I love my roast dinners. The smell of it cooking in the oven makes my mouth water and my tummy rumble! My partner loves Chinese Lemon Chicken, so I thought that today I would make a more Mediterranean version, as Mediterranean is the diet that the hospital has suggested is the most healthy to eat. Although I give it that title, it is inspired by (as most of the meals that I will cook) the ingredients from that region rather than a dish specifically cooked and eaten there.
What I have to hand is what I use. The vegetables below are what were in my fridge and cupboard
In this dish, there will be no added salt or sugar (other than that from the ingredients).
Ingredients:
1 whole chicken without giblets
8-10 small potatoes (New or Salad types), about 4 or 5 per person
1-2 sticks of celery roughly chopped
1 whole onion (I used a red onion as it was the only type that I had to hand)
1 lemon
1 red pepper roughly chopped
6 or 7 small vine tomatoes cut in half
3 small carrots peeled and roughly chopped
6 cloves of garlic (unpeeled)
1 chicken stock cube
2 sprigs of rosemary
2 sprigs of thyme
ground black pepper
approx 1 tablespoon of olive oil
Method
1 Preheat the oven to 160 degrees (about gas mark 6)
2 Place chicken in roasting tin with breast down. Cut the onion and lemon in half* and place in the cavity of the chicken along with a sprig of rosemary and thyme. Pour the olive oil over the chicken and rub it in all over with your hand. Grind black pepper over the chicken and place the tray with the chicken in the oven for 30 minutes
* the other halves of lemon and onion should be roughly chopped into about 6 or 8 pieces each and added to the baking tray at step 4 with the other vegetables
3 After 30 minutes, take the chicken out of the oven, and turn it breast upwards. Add your potatoes (no need to peel them) and toss them in the juices in the tin. Grind black pepper over the chicken and potatoes and return to the oven.
4 After a further 30 minutes remove from the oven, transfer your chicken to a tray or plate for a moment and add all the rest of the ingredients to the tin, tossing them in the juices. Put the chicken back on top of the vegetables in the tin. The juices left on the plate, pour over the chicken and return to the oven for a further 30 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked. (Pierce the chicken at the thickest point and check that the juices run clear with no hint of pink.
5 Put the chicken on a plate and cover with aluminium foil to rest
6 Dissolve the stock cube in the juices in the tin, turn the oven down to about 80 degrees (gas mark 1) to keep them warm while the chicken rests (If you wish, at this stage you could remove the skins from the tomatoes very easily)
7 Once the chicken is rested, add any juices from the plate to the vegetables and stir in. Remove the lemons and garlic.
Once the chicken is plated, add your vegetables and stock, give each person 2 or 3 cloves of garlic to squeeze into their meal to taste.
As there were only two of us eating this meal, I will use the rest of the chicken tomorrow in a different dish which I will think up tonight. If you are cooking for more people, just add more vegetables and potatoes. Also, the vegetables used are what I had to hand, you can add different combinations.
The result was packed with flavour and it was not noticeable that the only salt added was via the stock cube. You would need to like lemon though, to appreciate it, however, if you do not like lemon, add more herbs to give more flavour.
The chicken that I used was reduced price from the supermarket as it was coming to the end of it's shelf life, and was large. It cost only £3.75 and will make at least one more meal. I would imagine that the whole meal cost less than about £3 per person.
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