To make roast chicken with lime salsa verde for four or maybe five diners, you will need:
- One standard supermarket broiler fowl mass 2kg
- 4 cloves of garlic • 30ml extra virgin olive oil
- 1 teaspoon black peppercorns coarsely ground
For the salsa:
- 1 teaspoon coarse salt
- 1 teaspoon black pepper, coarsely ground
- 250ml extra virgin olive oil
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 60g capers
- 1 whole pickled jalapeno pepper
- 1 bunch of spring onions
- 1 generous bunch of dhania (coriander)
- 2 limes
Salsa is a South American taste combination of fresh aromatic herbs, citrus juice and olive oil. This version – lime salsa verde – is a classic, with as many variations as there are cooks who prepare it.
First, get the chicken roasting. No big surprises here. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Peel and section the four cloves of garlic into slivers. Make small incisions in the skin of the breasts, thighs and drumsticks and insert garlic slivers into them.Combine the pepper and olive oil and rub this over the entire fowl, including the back.
Now for the salsa. Use either a knife to chop the ingredients or a food processor. The latter is quick but can reduce the salsa to baby food, which is not what you want. Coarse is good, smooth is bad. Wash all signs of Mother Earth off the dhania, then tear each leaf into three or four pieces. Dhania mechanics firmly believe that hand-tearing the leaves produces a superior flavour and aroma.
Finely chop the spring onion greens and save the white bulbs for another day. Top and tail the pickled jalapeno pepper and discard the tiny flood of vinegar and the pips that emerge. Chop the remainder. Cooks suffering from chilli terror have nothing to fear from the gentle jalapeno pepper. Coarsely chop the capers and the peeled garlic. With a zesting tool or a paring knife, remove, then finely chop, the zest of the limes. Squeeze the juice.
Pour all these ingredients into a mixing bowl, then add the quarter litre of olive oil, the lime juice, the black pepper and the salt. Stir well, then let the mixture stand under cover for 30 minutes or so for the flavours to combine and mature. Do all this while the fowl is roasting so that it is ready for serving. Serve the fowl with the cooked vegetables of your choice and pour a few tablespoons of lime salsa verde over each carved portion. The result is magical, believe me.
