Tag Archives: roast

Venetian Spiced Roast Chicken & Apples

21 Tuesday Jan 2025

Posted by in Main Courses

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This recipe was inspired by a description of Venice as a historical trading port and how its cuisine has been influence by the goods and people passing through it throughout the ages. Arab traders brought a taste for fruit cooked with meat and Marco Polo introduced eastern spices not just to Venice, but from there into Western Europe. I thought to combine these two influences to spice up a Sunday roast.

For 4 portions

medium sized free range chicken cut into about 12 pieces

1 teaspoon black peppercorns

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

3 garlic cloves

2 cloves

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

good pinch of saffron

zest and juice of half a lemon and half an orange

2 tart eating apples

Using a pestle and mortar grind the salt, peppercorns and cloves together to a powder

Add the ground cinnamon and nutmeg, mix well.

Chop the garlic roughly and add to the spices, crush to a paste, then add the saffron, orange and lemon zest and juice.

Mix well to a paste and add the the chicken portions mixing well to ensure that the chicken is well covered with the marinade.

Leave for an hour to let flavours to enter and tenderise the chicken.

Roast the chicken pieces in a hot oven 180 fan or 200C for twenty minutes.

Cut the apples into wedges and remove the cores.

Take the chicken out of the oven and turn each piece, add the apple pieces and return to the oven for another twenty minutes.

If you want to roast potatoes with the chicken, have them peeled, cut into the size you like and seasoned. Twenty minutes before the chicken needs to go in the oven start roasting the potatoes in olive oil. After the twenty minutes, take the tray out of the oven and turn the potatoes over. Add the chicken and proceed as above

Enjoy!

Roasted red cabbage with apples &walnuts

14 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by in Main Courses, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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This is a Sunday roast with a difference and meat free so suitable for vegans. I have a lovely crop of red cabbages in my plot at the moment, the best that I have ever grown, so I’m feeling quite proud of myself. I have braised the cabbage in the past with apples, onions walnuts and spices, but roasting it results in quite a different texture, more solid but tender.


Roasting vegetables is so simple and tasty. The variations are many, the roast can be winter vegetables as in this case. When I’m in Northern Europe I love to add parsnips and celeriac. A summer roast would include peppers and aubergines flavoured with garlic and Rosemary. For the non vegetarians pieces of chicken or rabbit can be roasted with the vegetables. Rabbit with thyme is particularly good.

The only work is calculating in what order to add them to the roasting pan so that they are all perfectly cooked at the same time. Most vegetables need about 40 minutes, while potatoes need ten minutes more, so they are always first into the oven. I then usually put in anything from the onion family, onion wedges or leeks, roasting them for five minutes before adding the rest of the vegetables. Any nuts that you are adding only need a short time to heat and brown, so these go in ten minutes before the end of cooking.


For 2

2 or 3 medium potatoes – scrubbed and cut into wedges

1/4 red cabbage – cut in half as a wedge

6 small carrots – scrubbed

1 onion – peeled and cut into 4 wedges

1 leek – white part only – cut into 3 centimetre lengths.

1 courgette – cut into chunks

1 large apple – cored and cut into wedges

80 grams walnut halves

olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper


Put the oven on at 200C or if a fan oven 180C to heat up with a large roasting tray in the oven.

Season the potato wedges and toss with enough olive oil to coat. Once the oven is hot, put the potatoes in the tray and roast for ten minutes.

Season and oil the onion wedges and leeks then add them to the potatoes. Roast for about 5 minutes

Season the rest of the vegetables and the apple and toss with olive oil to coat. Add to the roasting tray and put back in the oven. Roast for 30 minutes tuning the vegetables over half way through the cooking.

Add the walnut halves and put back in the oven to roast for another ten minutes.

Enjoy with a glass of red wine.