Finally, my first whole roast chicken

Ok, that's a terrible pic., I didn't have the camera with me so I just used the camera in the laptop. Anyway forget the pic, it was a success. I followed almost everything from Jamie Oliver's recipe.

I was sceptical about having uneven cook as the chef doesn't say anything about turning the bird to the other side. And I thought cutting the bird in between the ribs (aiseh, what do you call this part?), and let it stay flat in the tin is not a good idea as the recipe asks to stuff a lemon inside the cavity. Anyway, it cooked perfectly, the flesh all juicy and soft all over. The hot fat that oozed out to the tin during cooking cooked the ribs nicely.

Anyway, since I wanted nice brown colour all over, I turned the bird so the ribs faced up for about 20 minutes. Next time I would let it stay longer that way, as I think this will let the flavour from the lemon, garlic and thyme penetrate through the breast flesh.

The chef's idea of parboling the potatoes with the garlic and lemon is just brilliant. The potatoes turned out to be very tasty that Bea1, Bea3 and Adel kept asking for them. I have never tasted potatoes that tasty, and they turned out a little sweet too. Dunno why but one of the commenters (in the website) also mentioned that.

I used 11/2 kilo bird and lower temp. at 180C, it also took 11/2 hours to cook and only used 1/2 kilo potatoes. And I didn't smear the cooked garlic flesh on the chicken as I believe the taste would be too strong for the kids.

We finished the whole bird and potatoes except for a breast for lunch. Hubby decided to have porridge for dinner, I used some of the bones to flavour it and shredded the flesh into it. Perfect!
I didn't know roasting a whole chicken can be this easy.