Thai Roasted Chicken

My poor little blog has been all alone for a little while now, neglected and forgotten. But in my defence, our internet hasn’t been working and for the last two weeks, every time I attempt to write a post, the internet crashes and my work gets lost before I have time to save… arrrgggh! So hopefully third time lucky and I manage to get a post done.

I realise that I missed thanksgiving. For my American followers, I hope you had a lovely day and ate some fabulous food and spent time with your loved ones. Happy belated thanksgiving! I did make you all a pecan pie, but alas, we ate it before I could blog it and in actual fact I wasn’t totally happy with it so when I am on maternity leave, I hope to make many pies to find the ultimate recipe to share. In fact, I hope to make many things when I am on maternity leave, cooking and writing all day long, let’s see how that goes! We will see, maybe I will have some time before baby arrives, and just maybe I’ll have one of those lovely babies that is hassle free and settles into routine quickly. Ha ha, I very much doubt it but one can dream.

But for now, I just wanted to share a recipe that we really loved and gobbled up over the course of two days.

At work one day two weeks ago, I overheard a conversation about chicken that is either cooked in buttermilk or marinated in yogurt. It got me thinking and also very hungry. So after work, I raced to the shop (in a taxi as I was just too lazy to walk the fifteen minutes to the shop from work) and picked up a few ingredients to make a Thai style roasted chicken. I decided to roast the chicken in coconut milk. I adore coconut and it’s milk and couldn’t think of anything more comforting than sitting down eating roast chicken in front of the fire and watching a film.

THAI ROASTED CHICKEN

This may not look like the prettiest plate of food, but it certainly tasted good and fed us for two nights.

• 1 whole chicken (3-4 pounds)
• 50 g butter
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 cans of coconut milk
• A lime
• Big handful of coriander
• 2 star anise
• 2 stalks of lemongrass (bruised by hitting it with the back of a knife)
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced
• 2 red chillies, pierced with a knife a few times
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon or a whole cinnamon stick
• Seasoning
• 100 g spinach
• 50 ml greek yogurt
• rice to serve

THE HOW

Heat the oven to 190C/170C fan oven.

Season the chicken on both sides. Heat the oil and butter in a heavy oven proof casserole dish and once hot, place the chicken top side down in the dish and brown. Then turn the chicken over and brown the bottom. Remove the chicken from the pot and add the cinnamon, star anise, coriander, lime, lemongrass , garlic, chillies, and coconut milk and heat. Once warm, add the chicken back into the pot.

Place the pot into the oven uncovered for 60-90 minutes. Remember to baste the chicken in the sauce (spoon the sauce over the chicken ) every 20 minutes or so.

Towards the end, start your rice cooking for it to be ready to serve with the chicken.

Once cooked, remove the chicken from the pot, with a slotted spoon, take out the lemongrass, chillies, lime, and star anise.

The sauce will already be reduced from its time in the oven, but I like to add some yogurt to it and then wilt the spinach in it. Turn the heat off.

Carve the chicken, plate your rice up, spoon some spinach over the rice, add the chicken and drizzle or ladle sauce over the dish. Now if you want to be fancy, add chopped spring onions and coriander for garnish.