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Roast chicken quarters with chorizo stuffing

I’m a big fan of the sorts of stuffing you can push into pockets underneath the skin of a chicken, leaving the skin to crisp up beautifully over the savoury filling. Stuffings like these should be fatty enough to baste the chicken from beneath the skin, leaving the meat moist and juicy; flavoursome enough to give their character to every bite of the meal; and reasonably dense, so they don’t swell and leak out of the sides of the skin when you cook them. This one’s an absolute doozy.

I’ve used chicken quarters here rather than a whole chicken – they cook a little faster, you’ll get more nice nibbly crispy bits, and it’s a bit easier to distribute the stuffing evenly this way. To serve four (or in our case two, with some left over for sandwiches), you’ll need:

4 chicken quarters
125g chorizo (use half of one of those dry looped sausages, and choose a good-quality one)
75g fresh white breadcrumbs
Juice and zest of ½ lemon
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1½ teaspoons fennel seeds
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 220°C (420°F).

If you don’t have any breadcrumbs in the freezer (I usually pop the stale ends of any white loaves in the Magimix and whizz them into crumbs, then freeze them – it means there’s usually a decent supply of breadcrumbs kicking around if I need them), blitz them in the food processor before you deal with the other ingredients.

Put the chorizo in the food processor bowl and reduce it to a rubbly texture, like fine gravel. (You’re aiming for little chunks, not paste.) In a separate bowl, use a spoon to mix the chorizo rubble with the crumbs, the juice and zest of half a lemon and the coriander and fennel seeds, which you will have ground up roughly in a mortar and pestle.

Use your fingers to poke little pockets under the skin of the chicken quarters, and push a quarter of the stuffing mixture into each pocket, pressing so it is firmly packed. Season each chicken piece on both sides with salt and pepper. Heat some olive oil in a large frying pan and brown the stuffed chicken quarters, skin side down, for 5-7 minutes, until the skin is taking on some colour.

Transfer the chicken pieces, skin side up, into a large baking dish. You don’t need to add any more oil – there’s plenty in the chorizo. Roast at 220°C (420°F) for 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to 180°C (355°F) for half an hour. Rest the chicken pieces for a few minutes before serving. We ate this with some halloumi sautéed with red peppers and sweet onions, and some rice, the savoury chicken juices spooned over.

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Crispy Thai lime chicken with fresh chilli sauce

I am currently all a-tizz about kaffir lime leaves. They’re hard to find out here in the sodden fen; not all oriental grocers stock the fresh leaves (which are very pretty and look like a pair of leaves growing on the same central rib). When I have spotted them in shops, they have often been a bit elderly, and not as aromatic as you’ll want them to be for cooking. Happily, you’ll find them shredded and frozen in some supermarket freezer cabinets; there are currently a couple of packs in my freezer at home. They have a wonderful citrus fragrance, almost as if you were sniffing fresh lime zest through an olfactory magnifying glass. (The zest of a kaffir lime is astonishingly good stuff, but sadly I’ve only seen the fruit for sale in Malaysia, which isn’t much help for UK home cooks.)

In most cooking, we use kaffir lime leaves in a similar way to bay leaves – as an aromatic to be infused in a wet mixture like a curry, then discarded before eating. The shredded leaves gave me an idea, though – how about using them to make a crispy crust with panko breadcrumbs for a neutral-tasting meat like chicken? Paired up with a fresh Thai chilli and ginger sauce, this turns out to be exactly how summer eating should be.

I’ve butterflied the chicken breasts and beaten them flat with a rolling pin to give them a bigger crispy surface area; this also helps them to cook really fast, preserving all the lovely lime flavour. I would like to believe that one per person is a sensible helping, but these were so good we ended up eating two each. To make four breaded, butterflied chicken breasts, you’ll need:

Chicken
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
4 heaped tablespoons flour
1 egg
8 heaped tablespoons panko breadcrumbs (if you can’t find Japanese panko crumbs, just use slices of white bread and whizz them to shrapnel in the food processor. Panko has a brilliant crispiness, though, and is worth seeking out.)
4 tablespoons shredded kaffir lime leaves (frozen or fresh – don’t get the dried ones, which will leave you feeling as if you are cooking with cardboard)
Peanut oil or a flavourless oil for frying

Fresh Thai chilli sauce
1 piece of ginger the length of your thumb
Juice of 2 limes
4 fat, juicy cloves garlic
½ stalk of peeled lemongrass
2 birds eye chillies (reduce amount if you don’t like your sauce too hot)
4 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
4 tablespoons palm sugar (most supermarkets seem to be stocking this now) or soft light brown sugar
1 small handful mint

It’s easiest to make the sauce before you start on the chicken, which will need your attention for the very short time you’ll be cooking it. Just put all the sauce ingredients except the mint in a mortar and pestle or (easier) a food processor or liquidiser, and process until you’ve a slightly chunky, wet sauce. Unlike commercial sauces, it won’t be red – but it’s none the worse for that. Chop the mint and sprinkle it over the sauce.

Start work on the chicken by butterflying your chicken breasts. This is far easier than you may have been expecting – just lay them flat, push a small, sharp knife into the thicker side of the chicken breast and make a horizontal cut almost all the way through to the other side. You should be able to open your chicken breast out like a book, with the fatter edge of the breast acting as the book’s spine. Place the butterflied chicken breast between two pieces of cling film on a chopping board (the cling film stops them from sticking) and wallop the hell out of them with your rolling pin, until the chicken is a thin, even escalope, about half a centimetre thick. Don’t worry about raggedy edges – the breading you’re about to apply is amazingly forgiving.

Put the flour, seasoned with some salt and pepper, in one bowl, the beaten egg in a second and the crumbs, mixed well with the lime leaves, in a third. Dip the chicken in the flour, then the egg, then the crumbs, making sure it’s coated well at every stage. Fry over a high heat for 2-3 minutes per side, until the crumbs are golden and crisp, and serve with the sauce, a salad or some stir-fried veg, and your choice of rice or noodles.

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Chicken with smoked oyster stuffing

I was meant to be going to New Orleans early next month, but unfortunately that trip’s been postponed until next year (chiz chiz chiz). I’m meant to be writing about the place, and about its unique food culture; New Orleans is the least American of American cities, and has a cuisine unlike anything else you’ll find in the US. That cuisine is influenced by the fertile land and sea surrounding the city, and also by the mix of cultures and ethnicities that called the city home – African, French, Acadian (or Cajun) and Creole flavours coming together to create something you simply won’t find elsewhere.

To console myself over my postponed trip, I decided to invent a chicken stuffing along the lines of something you might see in Louisiana (if you squint a bit). This stuffing is gorgeous – it employs the so-called “holy trinity” of green bell peppers, celery and onion as a base, with garlicky, cheesy bread croutons which retain their crunch through the cooking, some typical Louisiana spicing, and a little tin of smoked oysters, chopped finely, to give the whole dish a warm, smoky background. You may think you don’t like smoked oysters – they look pretty unprepossessing, and they can taste a bit strong when used on toast or as canapés – but in this dish they just give the stuffing and the meat of the bird a wonderfully rich, umami smokiness. Surprisingly (totally) un-fishy. The recipe will make enough to stuff a 1.5kg bird and to prepare a separate tray of the stuffing to serve with the meal – you’ll want a separate tray, because it’s totally delicious.

To serve 4 (with some leftovers for sandwiches tomorrow, if you’re lucky), you’ll need:

1 plump chicken, weighing around 1.5kg (use a larger bird if you like – there will be enough stuffing, but you’ll need to adjust the cooking time)
½ loaf white bread (unsliced)
4 grated cloves garlic
20g grated parmesan
4 tablespoons olive oil
3 medium onions
1 green pepper
2 sticks celery
1 large knob butter
2 teaspoons paprika
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, ground
1 teaspoon cumin seeds, ground
1 teaspoon ground chipotle peppers (use cayenne pepper if you can’t find chipotles)
1 large handful (25g) parsley
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 small tin smoked oysters
3 tablespoons light soy sauce
Salt and pepper

Take the chicken out of the fridge a couple of hours before cooking to allow it to come to room temperature. Dry the skin well and snip any fat you find inside the cavity out of the bird – either discard it or render it down in a dry frying pan to make schmaltz to use for another recipe. Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F) for the croutons.

Remove the crusts from the bread and chop the white part into cubes about 2cm on each side (a large-ish crouton is nice here, the outside turning crisp and the inside retaining a bit of squashiness). Arrange the croutons on a baking sheet – they should cover the bottom in one layer. If you find you have more space, chop a few more croutons out of the remains of the loaf. Grate the garlic into the olive oil, mix well and drizzle over the croutons. Toss them well in the oil so every side is covered with the garlicky mixture, then sprinkle over the parmesan and toss again. Bake in the hot oven for ten minutes until golden, but start checking after eight minutes – these are quite easy to burn. Turn the oven temperature up to 230°C (450° F) and set the finished croutons aside.

You can start on the other stuffing ingredients while the croutons are cooking. Chop the celery, onions and pepper finely and fry off in a generous knob of butter with the spices, keeping everything in the frying pan on the move, until the onions are turning golden, as in the picture. Remove the contents of the pan to a large mixing bowl, and add the chopped parsley, the juice and zest of the lemon, the drained and finely chopped oysters and the soy sauce. Fold the croutons into this mixture and taste it for seasoning – you may not find you need any salt, but a generous amount of pepper is good here. Stuff the chicken with the mixture, using toothpicks to hold the flaps of skin at the end of the chicken closed. There will be plenty of stuffing left over; put it in a small baking dish and keep to one side until the end of the chicken’s cooking time.

Rub the chicken with plenty of salt and roast it, covered with a piece of tin foil, for 1 hour and 20 minutes, removing the foil and adding the stuffing dish for the last 15 minutes. Prick the chicken at the fattest part of its thigh at the end of the cooking time to check it’s done – the juices should run clear. If they are pink, get the stuffing tray out of the oven and keep it in a warm place, and give the chicken another 10 minutes in the oven, repeating the prick test at the end of this time. Make gravy from the pan juices and a splash of stock and white wine if you fancy some lubrication, and scatter the chicken and stuffing with fresh herbs of your choice – I used some Cypriot basil and some parsley. The stuffing and chicken are fantastic with a tart salad, sautéed potatoes and lemon wedges.

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Gai Yang – Lao Barbecue Chicken

I hope you read through the spatchcocking instructions yesterday (my spellchecker doesn’t recognise ‘spatchcocking’, and suggests I use ‘knocking shop’ instead – honestly). If you didn’t, have a quick look, then come back here. This recipe will have you marinating a whole bird in some extravagantly delicious paste full of lemongrass, chilli and coriander, then grilling it over hot charcoal. It’s my version of a recipe that’s originally from Laos. When I lived in Paris, most weekends found me face-down in a plate of sticky rice, Ping Gai (the Laotian term for what the Thais and subsequently the Brits call Gai Yang) and Laotian wind-dried beef at Lao Lanxang (105, Avenue Ivry, 75013 Paris). This is a handsome treatment of a chicken, aromatic, sweet and smoky from the grill.

The recipe is also found in the Issan province of Thailand, and has now been subsumed into the melting pot of Thai food, so it’s in Thai restaurants that you’re most likely to find it in the UK – but if you’re intrigued by food from Laos (and you should be – it is fascinating and delicious), read Natacha du Pont de Bie’s Ant Egg Soup, a foodie backpacking travelogue with a handful of recipes at the end of each chapter that takes you all over the little country, sampling marvels like silkworm grubs, river algae and bottled chicken. The book seems to be out of print now, but there are plenty of copies available second-hand at Amazon.

To marinate a whole spatchcocked chicken (enough to serve four with rice), you’ll need:

1 stick lemongrass
5 green chillies
4 fat, juicy cloves garlic
1 large handful fresh coriander, with stems
1 in ginger, grated
1 tablespoon turmeric
4 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 ½ tablespoons soft brown sugar

Chop the lemongrass, chillies, garlic and coriander coarsely, and put them in a pestle and mortar. Bash and squash until you have a rough, emerald-coloured paste, as in this picture. (Don’t worry about squishing everything until it’s completely smooth – you are aiming to break the cell walls to make an aromatic paste, and this sort of texture will be fine.)

Transfer the green paste to a large bowl, big enough to fit your chicken in, and add the other ingredients. Stir well to combine all the ingredients, and slip the chicken into the bowl, turning and spooning so it’s well covered with the sauce. Refrigerate, covered, for 24 hours, turning occasionally in the marinade.

When you are ready to barbecue the chicken, bring your charcoal up to temperature and set the grill high above it. Ideally, the chicken should cook relatively slowly, to prevent the delicious skin from charring too much. The spatchcocked chicken will lie flat, which helps it cook evenly. Stand over your chicken as it grills, turning it every couple of minutes (again, this will help to avoid the skin from turning too black), and basting each time you flip the chicken over with the remaining marinade from the bowl. After 20 minutes, poke a skewer into the fattest part of the chicken at the thigh. If the juices run clear, you’re done – transfer the chicken to a plate to serve. If the juices are still pink, give the chicken another five minutes and repeat the test until you’re satisfied it’s cooked.

Serve with rice and some grilled corn cobs, drizzled with lime juice.

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How to spatchcock a chicken

We’ve been promised something called a ‘barbecue summer’ by the Met Office this year, so I thought I’d go with the flow and bombard you with some barbecue recipes – I’m a big fan of charcoal. There’s a recipe for a whole barbecued Thai chicken coming up tomorrow (here it is), but before you cook it, you’ll need to learn how to spatchcock the bird (removing its breastbone and backbone) so that it’ll lie flat on the grill to cook evenly. It’s much easier than you’d think, and all you’ll need is a pair of stout kitchen scissors (or, better, poultry shears) and a sharp knife – here’s how you do it.


Start by putting the bird back-side up, feeling for the spine of the chicken and cutting with the shears or scissors immediately to the right of it, all the way along the bird. Snip through the ribs as you go – they’re not very tough.


Repeat to the left of the spine and lift out the whole backbone. Don’t chuck it out – pop it in a saucepan with the other bits you’re going to be removing from the bird, and make stock.


Pull the legs apart and look into the cavity of the chicken. You’ll see the arrow-shaped breast bone (the bit my knife is pointing at in this picture). Slip your knife all the way around it, loosening it from the surrounding flesh.

Pull the breastbone out of the bird (the whole thing – it widens and goes all the way to the end of the chicken). You might need your scissors again to release it from the breastmeat.


And you’re done. Your finished chicken will be lovely and rubbery and foldy, ideal for marinating and grilling. Pop back tomorrow for marinade and cooking instructions.

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Chinese chicken with cashew nuts

I’ve lost the magic USB string for my camera. No matter – I did take some pictures of this recipe, and will put them up as soon as my magic string makes an appearance. In the meantime, here is a placeholder botanical print of a cashew nut borrowed from Wikipedia.

Chicken with cashew nuts pops up on Chinese restaurant and takeaway menus the world over, all with slightly different saucing and attitudes to things like batter and breading. Where I come from, we neither batter nor bread our chicken in this preparation, but if you can’t bear missing out on the missing cholesterol, feel free to bread/batter and deep-fry your marinaded chicken before you add it to the stir-fried sauce and vegetables.

The sauce here is made up from hoi sin with smaller amounts of chilli bean and black bean sauces – all from jars, and all from your local Chinese supermarket. If you don’t have access to these ingredients locally, try the excellent Wai Yee Hong, whom I’ve found to be superbly reliable and well-stocked over the last year or so. Unsalted cashews are no longer very hard to come by – most supermarkets will stock them in their whole foods section. It’s very important that you don’t use salted cashews here; all the above sauces, and the soy sauce in this recipe, are pretty salty, and salted cashews will be overpowering.

To serve four, you’ll need:

800g chicken breast, chopped (some Chinese people prefer dark meat, but breast is commoner in restaurants)
2 glasses Chinese rice wine
4 tablespoons light soy sauce
4 teaspoons cornflour
4 teaspoons sesame oil
150g unsalted cashews
4 fat cloves garlic
10 spring onions (scallions)
2 sweet peppers (I used one yellow and one orange)
2 teaspoons chilli bean sauce
2 teaspoons black bean sauce
2 tablespoons hoi sin sauce
2 birds eye chillies
Ground nut oil for stir-frying
Water

Start by preparing all the ingredients for stir frying. Marinade the chicken pieces in 1 glass Chinese rice wine, 2 teaspoons cornflour, 2 tablespoons light soy and 2 teaspoons sesame oil for half an hour while you chop the garlic finely, dice the peppers and chop the spring onions on the diagonal into chunky pieces. In a hot frying pan without oil, toast the cashews for a few minutes, keeping them on the move with a spatula, until they are browning nicely but not burned.

Heat the ground nut oil in a wok until it begins to smoke. Stir fry the garlic for a few seconds, then tip in the chicken and its marinade, and stir fry until the chicken is half cooked through. Add the spring onions and peppers, and continue to stir fry until the chicken is cooked and the vegetables are softer. Add the hoi sin, chilli bean and black bean sauces, stir well and then add the remaining glass of rice wine. Simmer the chicken and vegetables in the sauce and add two teaspoons of cornflour made into a paste with a little cold water to thicken the sauce. Cook for another minute, stir through the cashew nuts and two teaspoons of sesame oil, and serve immediately. Totally delicious and – dare I say it – probably nicer than what’s on offer at your local take-out.

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Star anise chicken wings

I’ve been trying very hard to find a silver lining in this economic collapse. The best I’ve been able to manage is in the fact that supermarkets are suddenly stocking more of the cheaper cuts of meat – and those cheaper, nubbly cuts, like pork belly and hock or breast of lamb, are great. They’re often fattier, tastier and altogether more fun to cook with than the clean, boneless slabs of muscle supermarkets usually fall back on.

Chicken wings are among my favourite of the nubbly bits – all that lovely, crisp skin, and the sweet little nuggets of meat, full of flavour from nestling up against the wing bone. The nice chaps at SealSaver (keep this up, fellas, and you’ll become my very best friends) have recently sent me a couple of new SealSaver vacuum canisters, which, besides increasing the storage life of foods make marinading an absolute breeze. Stick the meat and marinade mixture in a Sealsaver, pump the air out, and some magical process occurs, making the meat marinate in a fraction of the usual time. If you don’t have a SealSaver (and you should – they make life in the kitchen very easy), marinate these wings for 24 hours in the fridge. In the SealSaver, they only needed two hours – brilliant.

To make 16 wings (enough for two as a main course or four as a starter) you’ll need:

16 chicken wings, tips removed
5 tablespoons dark soy sauce
8 tablespoons light soy sauce
2 tablespoons molasses
8 tablespoons Chinese cooking wine or dry sherry
3 heaped tablespoons soft dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons sesame oil
8 star anise, 4 kept whole, 4 bashed to rubble in a mortar and pestle
Spring onion to garnish

Prick the chicken wings all over with a fork. Mix all the ingredients except the chicken wings and spring onion in a bowl, and combine the marinade with the chicken wings. If you’re using a SealSaver, marinate, refrigerated, for two hours – otherwise, marinate in the fridge for 24 hours.

Remove the wings, reserving the marinade. Bring the marinade to a low boil for two minutes. Grill the wings (use the barbecue if you possibly can – the only reason I didn’t was that it was snowing) over a slow heat for about 15-18 minutes, basting regularly with the cooked marinade and turning regularly until they are mahogany brown and crisp. Serve with more of the hot sauce and sprinkle with spring onion.

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Garlic butter roast chicken

I’m back in Portland for the week (and I’m spending the next few weeks in the US too, so look forward to some restaurant reviews). I’ve a couple of recipes from last week to post, and in the meantime I am applying myself assiduously to Portland’s fantastic cafés, in order that I can supply those of you who visit the city with a good round-up of places to pootle around in an intellectual fashion, getting caffeinated and taking advantage of free wireless internet.

Anyway. The chicken. This is a chicken flash-cooked at a very high temperature with a garlic butter under the skin. This technique results in a moist, juicy bird which you don’t need to baste or turn, and a gorgeously crisp, garlicky skin. The pan juices are fantastic for making a gravy with, but they’re also delicious just drizzled over the carved chicken as they are.

The cooking time below will be good for a bird weighing about 1.5kg (3lb) – enough to serve three or four people. To roast one chicken, you’ll need:

1 chicken weighing about 1.5kg
5 large, juicy cloves of garlic
Zest of 1 lemon
125 g softened salted butter
2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 230°C (450° F). Crush the garlic (I used something called a Garlic Card – a little grating device the size of a credit card which my mother-in-law Santa gave me for Christmas), zest the lemon and chop the parsley, and blend them with the butter using the back of a fork.

Starting at the neck of the chicken, use your fingers to loosen the skin from the breast. You should be able to separate it from the flesh by pushing with your fingertips until you’ve made a pocket that covers the whole breast. Take the softened garlic butter mixture and push it into the pocket you’ve made, making sure it covers the breast evenly. Reserve two teaspoons of the butter, and push them into the space between the bird’s legs and body. Salt the outside of the bird generously and drizzle it with olive oil.

Put the chicken on a baking tray high in the hot oven, and roast for one hour. Check that the chicken is cooked by pushing a skewer into the fattest part of the bird, just behind the thigh. The juices should run clear; if they are still pinkish (which is highly unlikely), roast for another ten minutes and repeat the test.

Rest the bird for ten minutes before carving. I served this with Pommes Sarladaise, a wonderful garlicky French potato dish – watch this space for the recipe!

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Basque chicken

I seem to get through an awful lot of bell peppers at this time of year, when sunshine is a dim and distant memory. This dish is a rich and glossy version of the traditional Poulet Basquaise, where the sweetness of the peppers works deliciously against tiny pieces of salt pork and the savoury chicken.

I got hold of a strip of salt pork from the Polish deli in Newmarket. (Just off Fred Archer Way, by the short-stay carpark on Wellington St.) A lot of towns, especially here in East Anglia, now have Polish stores selling some really fantastic preserved meats like smoked sausages and fat salt pork. I’ve also been using our local one to stock up on soused herrings, some great pickles and the holy grail – cartons of cherry juice. If you have a Polish shop near you, go in at the weekend and have a rummage; you’ll find some really interesting ingredients and, if you’re lucky, will discover a new addiction to that cherry juice.

Salt pork is much fattier than English bacon, and it’s not smoked. Stock up if you find some; it keeps for months in the fridge. There should be more fat in a slice than meat. Here, I’ve rendered it down into crisp little nuggets, and have used the rich rendered fat to brown the chicken and soften the vegetables in this dish. If you can’t find salt pork where you are, fatty pancetta or even fatty bacon lardons will do the job nicely. To serve four, you’ll need:

100g salt pork
4 large chicken breasts
½ teaspoon caster sugar
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons paprika
1 teaspoon fennel
3 bayleaves
1 teaspoon dried pimento chillies
2 red peppers
2 green peppers
1 yellow pepper
4 cloves garlic
1 banana shallot
1 medium onion
4 stalks celery
2 glasses wine
2 glasses chicken stock
500g passata
1 tablespoon tomato purée
2 tablespoons crème fraîche
Salt and pepper
Parsley to garnish

Slice the peppers into strips, and put them aside in a bowl. Put the diced shallot and onion and diced celery in another bowl with the crushed garlic. Rub the chicken breasts with the sugar, salt and pepper.

Cut the salt pork into small dice (about half a centimetre) and put in a large, heavy-based casserole dish. Cook over a low to medium heat, stirring occasionally, until all the fat has rendered out and the dice of pork are tiny and golden. Turn the heat up to medium-high and brown the whole chicken breasts on all sides in the fat. When they are golden all over, remove them to a plate with a slotted spoon. Turn the heat back down to medium-low.

Add the paprika, bay leaves, crushed chillies and fennel seeds to the pan with the shallots, onion, celery and garlic. Sauté in the remaining fat (adding a little olive oil if you think it’s necessary) for about five minutes, until the vegetables are soft. Add the peppers to the pan and cook for another five minutes, keeping everything on the move, then return the chicken to the pan along with any juices, stirring well so the paprika mixture coats everything.

Add the wine to the dish, and let it bubble up to a simmer. Pour in the stock and passata and stir a tablespoon of concentrated tomato purée through the mixture. Put the lid on and simmer for 30-40 minutes. Stir through the crème fraîche just before serving, and garnish with parsley.

I served this with sautéed potatoes. It’s also great with buttered rice and a salad.

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Hoi sin beer can chicken

This is an extremely tasty hybrid – American barbecue crossed with Chinese roast chicken. Regular readers may already have read my original beer can chicken post, and it’s worth glancing at it again for more on this cooking method, which is one of my favourites for roasting chicken. A can of beer is – how can I say this delicately? – rammed up the chicken’s bottom, and steams the bird from the inside while the outside roasts to a lovely crisp.

Usually, I make chicken cooked in this way with an American-style dry rub. This time, I’ve made a Chinese paste to marinade and cook the bird in, and I’m very pleased with the results. I served this with some steamed rice and sweetly stir-fried carrot and courgettes – about which you can read more later in the week.

To roast one chicken to toothsome perfection you’ll need:

1 chicken weighing around 1.5 kilogrammes
4 tablespoons hoi sin sauce
3 teaspoons five-spice powder
2 teaspoons sesame oil
1 piece of ginger about the size of your thumb
3 cloves garlic
1 can lager

Make a paste from the hoi sin, two teaspoons of the five-spice powder, 1 teaspoon of the sesame oil, and the ginger and garlic, grated. Rub it all over the chicken, both inside and out. Leave to marinade for at least three hours (I left mine overnight).

Preheat the oven to 180° C (350° F), pour half of the can of beer into a glass and drink it, and use a hammer and nail to knock a few holes in the top of the can alongside the ringpull. Sprinkle the remaining teaspoon of five-spice powder into the can (be careful – it will fizz extravagantly, so do this over the sink). Put the can in the centre of a roasting tin. Cut the string holding the chicken’s legs together, pull them apart so it looks like it’s standing up, and push the upright chicken firmly onto the can. I use a very cheap stand, whose wires I’ve bent so you can fit them round the can, when I roast chicken this way – it helps keep the whole apparatus from falling over while it cooks.

There is little dignity in death for chickens.

Roast the chicken for 1 hour and 30 minutes (if you have a large enough barbecue with readily controlled temperature, cook it in there instead of the oven), and remove carefully from the can. Pour away the beer in the can – it doesn’t taste great. Rest the chicken in a warmed dish for ten minutes – it will produce plenty of delicious juices to go with any that have dripped into the roasting tin during cooking. Whisk the juices together with a teaspoon of sesame oil, and pour over the carved chicken. Garnish with some chopped spring onion and serve.