Piri piri chicken with Little Gem salad
Serves 4 Prep 15 mins plus cooling, at least 4 hrs marinating and resting Cook 3 hrs
1 large free-range chicken (about 2kg) FOR THE CHILLI PASTE
2 dried hot red chillies 100ml red wine vinegar 6 red chillies, roughly chopped,
seeds and all 6 garlic cloves, peeled 2 tsp flaky sea salt 2 tsp smoked paprika 1 tsp dried oregano 1 tsp dried thyme 1 tsp erythritol (sugar replacement) juice of 2 lemons
FOR THE SALAD
2 Little Gem lettuces, leaves
separated from the core ½ cucumber, halved, deseeded and sliced 6 pickled green chillies, roughly chopped ½ pack mint (about 15g), leaves picked ½ pack coriander (about 15g), leaves
picked 2 tbsp salad cream
1 First, remove the skin from the chicken. Work your fingers under the skin, over the flesh, until you have loosened it enough to pull it off. Score the chicken all over (including the legs and the underside), making the cuts about 1cm deep.
2 To prepare the chilli paste, put the dried chillies in a saucepan with the vinegar and bring to the boil. Remove from the heat and cool, allowing the chillies to rehydrate.
3 Put the fresh chillies, the garlic and the rehydrated chillies and their soaking vinegar into a food processor and blitz. Add the salt, smoked paprika, oregano, thyme, erythritol and lemon juice and blitz again to a paste.
4 Spread the paste all over the chicken and massage it into the cuts (use latex gloves if you like). Place the chicken in a roasting tin, cover with cling film and leave in the fridge to marinate for at least 4 hrs, or ideally overnight, to allow the flavours to develop.
5 Preheat oven to 140C/120C fan/gas 1. Remove the cling film and cook the chicken for 2½ hrs. Turn oven up to 220C/200C fan/ gas 7 and cook for 25–30 mins more until a golden crust forms. Remove the chicken from the oven and set aside to rest for 20 mins.
6 Meanwhile, toss all the salad ingredients together in a large bowl with some seasoning
7 Carve the rested chicken and serve with the salad. The chicken is also good cold.