FFWD: Chicken for Les Parreseux

I have never made a whole roasted chicken before. I have made roasted turkey once for Thanksgiving, and have always had turkey for Thanksgiving that other people have made. I am never really a big fan of it though. It doesn't have a lot of taste and I ended up eating a lot more side dishes than the actual turkey :).

So when Laurie posted the Chicken for Les Parreseux as one of the 8 recipes to be voted for November menu, I did not vote for it. Roasted turkey, roasted chicken, they are both birds I figured, so if one is not very tasty, the other wouldn't be either. See how my method of deduction/conclusion went? :)

But alas, people voted for this one, maybe because November is Thanksgiving month? And so I thought, I might as well make it.

There is only 2 of us in the house, so I opted for getting a smaller chicken.

The good thing about a smaller bird is that it fits nice and snugly in my 5 qt Dutch oven.

Another good thing about getting a young chicken is the meat will be more tender.

I followed Dorie's instruction of roasting the chicken first for 40 minutes. Then added the vegetables.

As you can see, I did not follow her instruction of using just a couple of carrots and potatoes. Instead, I added a boatload of them. I think in total I used 8 carrots and 2 handful of fingerling potatoes.







I added dried rosemary and thyme all over the chicken, giving it a lot of seasoning. Once the chicken and veggies finished roasting, I made pan sauce by adding 2 cups of water and a teaspoon of chicken broth and scraping off all the burnt bits in the dutch oven. There wasn't any liquid left from the chicken, so I figured the chicken broth would be a good idea. Then I just let the liquid boil until it's slightly reduced.

You can see the potato gratin in the above picture. The tart on the left is Tart M....... which I will blog about when it comes to menu rotation.

Tasting impression:
This is so good! The chicken is very tasty and the sauce is delicious. The veggies goes along well with it and they are nice and soft. I am changing my mind now about roasted birds - well, at least roasted chicken. I am so going to make this again.