Roast chicken

Whatever the situation you find yourself in, I firmly believe you should be able to produce an excellent gravy for any number of guests when roasting a chicken.  A few pieces of meat from a cheaper cut, or just some onion, carrot and celery, surrounding the main event will always help, the pan scraped and deglazed with a little white wine and perhaps with a quarter of a chicken stock cube added to boost things if required.

You will however have more control by going a step further with some chicken wings or drumsticks and stock veg roasted in a separate tray in the oven.  While the chicken is resting this tray can be blasted, and the contents turned over, to ensure a thorough stage of browning is reached.  And with the extra surface area you can be certain of a good amount of rich gravy for your guests.

Indeed if you did want to make up a batch of dark chicken stock, and it is an extremely handy thing to have around, then you can take the principle another step by roasting some chicken carcasses separately to a big tray of vegetables, since they brown at different rates, before assembling all in a big stock pot for a lengthy simmer.  This is very satisfying indeed.

So there is no stress!

Roast Chicken

1 free range chicken.  The Rhug Estate chickens available from Partridges in Sloane Square are the best I've ever had (Raymond Blanc agrees so there)
1 lemon
50g butter
Salt
Pepper
1 bay leaf
bunch thyme
1 garlic clove, unpeeled but crushed under a knife blade

Bring the chicken up to room temperature by taking out of the fridge early in the day.  If the butter is straight from the fridge then melt it gently or soften in a microwave, then pour over the chicken in a roasting tray, smothering it inside and out with your hands.  Get somebody else to season the chicken generously all over with salt and pepper while you turn the bird over.  This avoids getting your salt and pepper shakers covered in butter.  You can wash your hands now!

Halve the lemon, squeeze the juice over the bird and place the halves inside the cavity along with the thyme, bay leaf and garlic clove.

Roast for 25 minutes in a fully preheated oven at 220C.  Reduce the heat to 180C and roast for a further 30 minutes for a small chicken (1.6kg) to 60 minutes for a big chicken (2.4kg).  Let the chicken rest for 15 minutes before carving.  If you like add a small splash of wine when turning the heat down, particularly if you think things could burn.  But it's quite nice to roast things in fat on a tray.

Gravy

The ideal for this is getting a bag of wings from a butchers, simply because they are very cheap and he will be able to chop them up for you.  It does work perfectly well however with drumsticks or thighs from a supermarket that you can rougly cut into pieces yourself.  There's no need to cut through the bones.

4 chicken wings (or 3 thighs or drumsticks)
1 large onion, unpeeled but washed, roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic, unpeeled but again flatted slightly
1 stick celery, roughly chopped
2 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
2 bay leaves
large bunch of thyme
flour
vegetable oil
200ml dry white wine

Place the first seven ingredients in a very large tray.  Pour on a tablespoon of veg oil and mix thoroughly with your hands.  Season with salt and pepper then roast in the oven while you are roasting your chicken.  I would always get this gravy tray into the oven before the chicken as you want to brown it thoroughly then simmer a while before the chicken is ready.  Roast this mixture until all is thoroughly browned, turning things over every now and then.  Pour in the wine and return to the oven to reduce and caremelise things.  Place over the heat, add some water and scape up all the browning residues on the base of the pan. Transfer everything to a saucepan, add water to cover and simmer for around 20 minutes before draining through a colander into a bowl.  Spoon off excess fat.

The next stage is up to you.  You can either reduce the sauce to concentrate the flavour, during which process it will thicken slightly, then serve from one of those gravy jugs whose spout pours from the base of the jug, to avoid oil-slicking your food.  Or you can cook equal parts of butter and flour together in a separate pan for 1 minute, then pour over the liquid, having been reduced slighly less, simmer and whisk for a few minutes, resulting in a thickened sauce which will have extra flavour from the emulsified fat in it.  Whatever you feel like, really.  Add the lemony juices from the chicken tray to either version, of course, tipping up the chicken to get the maximum out.