A "special" meal. Roast chicken and greek potatoes.

Sunday morning - such a change from two weeks ago, a reprieve from Gabriella and I get to wake up at 7.45am instead of 6.30am and another reprieve and I decide to cook one breakfast for absolutely everyone. Bill Granger's scrambled eggs, bacon and fried Turish bread - very indulgent as I usually steer clear of dairy, red meat and wheat bread.

This weekend I have been pleasantly pleased with having obtained some ingredients "on special" however I thought the meal I produced with them has so far been quite special (I also bought some chicken legs and yellow peas, I am marinating the chicken legs for tandoori chicken, and preparing the peas for a dahl).

I love a bargain and must tell what I paid for my ingredients the 2 kg cornfed chicken was $5.99 and had to be used by Saturday, and the 1.5kg packet of pontiac potatoes were $1.40.

Very basic ingredients and this is how I prepared them for the final dinner of the week long celebration of P's birthday:
The chicken I decided to stuff with a gluten-free mixture of toasted pinenuts, chopped apricot, coucous, shallot and a piece of crumbled gluten-free bread mixed together with one egg.

On the outside of the chicken I used my pestle and mortar to pound some basil leaves, garlic, olive oil and salt and pepper and generously coated every nook and cranny of my lovely yellow chicken.

The potatoes are prepared via a recipe from my sister and is called Greek Potatoes. The gorgeous pre-preparation colours of red, white and green give way to the delicious caramel colours below and what has been scrumptiously carmelised are the potatoes cut into halves (and sometimes quartered if large), roughly cut chunks of red onion and roughly smashed bulbs garlic. The dish is seasoned with ground pepper and salt and liberally coated with olive oil and the juice of one lemon. Then water is added to about halfway mark of the dish. Lots of fresh oregano is scattered throughout the potatoes.Due to the water the potatoes require a fair bit of baking to reduce and carmelise.

I put the potatoes in a hot oven with the chicken, for about one and a half hours and made sure I turned them occassionally and kept an eye on them to ensure they did not dry prematurely or burn.

The finished chicken.









The Greek potatoes in all of their caramelised goodness:

Finally the plated product.

I decided to keep the green vegetables simple and I sauteed some onion and bacon and added some chicken stock, green beans and celery.

When making gravy I always roast my meat on a rack and in the roasting tray keep some water. After I remove the meat from the rack to rest, I pour the remaining juices into a saucepan and usually thicken with some flour, however this time I used cornflour I was trying to keep to my gluten-free theme.