was difficult or boring?!

I roasted a chicken. It was excellent and lasted for three days. Here’s how I did it, and the stuff I did with it: Firstly, I defrosted the chicken from the freezer. This I started in the fridge for 24 hours, but this wasn’t long enough, so I turned the fridge down and put the chicken on a plate on the draining board instead. Once it was thawed, I put it in a specially prepared oven dish. Specially, because I screwed up three pieces of foil into sausage-like shapes and placed them parallel to each other in the dish along where the length of the chicken would sit. This allows the fat to drain away underneath the chicken.

I stuffed the chicken with two limes, which I had quartered and squeezed, saving the juice. I put a knob of butter into the chicken cavity, too, to maintain moisture and ensure cooking on the inside, too. Then I placed the chicken in the specially-prepared dish (with the legs pulled out slightly to encourage those areas to cook) and poured the lime juice over the chicken. Then I coated the chicken with olive oil.

I also bought some Maris Piper potatoes, which I’ve heard are best for roasting. I par-boiled them for a few minutes, after quartering them so they were roughly the same size. Once this was done, I put the lid on the pan and shook it briefly so there were some fluffy bits on the outside of each piece. I then heated some oil in the oven in a pyrex dish until it was the roasting temperature. Then I removed the dish from the oven and carefully placed the potato pieces into the oil. I turned the potato pieces so that each was coated in oil, then placed this dish in the top of the oven and the chicken in the bottom.

Each time I opened the oven to baste both the potatoes and the chicken, I switched which was on top, ending with the potatoes on top to make them as crispy as possible. I roasted first at gas mark 9, then turned down to 7 after fifteen minutes and cooked for a total of roughly one hour and ten minutes. Alongside, I had defrosted some sweetcorn and some green beans which I heated briefly in the microwave (which surprisingly works very well for these, not ruining the texture).

In all, it was excellent, with a beautifully browned chicken with crispy skin, and the chicken lasted two people for dinner, then another two meals for one person. It was also quite good fun to do – well worth the effort!