Butterflied Chicken

I have always wanted to try this, probably ever since I saw some famous chef doing it on a cooking show earlier in my life. So I was very happy to discover that Donna wanted me to do it in this issue of her mag :^)

I realise that I have been a bit remiss lately in my postings but I do have a rather valid excuse. I was away, with no internet. And I am telling the truth, not trying to make up an excuse like Tom Hanks in “You’ve Got Mail.” Having come back a week ago I have only now really settled back into routine enough to do something extra. Being a mum really throws everything completely out of whack.

Oh, complete baking disaster today. I was trying to make cinnamon scrolls and decided to have a go at a new recipe that I was given by a friend. Of course I thought, this should work, she was able to make delicious cinnamon scrolls here with this recipe, I should too, right? Ha. Don’t you love those recipes that call for approximately x amount of flour, warning you in neat little parenthesis that you might possibly need some more. Oh my gosh!! Three added cups later!! I don’t know what I am going to do with all that dough rising so serenely on my stove. I think I’ll be able to make cinnamon scrolls, savoury scrolls, some dinner rolls and maybe a loaf or two of bread. What a joke. I am never using that recipe ever again!! Unless of course they turn out really nicely :^)

So here it is “garlic and thyme roasted chicken,” page 62 of issue 50. You will need; butter, which of course, if you know me by now will know that I substitute with margarine. Crushed garlic is not a problem, thyme leaves, I do not have in abundance but I do have dried thyme so I used that. Looking back I probably would use fresh stuff the next time cause the chicken really wasn’t that tasty, maybe fresh thyme would add just a little bit more pizaz. Sea salt and cracked pepper, well, you know my stance on sea salt so I went with normal salt and ground pepper. A whole chicken butterflied, yep had that one. Now I didn’t actually butterfly it myself, my wonderful husband did. I had a cut on my hand, that is my excuse and I am sticking with it. He did a great job of butterflying it. And Donna Hay describes the whole process so well on page 61. Basically what you do is you cut out the backbone and then squash it down so everything is sticking out the sides and it’s half the thickness it was before.

A lemon and olive oil are the last things you will need. Now I didn’t have any olive oil so I used sunflower oil instead. I am so excited cause I actually have olive oil now and I am going to make a DH recipe tonight from a back issue that is so delicious but I don’t think I’ll write about it cause I am trying to only blog about recipes in current issues. Speaking of which, I am waiting with baited breath for the next one to come!

So what you do with all this ingredients is you take the butter, garlic, thyme, salt and pepper and mix it all together and then shove it under the skin of the chicken breast. There is no dainty way of doing this. This technique, says Maggie Beer is to help keep the breast from getting to dry. A problem that I have time and time again and even doing this technique, I still can’t eat my roast chicken without gravy.

After doing that, put the chicken on the baking try with more thyme, the lemon and olive oil.

Put it all in the oven, brushing with the juices halfway through and whala a lovely roast chicken in about half the time and you don’t have to really worry that it isn’t cooked through.

I did very much like this way of cooking the chook but I really think the flavours weren’t all that strong and that is possibly because of my lack of fresh ingredients. I really wanted to make the butterflied chicken recipe right next to the thyme one but I didn't have any red wine vinegar and that seemed to me to be a key ingredient. Beggars can’t be choosers and we have to use what we’ve got.