amywillcock.co.uk

Free Range Chicken Roasted on Freshly Baked Focaccia Bread

We have a brilliant team at The George Hotel and our chef, Kevin Mangeolles is a constant inspiration and his passion and knowledge about food is enviable.  This is a dish he devised and suggested I try it in one of my Aga demonstrations as he thought it would be a perfect Aga recipe and, as usual, he was right!

1 Quantity of Focaccia Bread Dough
1 x 1kilo Free-Range Chicken, trimmed - no wings, no wishbone, no parsons nose that is the trick to getting this dish to cook in the allotted time.
1 tbs Rosemary sprigs
2 Coves of Garlic, sliced
Olive Oil
6 Organic Cherry tomatoes

Roll the bread dough into a long sausage shape, set aside.  Prepare a frying pan large enough to hold the chicken and bread by lining with greaseproof paper and set aside.

Heat some olive oil in another pan until smoking.  Season the chicken with salt and seal the chicken in the hot pan.  Place the sealed chicken in the prepared frying pan and wrap the dough around it so it looks like a life saving ring.Drizzle over some more olive oil and scatter the Rosemary, salt and garlic over the chicken and the dough.  *Bake for 40 minutes in the Roasting oven.  After the 40 minutes, take the chicken out and scatter over the cherry tomatoes.  Cook for another 10 minutes then remove chicken from the oven, rest for 10 minutes and serve.  Serve with a green salad.

Serves 2 hungry people.

*For conventional cookers, heat oven to it’s hottest –220c and increase initial baking time to 50 minutes. Continue with recipe.