Julia Child's Herb Roasted Chicken With Garlic, Lemon & Watercress

When I first got my hands on the fabulous How To Eat by Nigella Lawson, I marvelled at her ability to wax lyrical about roasted chickens.

That buxom woman literally had 6-7 recipes on how to roast a chook alone in that book.

Then I slowly discovered the gorgeousness of roasting a bird in the oven. Just a few ingredients can transform your free range (please, ONLY free range, I beg of you. Believe me, you will taste the difference!) chicken into an utter gastronomic feast.

Long before Nigella, another buxom lady was already promoting chickens of the roasting kind - Julia Child. This lady not only had the wonderful opportunity of attending Le Cordon Bleu in Paris but also had her own cooking show.

So without further ado, this is Julia Child's Herb Roasted Chicken on Watercress.

You MUST give this recipe a go. The chicken is moist and juicy yet beautifully punctuated by notes of garlic, rosemary and thyme. But the lemon, oh the lemon is the star of this dish undoubtedly and just ties in all the savoury and sweet notes and makes the dish sing even more.

I have now cooked this numerous times as Leng requests for this chook more so than Jamie Oliver's Perfect Roasted Chicken.

VERDICT: 10/10 Such an easy dish for a Sunday roast. The flavours in this are amazing - sour, bitter (from the peppery watercress), savoury and sweet. Plus the leftovers make the best chicken sandwich! (recipe for that coming up real soon!)

Ingredients:

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1 free range whole chicken (I normally get a 16/17 bird for 2 people)

1 garlic clove, peeled and smashed lightly with knife

3 lemons, halved

1 brown onion, sliced

1 bunch of watercress

rosemary & thyme (preferably fresh but I've used dried and it works fine too)

freshly ground pepper & salt, to taste

Method:

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1) Wash chook, inside and out and pat dry with kitchen towel

2) In a large bowl, squeeze your lemons and throw their skins in together along with garlic, herbs, freshly ground pepper and salt.

3) Mix well

4) Transfer chicken into bowl and rub the marinade you just made all over it

5) In a roasting tray, put your sliced onion on the bottom to make a trivet

6) Stuff herbs, garlic cloves and as many lemon halves you can into your chicken and truss it

7) Transfer chicken to roasting tray and pour remaining marinade on top of the chicken

8) Drizzle olive oil over chicken and generously salt skin

9) Roast in preheated oven at 200C for about 1 hour and 20 minutes

10 Wash and chop up watercress whilst waiting and line on large serving platter

10) When done, transfer chicken to a bowl to rest and to collect resting juices

11) In the hot roasting tray, pour some chicken stock if you have some on hand, or else I use the new Campbells chicken stock concentrate that comes in the squeezy tubes with some water and scrape down the tray with salt & pepper to taste

12) Strain it with a sieve into a serving jug and pour into it whatever resting juices you may have collected from the chicken

13) Transfer chicken to serving platter and serve!