Mushroom Roast Chicken

If you can't bear to watch Jamie and Jimmy larking about on Friday nights with their celebrity mates, who could blame you. But ten minutes quick glance did produce one recipe worth trying, a roast chicken given oomph or in Jamie speak, 'attitude", by stuffing mushrooms under the skin. It reminded me of how you could once buy what were called 'boiling chickens' from the Polish stall holders in a covered market hall which has since burnt down. Fanny Craddock advised small flat mushrooms could be pushed under the skin of chickens like these. I used to simmer one of these old hens, with their mushroom decoration, in a broth with carrots, onions and herbs, till tender, juicy and delicious. Cheap meat cooked very slowly and providing lots of meals for very little.

This is a modern variation and much more expensive, of course. It does give you moist meat and stretches a free range bird and is good cold too. I used foil to cover it. Jamie used a special pastry cover. I was not going to waste 2 kilos of flour.

Mushroom Roast Chicken

1 free range bird
Quarter pound button mushrooms
1 tbs porcini mushrooms soaked for 10 mins in hot water - J uses more but these have a very strong flavour
1-2 garlic cloves crushed
Fresh thyme or parsley
Butter - half a packet plus a large knob, taken out of the fridge

1. Soften the chopped mushrooms in a little butter, seasoning as you go, and add the porcini ones. Keep the liquid for your gravy. Add the garlic, cook gently and then add herbs, thyme or parsley. Let this mixture cool to lukewarm.
2. Then take half a packet of butter and mash it into the mushrooms. This is best done with your hands.
3. Pull the chicken skin gently away from the breast on both sides. Then stuff the mushroom butter all the way down. Any left on your hands can be rubbed into the outside of your bird. Season it with salt and pepper then wrap in a loose package of foil
4. Roast in a hot oven, no 6/200, for one and half  hours. Check in the last ten minutes that it is cooked and peel the foil back if it needs to brown.
5. Cook any potatoes in a separate tin in the usual way, for one hour after boiling for 4 mins.
6. Make gravy in the tin once you have put the chicken on a warm dish and poured off most of the fat. Add a spoonful of flour, stir then add water or your vegetable cooking water, enough to make the right thickness. Add your mushroom water and if you've got it, a spoonful of dry sherry. This always improves gravy. Wine will do the job too. Just bubble it vigorously before serving in a warm jug.