Roast Chicken, Stuffed Potatoes and Vegetables (by G)

Well, I was going to make an effort today with a whole chicken but I didn't really feel like doing anything too complex when it came down it - instead I just roasted it, which turned out to be quite a fuck around anyway... mostly because I was inattentive.

I read the directions on the chicken packet and it said to roast the chicken for 25 - 30 minutes, I don't trust packet directions so I decided to roast it for 45 minutes. When it was almost too late I re-read the directions and discovered that you are supposed to roast for 25 - 30 minutes per 500g, my chicken was 3.4 x 500g so dinner was already running late. I rubbed the chicken skin with butter, sprinkled on some salt and pestle ground dry rosemary, put it on a bed of onion and garlic then bunged it in the oven along with a couple of whole potatoes. Half way through the cooking I added some jelly chicken stock to the pan for gravy.

As the potatoes were coming up to doneness I simmered some onions and chopped ham in butter, added some of the roasted garlic from the pan. When the potatoes were done I scooped out the flesh, mixed through the onion and ham mix and some parmesan cheese then stuffed it all back in the potatoes and put them back in the oven.

I read recently that David Chang believes the vegetables should be cooked in juice of the same vegetable for flavour reasons. I couldn't find any carrot juice so I bough a tin of baby carrots, blended them then cooked some baby carrots in that liquid. The carrots turned out a lot like tinned baby carrots, but not as good. I also steamed some snow peas as the carrots were cooking.

The gravy was a mix of pan juices thickened with a butter/flour rue.

I know the chicken portion shown looks a little stingy - I left the bone-in portions to cook a little longer so as not to kill us.