Five spice roast chicken

Sunday has become roast chicken day for us when we sit down to a very phoren dinner complete with knife and fork and feast on roasted vegetables and chicken (instead of wiping my plate clean with my fingers, trying to get the last taste of eromba or kangsoi or yen thongba off the plate – Baba hates me doing it, i mean, wiping my plate with my fingers and licking them but i cannot help it no matter how much uncouth it makes me look – but then, i am happily uncouth so sue me.)

Long, long, long ago i bought a packet of five spice powder from the local Asian grocery shop i love browsing in till my husband is forced to drag me away like a recalcitrant kid. i have used it once or twice and left it to its own device in the spice box.

But i got tired of the same old roast chicken seasoned with rosemary and other such stuff. i wanted to try something new and so i thought i could try using five spice and found recipes on the net. After an afternoon of scrutinising recipes, i managed to get all mixed up and ended up with my version of it. It was good, the meat was flavoured and moist. Though, the next time around i will crank up the heat at the end for crispier skin – i am so beginning to like chicken skin now.

The recipe calls for marinating the chicken for at least 12 hours so it would do well to do it the night before.

Five spice roast chicken

Things you need:

1 whole chicken with skin on – about 1.5 kg

2 capsicums – stalks removed and halved

4-5 potatoes – scrubbed with skin on

5-6 baby carrots

5-6 shallots

1 whole head of garlic

A quarter of a lemon

2 tablespoon dark soy sauce

2 teaspoons five spice powder

2 teaspoons brown sugar

1 tablespoon oil

Salt

Ground pepper

The method:

Lovingly, wash the chicken and pat dry with kitchen towel. Mix the five spice, soy sauce, brown sugar and oil and stir well to mix. Massage the chicken with this mixture, making sure you get plenty under the skin and inside the cavity. i added a little bit of salt as well but soy sauce is salty so watch out. Let the chicken soak in the goodness for about 12 hours or overnight.

After 12 hours:

Preheat the oven to 200 degree centigrades. Stuff the cavity of the chicken with some cloves of garlic, 2-3 shallots and the lemon. Truss the bird well. Put the chicken on the dripping tray over the roasting pan and roast for 30 minutes or so to let the juices drip. Now remove it from the dripping tray and put in on the roasting tray and arrange the vegetables around it. Do the vegetable the favour of anointing them with oil and salt and pepper before that.

Return the tray to the oven and bake for another hour or so although the time will depend on the size of your bird. Check occasionally and baste the chicken with the juice to prevent it from drying out. The chicken is done when the juice runs clear.

Cover the chicken in foil and let it rest for 15 minutes before carving and serving. The juice in the pan can be thickened along with red wine to make au jus (French for with its own juice) – something i have never bothered doing but will, someday.

P.S. My husband informed me as we ate the leftover that he preferred the other roast with rosemary, that the five spice did not go well with the roast.  i was not very pleased because i like this one. Wasn’t it very clever of him to tell me this the day after rather than the night i served it?