Roast Chicken with Couscous

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while you know of my fondness for meals that are easy to prepare with less to clean up afterwards! This dish tops the charts and the flavours here are amazing. My husband who usually doesn’t usually care for couscous said this was very good. Cumin is native to Egypt and has been cultivated in the Middle East, India, China and Mediterranean for centuries. Its nutty peppery flavor packs a punch when adding it to food. Smoked paprika has an intoxicating smoky aroma with a mild bite on the finish. Is it any wonder with all these wonderful spices mingling together that the taste was anything less than superb!

Serves 4
recipe from Jamie Oliver in Delicious magazine

1.7kg free range or organic chicken
1 lemon, halved
2 red onions, cut into quarters
2 carrots, cut into chunks
a few mint leaves, chopped
olive oil
1 heaped teaspoon ground cumin
200g roasted red capsicum from a jar, drained and roughly chopped
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 tablespoon ground coriander
250g (1 1/4 cups) couscous

Preheat oven to 200c. Make some deep criss-cross slashes in the chicken legs. Stuff lemon inside chicken then rub the skin with olive oil, salt and pepper and cumin. Place the chicken in a roasting pan and bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the oven to 180c. Add onions and carrots to the pan and roast for 1 hour shaking the pan now and then until chicken is cooked (when the thigh meat pulls easily away from the bone and the juices run clear). Carefully lift the chicken out onto a plate and cover with foil. Spoon the vegetables onto a board and chop them roughly, then put back into the pan and place over medium heat. Add 2 cups water, then scrape all the bits off the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon.

Add the capsicum, paprika, coriander and the couscous to the pan. Pull the lemon out of the chicken using tongs and squeeze the juice into the couscous. Bring to a boil then turn heat off and rest for 5 minutes or until the couscous has absorbed all the water. Fluff up the couscous with a fork and stir through the chopped mint and a good splash of extra virgin olive oil. Cut the chicken up and serve on a bed of couscous.

The Culinary Chase’s Note: As Jamie would say, “easy peasy” and all in one pan! If you can’t get a jar of roasted red capsicum, then buy a large red bell pepper (capsicum) and blacken all sides, cover to let rest and then remove the charred skin. That’s what I had to do as the jars of roasted red capsicum selection here is limited not to mention awful tasting. I used basil as mint was out of stock.