Spicy Roast Chicken

Roasting is one of the easiest ways to cook there is. All you have to do is select how you want to season your chicken, marinate for a little while maybe, then just pop it into the oven. If you're really rajin, you might baste the chicken occasionally, but most of the time, it turns out just fine without the basting (although the chicken might look and taste a little bit better if you actually take the effort. So here's another roast chicken recipe which you can put into your files :D

What you need:
6 chicken drumsticks
Juice of 1 lemon
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon each cayenne pepper, paprika and dried oregano
2 teaspoons olive oil
Salt and ground black pepper, for seasoning

What you do:

1. Place the chicken in a large mixing bowl, and pour over the lemon juice. Place the garlic, cayenne, paprika, oregano, black pepper and olive oil in a small bowl and mix well. Rub evenly over the surface of the chicken.
2. Cover the chicken and leave to marinate for 2-3 hours at room temperature, or chill the chicken overnight and then return to room temperature before roasting.
3. Season both sides of the chicken with salt and place skin-side up in a shallow roasting tin.
4. Put the tin in a cold oven and set the temperature to 190 C. Roast for about 45 minutes, or until the chicken is tender.

Most roast chicken recipes actually require you to preheat the oven before putting the chicken in, but this one doesn't. Apparently, this will make the chicken skin nice and crispy, but I didn't notice any difference, actually. I just have to show this, since its so cute! I didn't have any lemons handy, so Justin bought a bottle of lemon juice from the butchers. It comes in such a cute bottle! It also comes in lime juice, where the bottle would look like a lime! Awwwwwwww!!!

Anyway, back to the chicken. This recipe would please any spice-loving person, I think. Its really really spicy. I usually disregard Western "spiciness" as being not very spicy at all (this was from a British cookbook) but this was a bit too spicy for me. Even Hadi found it a bit too much. Bizarrely, however, Justin couldn't taste anything... He says his excuse is that he eats too much in Malaysia... Um, ok...

Also, instead of chopping up the garlic finely, I ground it with a mortar and pestle instead! Yep yep! I have one of my very own, what do you call it, batu lesung? Anyway, its quite small, but that makes it even cuter! Hehe, lots of cute things in my house :P Have you seen my frog? ;) I would have mashed it for longer, but I was afraid of disturbing the neighbours (above us). It turned out quite ok, actually. I think actually mincing it with a food processor might have been better, actually. Or, use garlic powder, come to think of it. I didn't think of that, at all! That might have been a good idea since I barely tasted the garlic...

Also, I made the mistake of not looking after my cooking :P Roasting a chicken might be easy, but you should check on it once in awhile. As a result, I kinda overdid it on the chicken. The garlic was burnt beyond recognition, but the chicken itself was actually alright, if a bit overcooked. Still edible though :D

Quote of the day: Oil and potatoes both grown underground, so french fries may eventually have produced themselves, had they not been invented.