Roast chicken, garlic and potatoes in the pan with watercress, cashel blue and walnut butter
This is one of the easiest suppers I cook and oneof my favourite weeknight meals. Sometimes I add mushrooms, Jerusalemartichokes (scrub them well and halve them lengthways), or wedges of onion. Theimportant thing is to make sure there is room for everything in the pan you areusing, as you need the chicken to lie in a single layer so that it becomesbrown and crispy, it shouldn’t ‘sweat’.You don’t have to useCashel Blue cheese – I just really like it – you could use Gorgonzola oranother blue. And of course other flavoured butters – thyme and Parmesan,mustard, or chilli and coriander – would be good, too.
Ingredients
FOR THE CHICKEN
- 550 g 1lb 4oz waxy baby potatoes (no need to peel)
- 8 mixed skin-on bone-in chicken joints or thighs
- 2 bulbs of garlic separated into cloves but not peeled
- salt and pepper
- 6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- sea salt flakes
FOR THE BUTTER
- 75 g 2¾oz unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 25 g scant 1oz finely chopped watercress leaves
- 40 g 1½oz Cashel blue cheese, crumbled
- 25 g scant 1oz walnuts, roughly chopped
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F/gas mark 6.
- Halve the potatoes unless they are really small.
- Trim the chicken joints of any scraggy bits of skin or fat to make them neat.
- Put the potatoes and the garlic into a big shallow ovenproof dish (I use a shallow cast-iron pan that measures 30cm/12in across).
- It has to be big enough to take the chicken in a single layer; you don’t want the joints to be piled on top of each other or they won’t crisp and brown properly.
- Add the joints, season and pour over the oil and balsamic.
- Toss with your hands to coat everything in a little oil then arrange so the chicken pieces are lying skin side up.
- Season the chicken with sea salt so that it crisps the skin and roast for 40–45 minutes in the hot oven.
- You need to move the potatoes around a little halfway through cooking, so they don’t get more colour on one side than the other.
Meanwhile, prepare the butter.
- Either pound the butter in a mortar and pestle, or beat in a small bowl with a wooden spoon, with all the other ingredients.
- Once everything is mixed together, put it in the fridge to firm up, then mold it into a sausage shape, wrap in cling film or greaseproof paper and return it to the fridge until you need it.
- Serve the chicken and potatoes in the dish in which they were cooked with rounds of the butter melting over the top.
- A green salad or roast onions would be good on the side.
- And actually pickled pears (or pear chutney) are rather good with this, too.
