For the chicken:
1 x Bendele Whole Chicken
1 x Victorian truffle
St David Dairy butter
Mount Zero Pink Lake Salt
For the gravy:
500ml of Hagen’s home-made chicken stock
250ml of dry white wine
3 carrots, roughly chopped
1 leek, roughly chopped
5 shallots, roughly chopped
6 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp of plain flour
Salt & pepper
1. As soon as you get your chicken home, remove it from the packaging, put it on a plate place uncovered in the fridge (this dries the skin so it gets crispy when cooking). Ideally you’d do this overnight, but a few hours is fine.
2. Preheat your oven to 200c. Remove the string, gently separate the skin from the breast and place wafer-thin slices of truffle and discs of butter between the skin and the breast.
3. Roughly chop your vegetables, place them in a roasting pan, coat with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Place your chicken on a grill or rack on top of the roasting pan so the chicken is above the vegetables and has full air circulation. Season heavily with salt.
4. Roast for around an hour or until cooked through. Pour any juices from inside the chicken on to the veggies. Rest the chicken for 12-20 minutes.
5. While the chicken is resting, place the roasting pan on the stove. Add one tablespoon of flour and stir in to the vegetables. Deglaze the pan with white wine, making sure to scrape all the flavour off the bottom. Reduce the wine until almost gone and pour in the chicken stock and stir. Cook until you’ve reached your desired consistency. Strain the gravy through a sieve and return it to the pan. Add a good knob of butter and season with salt and pepper.
6. Carve your chicken and serve with your favourite sides – we’ve gone with Andy Baraghani’s caramelised cabbage and green peas. Yum!