Recipe 12

Olive oil roast chicken with chickpeas

For the first time this year, we didn't have any plans on Saturday night. It's not the first Saturday night we've spent at home, but other Saturdays we've had at home we've had people around for dinner or drinks.

We had spent the afternoon in the beer garden at Shakespeare's Head, willing Spring to make its permanent arrival. It got cold quickly, so we headed home - for me, via the supermarket for wine and the little deli on Exmouth Market for cheese. We lit some candles and ate crisps and played cards and Yahtzee and had drinks, and suddenly it was nearly 7pm, and I remembered I needed to get on and make dinner.

I had decided to cook Alison Roman's olive oil roast chicken with chickpeas (and carrots) from her new book, Something from Nothing. The idea was that I would see whether the recipe was any good, and if it was, make it when we have friends round for dinner next Friday. But as we waited for the chicken to cook, we devised a completely different menu of things we've cooked before and know to be good to eat and easy to make when you have people round.

So while the olive oil roast chicken trial became a bit of a pointless exercise, I was pleased for an easy throw together dinner at a time when it dawned on me that I had drunk rather a lot of wine. You put seasoned chicken legs in a roasting tin with a bulb of garlic, slices of lemon, sprigs of oregano, little baby carrots and a tin of chickpeas, and then pour a cup of olive oil over everything. You roast the chicken and bits at 150C for 90 minutes.

We ate cheese with bread while we waited for the chicken to cook, as a first course of sorts, even though I know the cheese course should really have come after the chicken.

The chicken was quite good, tender and falling off the bone, and I liked the little sweet carrots and caramelised slices of lemon. It was quite an oily dish; I guess confit-style things usually are, and it didn't exactly help that I spooned a few extra drizzles of pan juices over our plates of food, forgetting the pan juices weren't exactly a sauce, but rather a lot of oil. But all in all, a good recipe, and nice to have the chicken and bits with our first asparagus of the season.

After dinner we drank some more wine while we talked to Phil's parents and then had little pieces of clotted cream fudge. We had an early night and I was grateful for it. Saturday nights at home with no plans every once in a while are quite nice.