Recipe: chicken with lemon
Johan Cruijf said: ‘Football is simple, but nothing is as difficult as playing simple football.’ The same goes for cooking. Some recipes you make throughout your entire career and never get tired of. Dishes that are simply spot on, with a recipe that needs nothing added or taken away. That applies to this chicken with lemon in the style of Marcella Hazan. This recipe results in juicy, tender chicken. The essential oils from the lemon zest give the sauce an aromatic note, while the lemon juice neutralizes the richness of the chicken fat and binds the sauce.
How to make chicken with lemon
- Preheat the oven to 180 °C.
- If desired, rinse the chicken inside and out and pat it thoroughly dry with kitchen paper. Season the chicken generously with salt and pepper inside and out and rub it in well.
- Soften the lemon by rolling it firmly across the work surface and prick it all over at least 20 times with a sharp knife or fork.
- Put the lemon inside the chicken and close it with cocktail sticks or with a needle and thread. Make sure some air can still escape, otherwise the chicken may burst open. One more thing: if the chicken skin remains undamaged, it will puff up in the oven.
- Then heat the oven to 275 °C, or as high as the oven can go.
- Roast the chicken at high heat until it turns nicely golden brown.
- Once that has happened, lower the oven temperature to 95 °C. Let the chicken cook gently for another 1 hour. You no longer need to keep an eye on it, because the chicken will never dry out this way.
Title: Café Marseille
Author: Derk Jan Wooldrik
Price: €35
Publisher: Carrera
This is not a cookbook as you know it. It is a journey through eight port cities, an account of Derk Jan’s culinary adventures as a ship’s cook, in which he repeatedly lost himself – and found himself again – in a tangle of ingredients, aromas and memories.
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