Rosemary & Lemon Baked Chicken

When I went over to my bestfriends' house for dinner a couple of weeks back, she made for us roasted chicken for dinner. There was, roasted chicken, buttered broccoli and salads for dinner. "Sorry the presentation is not very nice.." She told me. I told her it's okay, it's the food that matters - if it's good, who cares about presentation unless you're publishing your food in a book?!

It looked simple, but it tasted really good. So I started to ask what she put in there. And so butter, lemon, rosemary came up in our conversation. Hmm, this sounds good and I really want to try and make this soon.

Back in Penang, after a week or so, I shopped for the ingredients and although I did not get the chicken as a whole like she did, I proceeded to dress the chicken... I used fresh rosemary because it really brings out the flavours and it smells so good... that you would'nt want to use dried rosemary. It's available in Tesco/Giant/Cold Storage for a small price, really.

I also browsed the internet and came accross a similar recipe of Roast Chicken from Jamie Oliver - and both my friend and I agreed that he (we mean his cooking) inspires our cooking in many ways. Cheers to Jamie for a lovely roast chicken that we can now make on our own!

As my little oven is too small to fit a large piece of whole chicken, I chose to buy chicken quarters instead. Works well for me... technically is a oven baked chicken, but surely tastes the same like roasted chicken... So I'm going to call it 'roasted' despite the method used is 'baking'....

:: Rosemary & Lemon Roasted Chicken ::
For 2

2 chicken quarters (thigh/drumstick part)
1/2 lemon, cut into 2 pieces
2 bay leaves
4 stalks fresh rosemary
1 large onion, quartered
3 garlic, smashed
1 potato, quartered
1 medium carrot, roughly chopped to big chunks
1 celery, roughly chopped to big chunks
6 stalks asparagus
6 medium white button mushrooms
2 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon whole black peppers
Salt & pepper

Marinate the chicken with salt & pepper and butter, completely covering the chicken. Do the same for the potatoes, carrots and celery. Clean the asparagus and mushrooms, marinate with some butter and place aside (to cook it later).

In a roasting tray (or a baking tray) lay the potatoes, carrots, celery. Place the lemon, bay leave, garlic and onions closely which will be closely beneath the chicken pieces, alongwith the fresh rosemary. So now, you will have a tray full of veges and the fresh rosemary. Place the chicken on top of this and sprinkle black peppers.

Preheat the oven (moderate-high temp) and bake the chicken for about 30 minutes, checking at intervals to ensure the chicken is baking constantly. The juice from chicken and lemon will start to accumulate in the tray, and this is lovely to just pour some over the chicken so the skin won't over burn.

After about 25 minutes, place the asparagus and mushrooms in the tray and cook for another 10 minutes. The skin would be golden brown and now, it's ready to be served!

Make some garlic bread or fry some french fries.. and serve with the chicken. The rosemary and lemon is really a good combination and it tasted very nice. The juice adds as a sauce for the chicken too. Asparagus and mushrooms just adds that extra vegetable dish, without having you to cook them separately, and thats why I throw them in with the chicken... they stay crunchy and fresh at the same time.

Roasting the whole chicken would be nice too, but the way I did it in my small oven work well for me too. Now, need F to go buy me that nice big oven we saw so I can cook for the entire family!