You can either roast the bird whole or dismembered. They both take the same time to cook anyway.
What's quite nice is combining panettone crumbs and a whole egg with the butter, sage, proscuitto and garlic before stuffing the bird. This makes for something grander and more sumptuous.
Ingredients
1.5 kg fresh whole chicken
5 slices proscuitto, cut into rough rags
a bunch of sage, finely chopped
30g unsalted butter, softened
2 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
a little olive oil, salt and pepper
150ml white wine (optional)
Preheat the oven to 230 degrees Celsius.
Put the proscuitto, half the sage, butter and chopped garlic in a bowl. Grate over half the nutmeg and season with salt and pepper. The cured meat is already salty, just not salty enough. Mulch to create a little ball of festive flavour. Pop this ball into the chicken's cavity before lubricating the entire bird with just a glint of olive oil. Sit it in its roasting tin. Sprinkle the remaining chopped sage leaves over the bird. Crunch salt flakes over its breast. Chicken cooked this way yields its own beautiful, natural gravy, but if you think you might want a deeper gravy, pour the white wine around the bird. Roast for 40 - 45 minutes.
If the chicken has failed to adopt a winning tan by the 35th minute, it's time for desperate measures. So turn on the grill to its max and let it complete its oven term. You can tell the bird is done when a wound in its toughest part - its leg, in this case - oozes clear juice.
Once the chicken is cooked, let it sit under a tent of foil for 10 minutes. Now it is ready to be carved.
Ingredients
