Ingredients:
1-1.5 kg whole chicken.
Half a slab of salted butter
Parma Ham or bacon, chopped
Basil leaves, chopped finely
1 lemon
Rosemary stalks,2 whole
Fresh Ground Pepper
Mix butter, ham/bacon/ and basil leaves. Scrape in the zest of the lemon. Cut the rest of the lemon into slices and set aside.
Very carefully, using two fingers, separately the skin of the chicken from the flesh as much as you can. It will feel weird at first and does look quite strange when you have guests watching, but it's absolutely essential to transforming an ordinary chicken to perfection. Make one or two deep cuts into the thighs (this ensures that the thighs will be "overcooked" which is when they taste best).
Taking small lumps of the herbed butter mixture at a time, stuff them between the skin and the flesh of the chicken, and massage to spread it out as evenly as you can throughout the chicken. Put some of the mixture into the thigh slits too. Stuff the rosemary stalks and the slices of lemon into the crevice of the chicken. If you have a poultry lacer you can use it to close the cavities, but if not, hemp string would do. But then I can never find those when I need them anyway - and the chicken does fine usually
Preheat the oven to 210 C. Put in the chicken and roast for an hour turning it once in between. In the last half hour, you can throw in small new pototates and chopped onions on the baking tray to make a complete meal.
I had an almost magical experience when I indulged in a French Yellow Skin Chicken once in Hong Kong. It really was most succulent and the recipe was a roaring success even though it was my first attempt. I never repeated it again because those foreign chicks were incredibly expensive. I have used U.S. chicken, Brazillian chicken and Danish ones too. They all work really well, but never quite the same way as that French poulet. Back in Singapore, I guess because we are all more paranoid, foreign chicks are seldom found here. The regular ones in our supermarkets work too, but don't use a kampong chicken. It's great for Hainanese chicken rice but too skinny for angmoh recipes, lah.
Next chicken challenge: The Perfect Roast Chicken with Two Lemons
