Sorry I haven't posted for a while. I thought I would post recipes I regularly cook at home which are usually cheap, and don't require a lot of pre preparation. I love cooking a roast chicken for dinner. You can usually pick one up for $6-$9 in the supermarket, sometimes they have specials. You just eat veggies with it which are healthy, cheap and fresh (especially if you go to the veggie markets!) You marinate, stuff and serve it from anything you have in your fridge.
Here is the roast chicken I cooked tonight:
Ingredients:
1 whole uncooked chicken, any size (cooking times will vary)
Marinade: Anything you have lying around. I used:
Parsley (chopped finely)
Sweet paprika
Minced Garlic
Pepper and Salt
Lemon salt mix from supermarket
Dried rosemary
Marinating meat is most effective when it is left for several hours or overnight, but if you don't have time you can still rub the chicken in marinade and stick it straight in the oven. I rubbed salt and pepper into the chicken's skin (be prepared to get your hands a little dirty)then added some minced garlic and sprinkled heaps of sweet paprika over it. I bought a big sachet from and indian grocer cheap. Finally sprinkled some chopped parsley, lemon salt and a tiny bit of dried rosemary over the top. It looked like this:
Other things in my fridge I could have possibly marinated with:
A bottle of portugese chicken marinade
Dark soy sauce or oyster sauce for an asian twist on your roast chicken (you can serve with steamed bok choy)
Lemon juice
olive oil
While you're leaving your chicken to marinate, get started on some stuffing. If you don't have time, no need for stuffing. I made one from the way my fiance suggested, similar to how they do it in egypt. If you can't be bothered making a big stuffing, try mixing breadcrumbs, olive oil, garlic and parsley (and any other seasoning you choose).
For the stuffing:
1 cup of rice
1/2 cup of pearl barley (You can leave this out if you don't have it)
quarter of an onion
2 table spoons of butter or margarine
drizzle of olive oil
salt, pepper garlic to taste
1 cup of chicken stock
chopped parsley
Chop the onion and fry it gently with some garlic, butter and olive oil.
Then I stirred in about 1 cup of rice and about half a cup of pearl barley, and coated it in the buttery onion mixture. This is pretty much how you start making a risotto.
Add a cup of chicken stock and stir in some salt, pepper and parsley.
Add another cup of water and let it cook through (You may need to add more water)
Here was the end result:
Stuff it in the chicken and preheat the oven to about 250c. Pop the chicken on a tray with some vegetables. Carrots don't take as long to cook as potatoes or slices of pumpkin, so add them after about half an hour of cooking.
You may wish to brunsh your vegetables with olive oil, salt or pepper. Its up to personal taste and how long you have. Sometimes I like to put half a cup of water on the roasting dish to keep the veggies moist. Again up to you.
Bake for between 1 hour and 90 minutes. This depends on the size of the chicken. You don't want to dry it out but raw chicken is dangerous and gross. Poke the chicken with a knife, if the juices run clear (not pinky red) then the chicken should be cooked.
I drizzled some lemon juice on it and served it with some cauliflower cheese and roast carrots. The fiance made a salad to put with it. I did a similar thing a few weeks back but I had mostly Mediterranean vegies in the fridge so I sauted some capsicum and zuchinni to go with.
The best bit is I can use left over chicken for chicken, tomato and cheese toasties tomorrow and possibly the rest of it to make a good chicken stock. Yummo!
