A typical, English, Sunday roast

As much as every Englishman's home is his castle, his Sunday roast is his daily bread.  The Sunday roast is part and parcel of the weekend rota and in many households is considered mandatory.  In reality, our family have a roast dinner on a Sunday perhaps once a month - sometimes less.  I do like a roast dinner, but as a weekly occurrence?  No thanks.  God forbid if we ever walk into a pub on a Sunday and see a carvery - this invariably triggers our hasty exit.

Roast chicken is probably our weapon of choice to consume on a Sunday.  The two main motivators for this are that it is a particular favourite of Luca - our 4 year old son, and that we can boil the residual carcass of the bird afterwards to create a tasty stock.  Basically we kill two birds with one stone.  Yesterday I did a roast chicken with thyme and onion gravy served with roasted potatoes, steamed kale and broccoli.  

One thing I wanted to discuss, though, was the totally inept cooking instructions provided by the supermarket (in this case Marks and Spencer).  The bird weighed 1.5kg, and their instruction was for 1.5 hours @ 180C (for fan-assisted oven).  At the 1 hour mark my bird was looking seriously ready, so I checked it by gashing a thigh, which resulted in clear liquid oozing from nicely cooked meat.  I then cut into the breast and it was likewise ready for eating.  I rested it for 15 minutes, and honestly, if I had adhered to the cooking instructions I would have been left with a piece of leather.  Cooking a chicken is an art-form, it is perilously easy to mess-up.  I am always extremely vigilant when cooking a chicken, as 10 minutes over can totally turn your fowl to foul.

I use the cooking technique from Nigel Slater's book, "Real Food".  Here's what you do:

•   Cut 3-4 medium onions into large chunks (each onion into 3 or 4 pieces).  Lay them in a baking tray.
•   Add 4 cloves of garlic to the tray, no need to peel.
•   Add 2 bay leaves to the tray.
•   Strip 4 bushy sprigs of thyme and put the little leaves into the tray.
•   Mix all the ingredients in the tray.  Dot with some knobs of butter and give some serious glugs of olive oil.
•   Stick your bird on top, so that the vegetables act as an organic trestle.
•   Cook your bird as you see fit, don't follow the instructions on the packaging.  
•   Remove the bird from the tray and allow to rest and cool.
•   Use the remaining roasted onions, garlic, herbs and juices to make a nice gravy.