Attempt #1: Perfect Roast Chicken

News has it that roasting a chicken is one of the easiest dish for new cooks (or a chef wannabe) to start with. So, when I found this recipe on Jamie Oliver’s website for a Perfect Roast Chicken…I thought I struck gold…or poultry heaven in this case.
 
But oh….roasting a chicken was not as easy as 1-2-3 as news has it!

Here’s what happened and learning! Learning! Learning! to remind myself the next time I attempt to roast an entire chicken! 
 

Mistake #1: Never try to adjust the recipe of a great chef when you are trying your virgin attempt to roast a chicken!

Instead of organic, free range chicken which I thought was rather large for a family of 2 adults and 2 small kids, I bought a ‘kampung’ (village fed) chicken. This means that I should have also halved the other ingredients which I did not and adjusted the baking time.

IMPORTANT: Depending on the size of the chicken, may not be full 80 minutes as per recipe. Else, you will get a much burnt bird!

 

Recipe asked for celery and carrots. I replaced with leaks and cherry tomatoes. Reason being: I had leftover of leaks and cherry tomatoes and I wanted to use them before they went rotten. Waste not, want not right?

IMPORTANT: Roasting is like a box of chocolates, you will never know what it will taste like if you have not tried it. So, don’t try to be creative just yet!

Mistake #2: Size of the lemon must be in according to the size of the chicken!

The lemon keeps popping out from the chicken’s rear end as you can see from the photo! It took me longer trying to tackle the lemon and stuffing it into the chicken’s behind than to clean the chicken.

Not just that, if the lemon doesn’t get inserted well into the chicken, you get burnt lemon.

The RESULT: Chicken was slightly burnt and a little tad too sour (probably from the tomatoes!). But overall, it was quite tasty. The citrusy taste of the lemon goes really well with the sweet onion.

p/s: Visually, I thought the roasted chicken looks like an alien trying to eat that lemon! Don't ya think? See the resemblance? Gosh, I got to do something about my visual presentation of the food!