roast chicken and other stories

Having got rid of two chicken carcasses from the freezer, of course the next logical step is to make up the difference with another one, as if the remaining 10 are now lonely...

The original plan was to knock up another serving of Billy G's utterly-blydi-divine quick roast chicken with white wine and shallots. However curiously for a house now entirely funded by hooch, we didn't have any wine, so we're fell back to a sort-of approximation of Simon Hopkinson's classic roast chicken recipe (feat StarVest's Lucy Ferguson and the BBC's Louise Pepper).

It's funny how quickly a dish that has been completely in our top ten for the past three years, and one I really looked forward to cooking, has now been superseded within a matter of weeks by the new version, and to the extent I was genuinely annoyed I had to make it. Or maybe that was the lack of booze? Anyway, it's even stranger when you think roasting a chicken was merely a means to an end to another fantastic meal using the left-overs: Yottam Ottolenghi's roast chicken and three rice salad - Roll on Wednesday!

Still, roast chicken and an avocado salad with a beautiful wife, what's not to like? Even if she is stressing about tomorrow's school application results?

Wine Time
After Easter Sunday's finishing off of the Christmas Box, there's only one thing I want at the moment with roast chicken: Puligny-Montrachet. However I've drunk my 2009 and let's face it none of us are £30 bottle of wine people, but the point remains: Creamy, warming, toasty Chardonnay loves roast chicken. Find any fairly good White Burgundy - and there plenty in the £9 zone - and you won't go wrong.