Hi, I'm Alice Zaslavsky,
otherwise known as Alice in Frames,
and I'm here to talk you through a super simple roast chook,
and this recipe is a twofer.
You roast the chook,
you eat the chook
and then with the leftovers,
not just the meat, but the juices,
you make a delicious pasta
for the second night's dinner.
Oil first,
acts like a glue for seasoning the chicken.
And then you start rubbing it in.
See?
You wanna make sure that that chicken is nice and seasoned
so that the salt permeates the skin.
A lot of people tell you to roast the chicken
so that it's breast side up.
Couldn't agree less.
The breast is the bit that dries out the fastest
so I roast breast side down
and that protects the meat,
and by the time that the legs and the thighs have cooked
the breast is still nice and tender.
Now, I'm gonna stuff.
You're gonna wanna let the chicken rest for about 10 minutes
and while you let it rest,
that's when you can harvest the schmaltz,
which is the chicken fat and the pan juices.
Now, use something sharp,
just scrape all of that chickeny flavour out of this pan.
My favorite part of this recipe
is that it cooks in about as long as
the pasta takes to finish,
so all you need to do is shred the chicken,
sear the shallots on their faces,
chop up the herbs roughly
and add the pan juices towards the end of the cook.
You can either use your hands
to shred it into bits like this,
or you can always use a fork.
You can pop the crispy skin in along with the shallots
so they can just start crisping away
and rendering out even more of that chicken fat
into the pan.
The shallots and the crispy chicken skin
have had a bit of a headstart.
Now I'm gonna add the rest of my chicken
and my pan juices,
and you'll notice that I am doing my best
to keep some of that yellow fat still in the jar,
because I do wanna save that for other dishes.
There's plenty to go around.
Scooping in some pasta water to thicken the sauce,
to make it really glossy
About a half a cup of pasta water.
Add the pasta to the sauce.
Stir it all around.
Good glug olive oil.
And that's it.
This is the kind of midweek marvel
that you can just whack together on autopilot
after a couple of goes.
Finish with a sprinkle of parmesan,
a glug of olive oil and a crack of pepper
and serve it up to the table to your adoring guests.
I hope this one enters your regular repertoire
because it's one that I love to make
and it's one that my family loves to eat.
For this recipe and plenty more,
head online to ABC Life.
See you next time.