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Sunday 4 February 2018

Recipe CXXIX - Roast Spatchcock Lemon Chicken

I have started shopping in Luxembourg these days, as the kind of fare on offer is more international. This week, they had a splendid Portuguese theme and were selling all kinds of cheeses, vegetables, sea salts, fruits and meats from the country. There were some delightful pastéis de nata, the Portuguese national calling card, and some rather interesting spatchcock chickens. Now usually, I do my own, but what with so many responsibilities these days, time is of the essence, so I bought it. Now, it's winter, so I couldn't really grill the thing outside in the snow, but I wanted to do it some justice, considering its provenance. This recipe was inspired by a meal I had in Andalucía many years ago, which remains one of the most memorable gastronomic experiences I had.






Ingredients:
1 spatchcock chicken
4 large cloves of garlic
1 onion or 4 shallots
3 lemons
2 sprigs of rosemary
Some olive oil
Salt and ground black pepper

Instructions:
Turn on the oven to a maximum 150°C.

Spatchcocking a chicken:
If you have a whole chicken, place it with the breast on the cutting board, and cut along one side of the backbone with a sharp knife or the kitchen scissors. Then cut the other side of the backbone and remove it. Now turn the chicken over to the other side and open it up by pressing on the breastbone. You can use your hands to flatten it totally.

Then...
Having cut up 2 of your lemons into thin slices, place one of them on the bottom of an oven dish along with thick slices of garlic and onion.



Open up the skin of the chicken at the neck with your fingers and fill it with slices from the third lemon. Put some garlic and onion in there if you want too. Finally, spread salt, pepper and olive oil randomly on top of the chicken and cover the oven dish with tin foil. Put it in the oven on a low heat for 90 minutes to 2 hours.


Then take off the foil and roast at 180°C for a further 30 minutes.


I made potatoes roasted in olive oil and rosemary, and to bring some colour, Brussels sprouts fried in butter and nutmeg.


Bom apetite, as they say in Old Lisbon!