My mums visiting so we are having my mums roast chicken to celebrate.

This all started at 6pm sharp with cocktails, we had belinis with smoked salmon on brown bread as our cocktail hour starter!!

Meanwhile the pavlova has just come out of the oven and the bird has gone in so all is on track.

I’ve got a gorgeous corn fed bird which I’ve stuffed with lemon salt, a couple of cloves of garlic, half a lemon, thyme twig and a bay leaf. I’m roasting this in water as its my mums roast so I’ve also added lemon zest, lemon juice and salt and black pepper to the skin, together with a little dried parsley!

I’ve made my own stuffing from scratch because I had leftover homemade bread to use up and I cannot believe how easy this was, even using up a couple of the yolks leftover from making the pavlova…

Sage and onion stuffing

Ingredients
2 small onions chopped finely
Knob of butter
Glug of olive oil
10 fresh sage leaves chopped finely
Tsp dried parsley
125g dried breadcrumbs
2 egg yolks (or a whole egg)

Method
Soften the onion in the butter and oil for about 10 minutes, till soft but not browned
Meanwhile chop the sage leaves finely
in a bowl mix the sage leaves, parsley, breadcrumbs & seasoning
Add in the onions and the egg yolks and combine, adding a little water if necessary to combine.
At this point you could also add some sausage meat but I didn’t feel the need!!
Put all this either in the bird, balled up or as we did roast in a small greased tray.
Cook with the chicken for the last 30 mins gas mark 6

Seriously I’m never going near the paxo again!!

Top tip To make your own breadcrumbs using stale bread just cube it and put in a very low oven for 20 mins. Allow to cool then blitz in a blender (or as I did in a jar with a stick blender) store in an airtight jar till you want to use. This isn’t my tip but Hugh fernlythingy!!

So it all came out of the oven looking rather Flabulous!!

Update

After posting this I realised I forgot to update on how the meal went…

We had a fabulous meal, with new potatoes carrots and spring greens slathered in silky chickeny gravy followed by a fabulously fruity pavlova, all washed down with copious amounts of wine!!

And did mum enjoy it?

Hell Yes!!! (And yes it was fancy dress, yes that is a onesie and yes that is a wig and YES she will kill me for this piccy!!)