The Great Karangi Roast Off

We often eat out - not at a restaurant but at our neighbour's house. This means we don't need to drive miles and we can have a few drinks. On Friday night we were invited to a flash dinner party with at our neighbours - with their parents, Fran and John (actually Jean-Paul - but some people don't understand that he is a boy and call him Jean).

I rejected this invitation because I was planning to cook a roast - I had defrosted the chicken earlier. Our neighbour told us to bring the chicken up the next night and we could have a roast cook-off. So I agreed and was up to for the challenge.

So the next day I prepared my roast chicken knowing that Fran was making some sort of super duper 40 garlic clove chicken.

Steve's Roast Lemon Chicken

Ingredients

1 Whole Chicken
3 Tbspns Chicken Stock Powder
2 Tbspn Honey
2 Handfuls of Almonds
1/2 cup Flat Leaf Parsley, chopped up
1/2 cup Mint, chopped up
1/4 cup dried Rosemary
8 Garlic Cloves
1/2 cup Duck Fat
1 Whole Lemon
6 Quaters of Preserved Lemon, chopped up
3/4 cup of Couscous
1/4 cup white wine
8 Potatoes, peeled and quartered
1 cup of Sherry

Clean out chicken cavity trimming off the fat. Rub some duck fat into the cavity. Mix together couscous, 1/4 of the herbs and garlic - add the white wine to make the couscous damp. Chop up a handful of the almonds and add along with 1 tspn of honey. Clean the lemon skin and squeeze the lemon against the bench - do not break the skin - this will make the juice freer in the cooking process. Cut holes in lemon using a knife. Put half the stuffing into the chicken cavity and then pop in lemon - then squeeze the rest of the stuffing into the cavity. Use roasting spears to close everything up.

Mix the some of the preserved lemon, fresh herbs, 1 tspn of honey, and a mined garlic clove. Gently push this mixture under the skin of the chicken. Then rub duck fat all over the chicken. Put in a roasting dish along with the potatoes (cover potatoes in the fat too). Cover chicken in chicken stock, almonds, rest of the rosemary, and preserved lemon. You could add salt and pepper to the top.

Roast at 250 degrees cent for 20 minutes then turn down the oven 180 degrees making sure the roast is basted. Once cooked, about 1- 1 1/2 hours remove the chicken and potatoes from the pan. Add the sherry to the pan and create gravy.

Myles and I wore a pirate hat and sailors hat to dinner. Upon arriving we let everyone know that we had been informed it was a fancy dress party - which generated a laugh. Fran made a steamed chicken with cloves of garlic - something I will have to try. You make a crust on the top to keep the steam and juices in.

At the end we all agreed it was too difficult to judge each other's recipe because they were so different.