Chicken in Milk - By Jamie Oliver

One of my things I like to do is search the web for new, unusual and delicious sounding recipes to try and test. On this one particular day I had a whole roast chicken to cook. Usually I would make either a pot roast or your standard roast chicken, bang it in the oven and done, but on this day I felt creative. I had heard along the grapevine many fabulous reviews about Jamie Oliver's 'Chicken in Milk' recipe and decided to give it a go. The initial thought of chicken cooked in milk didn't sound all that appealing, It sounded soggy, curdly (if that's even a word) and quite frankly ... disgusting.

How wrong I was, the pictures alone of Chicken in milk looked delicious. The ingredients sounded like a perfect match and the thought of meat falling off the bone when serving made my mouth water. I could already taste it, now it was time to prep and make it. Some effort is required with this dish but it won't disappoint. The sauce alone is so taste tantalising that it will leave you wanting more. I served this on a bed of potato and parsnip mash, roasted root vegetables and greens. 

I would love to make this dish in winter when we have our friends over for dinner with hopefully some of the veggie that I have grown from our new patch. Fingers crossed. Until then, happy eating.

CHICKEN IN MILK - BY JAMIE OLIVER

Ingredients.

1 Whole Roast Chicken
500 ml Milk
10 Cloves of Garlic
1/2 Cinnamon Stick
1/3 Cup Fresh Sage Leaves
Zest of two Lemons
Olive Oil
Salt
Black Pepper



Method.

Step 1.
Pre heat your oven to 190C and find yourself a big enough oven proof pot to cook your chicken in I use my cast iron casserole dish).
Season your chook with enough salt and pepper to coat generously and fry it on the stove on a med - high heat with enough oil to coat and brown the chook evenly on all sides. Once browned remove the chicken from the pot and place on a plate and discard the oil only from the pot - leave all the sticky bits on the bottom, it adds to the flavour.

Step 2.
Put your chicken back into the pot with the rest of the ingredients and place in the oven to cook for 90 mins and baste when you remember to. Now, I place the lid on my pot for the first hour then leave uncovered int he oven for the last 30 mins. I found this intensified the flavour more and made the chicken more juice and tender and delicious.

The lemon zest will make the milk curdle a little and it's supposed to do that so don't fret, it adds more texture and deliciousness to the dish. When serving you can either put the chicken apart and shred it onto the plate or break up the chook into sections and serve. I served it broken  into pieces to bulk up our plates a bit.

Enjoy and I hope you find it as ah-may-zing as I did.

B x