This is the dish I generally trot out when I can’t be bothered to cook but have inadvertently invited people for dinner. Its ridiculously simple, it’s positively dripping with flavour, it looks ‘le business’ and it makes the house smell amazing.
I could finish right there and move on to the ingredients, however I need to make you aware this is not the dish for you if you have a hot date the following day…sensing that I am safe to continue; there are indeed forty cloves of garlic, the point being to roast the chicken on top in the style of a one-pot wonder, leaving you with one big juicy bird and forty little cloves of sweet, unctuous pleasure.
It’s a rustic hands-on peasant dish, quite literally the garlics are served whole still in their skins to be squidged out and scooped up and eaten with French bread dipped in the juices. A green salad with a good tart vinaigrette would be the ideal accompaniment, as would a nice cold bottle of Chablis and a bloke on the accordion.
You could of course use a knife and fork, ditch the salad and serve with potatoes, but what you can never do is skimp on the garlic. Forty, really does mean forty.
Ingredients
(serves 4)
1 x whole chicken (1.2 – 1.5kg)
40 cloves of garlic (4 whole bulbs) skins on, but excess removed
2 x tablespoons olive oil
½ x lemon
1 x small bunch of mixed herbs such as rosemary, thyme
Sea salt and black pepper
Pre-heat the oven to 200⁰C.
Season the cavity of the bird with salt and pepper and stuff in the lemon and herbs. Pour a little olive oil over the chicken and massage into the skin. Season with salt and pepper.
Put all the garlic in the base of a roasting tin and mix with the remaining olive oil. Sit the chicken on top, breast side down and cover tightly with foil or the lid if you’re using an oval roaster.
Roast in the oven for 1 hour, then remove the foil, turn the chicken over so it faces breast side up, and return to the oven for another 30 minutes, uncovered.
Check the chicken is cooked; insert the tip of a sharp knife into both the thick part of the thigh and the breast – the juices should run clear. Insert a meat fork into the cavity of the bird, tip it up to let the juices run out – these too should be clear with no sign of blood. You should be able to pull the thigh away from the body easily; the juices that run from the joint should also be clear.
Let the chicken rest in the roasting tin for a good ten minutes before removing. Ideally serve it whole to be carved at the table, with the garlics served separately.
Note: My mother prefers to squeeze all the garlics from their skins before serving and mash with the juices to form a spreadable sauce, but I prefer the interactive approach and let people do it themselves.