Poulet de Karpates

Looking through an old French cookery book this morning for some inspiration and decided to do my own take on 'Poulet de Karpates' this evening.  This is a chicken dish from the Carpathian Mountains region; a range of mountains which runs in a curve from the Czech Republic and Poland in the north, through Romania at it's most widespread point and ending in the northernmost part of Serbia in the south.

 
Geography lesson over and so on to some cooking!

The original dish is a sort of herby, mushroomy, lemony dish which I have used as a base recipe and then added a couple of twists with a creamy white wine gravy packed with whole mushrooms and shallots which have been slow-roasted along with the chicken.  I will, of course, be in close cahoots with The Woo at gravy time as she is acknowledged as the family's Queen of the Gravy!

So into a roasting dish I roughly chopped a couple of onions to act as a trivet for the chicken and to give a good base flavour for the gravy.  Onto this was placed the chicken; weighing in at just under two kilos for the three of us (The Woo and Sam), with a bit left over for late night munchies and maybe an addition to tomorrow's lunch (and of course the picked over carcass for stock or a decent home made soup).  I find that roast chicken is a bit like roast potatoes - it doesn't matter how many you do there's only just about enough to go round when you get down to the eating bit!

The chicken was seasoned inside and out and then coated in softened butter.  Into the dish went some peeled shallots; the larger ones halved, half a dozen large portabellini mushrooms.  A handful each of thyme sprigs and roughly chopped chives were scattered around the bird and then half a lemon was squeezed over the mushrooms and the other half inserted into the chicken cavity.  Last but not least a good lug of white wine around the dish to start the gravy off.

The whole thing was then covered in tin foil and placed into a 180* oven for an hour and then 50 minutes with the foil removed to let the skin crisp up; 45 minutes per kilo plus 20.

And so to the end result.  Once the chicken was cooked I removed it from the oven dish, wrapped it in foil and left it to rest.  I removed the mushrooms and shallots and set those aside also.  The Woo did magic with white wine and cream to make the gravy and then the mushrooms and shallots were warmed through in it prior to serving.

We had ours with roast potatoes, honey roasted Chantenay carrots and baby leaf greens.  A perfect Sunday roast!