Lancashire spatchcock

Saturday was the first weekend day in 6 weeks that it hasn’t rained here in Rochdale. Mrs Flamb dropped in so it seemed appropriate to cook something a little quicker than usual. I bought a small (3lb) fresh chicken from Alec Chadwick, our local butcher, and took out the breast bone so it could be laid out flat – spatchcocked. The chicken was rinsed, shaken to remove surplus water and rubbed with a simple dry mixture of sea salt, black pepper and mixed herbs (equal quantities of each). We laid it on the grill under a baking tray weighted down with a brick as Joe-Be-Wan demonstrated at the Moist Heat teach-in back in May. Cooking for 20 minutes over a medium direct heat coloured the skin before turning the chicken over to cook through for about an hour. I like to get an internal meat temperature of 180F for chicken.

We cooked fresh corn cobs on the grill and one of Mrs Flamb in Law’s zucchini (courgette to us Brits), grown in France. With our wet weather these have gone berserk this year and are the size of marrows. They were cooked in a foil parcel with butter, salt and pepper. The chicken was moist and just fell off the bones – yum.