Take Five!

 

Not just an excuse for a great piece of music from Dave Brubeck - but a sideways nod to the new Jamie Oliver programme on Channel 4. I have concluded JO is a bit 'Marmite' - you either get on with him...or you don't. This current series works on the premise that each recipe just has 5 ingredients [and there is also a list of a few store cupboard staples - oil, vinegar, salt and pepper] Some of his tricks are quite clever. I did the Chicken Tikka at the start of the week. 

The recipe says it serves 4. We ate it Monday, and I plated up and froze 2 more dinners for a Friday night. I also stripped off the remaining meat from the carcase and made a stock. The remainder of the cauliflower [I couldn't find one only weighing 600 grams for the recipe] plus some cubed spuds, and most of the rest of the meat made a sort of hash [Wednesday] With a few leftover potatoes, I cooked up the stock and a few chicken scraps, liquidised that to make soup [Thursday]

OK, it's a bit repetitive - but we really did enjoy the meal and using the jarred Tikka Paste saved a lot of time.

Ingredients

800 g potatoes

1 small head of cauliflower (600g)

1 bunch of fresh coriander (30g)

1 x 1.2 kg whole free-range chicken

2 tablespoons tikka curry paste

Method

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/350ºF/gas 4. Wash the potatoes and chop into 3cm chunks. Trim the cauli stalk, remove any tough outer leaves, then chop the cauli and nice leaves the same size as the spuds. Finely slice the coriander stalks (reserving the leaves in a bowl of cold water). In a 30cm x 40cm roasting tray, toss the veg and coriander stalks with a pinch of sea salt and black pepper, and 1 tablespoon each of olive oil and red wine vinegar.

Sit the chicken in the tray and rub all over with the tikka paste, getting into all the nooks and crannies. Place the chicken directly on the bars of the oven, scrunch everything in the tray and place exactly underneath the chicken to catch the tasty juices. Roast for 1 hour, or until everything is golden and cooked through, turning the veg halfway. Sit the chicken on top of the veg to rest for 5 minutes, then sprinkle over the drained coriander leaves and serve, tossing the veg in all the tasty juices before dishing up.

 

I have always used Patak's Tikka Paste in the past, but just discovered that Sainsburys do their own [cheaper] version which is also very good. It is important to buy the paste not the sauce though! Sorry - the photo above is the one from Jamie's website- we staring eating ours before I remembered to photograph it! I picked up a large enamel dish like this for £1 at a boot fair in Norfolk over the summer, and it is getting a lot of use!