Roast chicken with lemon & rosemary roast potatoes

 2 kg higher-welfare chicken
 sea salt
 freshly ground black pepper
 1.5 kg potatoes, peeled
 1 large lemon, preferably unwaxed
 1 whole bulb garlic, broken into cloves
 1 handful fresh thyme
 olive oil
 1 handful fresh rosemary sprigs, leaves picked
 8 rashers higher-welfare smoked streaky bacon, optional
Read more at http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chicken-recipes/roast-
chicken-with-lemon-and-rosemary-roast-potatoes/#6s1eqKBllpPRa0wP.99

Method
Roast chicken remains one of our favourite dishes at home. I recently
discovered a way to make the chicken taste even better, by putting a
lemon in with my potatoes when I was parboiling them. It smelt fantastic
and flavoured the potatoes. Then when I was draining them I decided to
stab the lemon, which hissed out juice and steam, and quickly jammed it
inside the chicken! The benefits of the hot steaming lemon going into the
chicken are very obvious as the meat tastes amazing, and the chicken
cooks slightly quicker because of it.

Rub the chicken inside and out with a generous amount of salt and freshly
ground black pepper. Do this in the morning if possible, then cover the
chicken and leave in the fridge until you're ready to start cooking it
for lunch or dinner. By doing this, you'll make the meat really tasty
when cooked. Preheat your oven to 190ºC/375ºF/gas 5. Bring a large pan of
salted water to the boil. Cut the potatoes into golf-ball-sized pieces,
put them into the water with the whole lemon and the garlic cloves, and
cook for 12 minutes. Drain and allow to steam dry for 1 minute (this will
give you crispier potatoes), then remove the lemon and garlic. Toss the
potatoes in the pan while still hot so their outsides get chuffed up and
fluffy – this will make them lovely and crispy when they roast.

While the lemon is still hot, carefully stab it about 10 times. Take the
chicken out of the fridge, pat it with kitchen paper and rub it all over
with olive oil. Push the garlic cloves, the whole lemon and the thyme
into the cavity, then put the chicken into a roasting tray and cook in
the preheated oven for around 45 minutes. Remove the chicken to a plate.
Some lovely fat should have cooked out of it into the roasting tray, so
toss the potatoes into this with the rosemary leaves. Shake the tray
around, then make a gap in the centre of the potatoes and put the chicken
back in. If using the bacon, lay the rashers over the chicken breast and
cook for a further 45 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked and the
potatoes are nice and golden. (You can tell the chicken is cooked when
the thigh meat pulls easily away from the bone and the juices run clear.)

I like to remove the bacon from the chicken and crumble it up over the
potatoes. Then I remove the lemon and garlic from inside the chicken,
squeeze all the garlic flesh out of the skin, mush it up and smear it all
over the chicken, discard the lemon and rosemary and carve the chicken at
the table. Heaven!

Read more at http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chicken-recipes/roast-

chicken-with-lemon-and-rosemary-roast-potatoes/#6s1eqKBllpPRa0wP.99