63: A chicken roasted with new garlic and a fresh pea pilau to go with it, p184

Yuuuuuum. Can't beat a roast chicken. Especially not on a weeknight, what a treat! I had the cunning idea of chopping the legs/wings off and freezing them to use another day for other recipes, since it was only me and T for dinner - and having the added advantage of meaning the chicken cooked quicker too, about an hour plus 30mins resting. Perfick! Who says a roast is a faff and takes loads of time?

This was a very easy, quick way of roasting the bird, very similar to how I normally do it (upside down to start with, stops the breast meat drying out, and then right way up for last 30mins or so to crisp up on top), but rubbed with oil instead of butter as I usually use. Really super tasty, crisp skin - not sure that's a good thing though, as it means I eat more of it...

The new (green) garlic was amazing. Bit of a faff to parboil it first, and it ended up burning in the pan around the chicken anyway - not sure what I did wrong there, but it was a shame, and meant there wasn't much squidging of soft roasted garlic to be done, but it did manage to massively infuse the chicken and the gravy with incredible garlickiness. Yum! The gravy was amazing - mostly alcohol, and what wasn't alcohol was garlic :) Good times.

The pea pilau was a mini cheat... instead of fresh peas (in May?? Yes, I should be trying to be more seasonal... this recipe is from June in the book...) I used Bird's Eye's finest... but they were petit pois! And they are peas. Honestly, does it really matter that much? Hmm. Maybe it does? Ho hum. Ignorance is bliss. And the pilau was a different, but very good, accompaniment to the chicken. And the gravy. Mmm. Did I mention how good the gravy was?