roast chicken with lemon and

ingredients
• 1 x 2kg/4½lb free-range organic chicken
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2kg/4½lb potatoes, peeled
• 1 large, preferably unwaxed, lemon
• 1 whole bulb of garlic,broken into cloves
• a handful of fresh thyme
• olive oil
• a handful of fresh rosemary sprigs, leaves picked
• optional: 8 rashers of smoked streaky bacon

main courses
Serves 4
Roast chicken remains one of our favourite dishes at home. I
recently discovered a way to make the chicken taste even better,
by putting a lemon in with my potatoes when I was parboiling
them. It smelt fantastic and flavoured the potatoes. Then when I
was draining them I decided to stab the lemon, which hissed out
juice and steam, and quickly jammed it inside the chicken! The
benefits of the hot steaming lemon going into the chicken are
very obvious as the meat tastes amazing, and the chicken cooks
slightly quicker because of it.

Rub the chicken inside and out with a generous amount of salt
and freshly ground black pepper. Do this in the morning if
possible, then cover the chicken and leave in the fridge until
you're ready to start cooking it for lunch or dinner. By doing this,
you'll make the meat really tasty when cooked. Preheat your
oven to 190ºC/375ºF/gas 5. Bring a large pan of salted water to
the boil. Cut the potatoes into golf-ball-sized pieces, put them
into the water with the whole lemon and the garlic cloves, and
cook for 12 minutes. Drain and allow to steam dry for 1 minute
(this will give you crispier potatoes), then remove the lemon and
garlic. Toss the potatoes in the pan while still hot so their
outsides get chuffed up and fluffy – this will make them lovely
and crispy when they roast.

While the lemon is still hot, carefully stab it about 10 times. Take
the chicken out of the fridge, pat it with kitchen paper and rub it
all over with olive oil. Push the garlic cloves, the whole lemon
and the thyme into the cavity, then put the chicken into a
roasting tray and cook in the preheated oven for around 45
minutes. Remove the chicken to a plate. Some lovely fat should
have cooked out of it into the roasting tray, so toss the potatoes
into this with the rosemary leaves. Shake the tray around, then
make a gap in the centre of the potatoes and put the chicken
back in. If using the bacon, lay the rashers over the chicken
breast and cook for a further 45 minutes, or until the chicken is
cooked and the potatoes are nice and golden. (You can tell the
chicken is cooked when the thigh meat pulls easily away from
the bone and the juices run clear.)

I like to remove the bacon from the chicken and crumble it up
over the potatoes. Then I remove the lemon and garlic from
inside the chicken, squeeze all the garlic flesh out of the skin,
mush it up and smear it all over the chicken, discard the lemon
and rosemary and carve the chicken at the table. Heaven!