Chicken with about Forty Cloves of Garlic (but who's counting?)

Tuesday October 23

We were home trying to clean out the attic for Christmas visitors, and it was a drizzly, chilly, charmless day. So we needed a warm oven-roasted dish that wouldn't take too much to prepare, and we happened to have an abundance of garlic.

Roast chicken with forty cloves of garlic was the obvious answer.

This is a famous recipe that appeared in Gourmet in 1967, and everybody does their own adaptation of it. Our version is considerably simpler than the original, as you don't have to brown or truss the bird - it browns itself in the oven, and trussing only keeps the thighs from cooking until the breast is completely dried out. Tell the chicken to spread its legs, turn its head, and cough.

We used our basic roast chicken recipe here but threw all the garlic cloves from two whole heads into the pan - and no, we didn't count them. We also put a quartered lemon and some rosemary sprigs into the chicken's cavity, rather than working chopped herbs up under the skin.

The vegetables that roasted alongside were potatoes, shallots, and parsnips. And they were damn tasty, especially when you squeezed the roasted cloves of garlic out over them as you ate.