Amazing Roast Chicken

Adapted from Jamie Oliver (Naked Chef), as seen on Ezra Pound Cake.

Materials
4-5 lb roasting chicken
salt and pepper
4-5 lbs potatoes
1 lemon
1 head garlic
olive oil
rosemary and thyme
2-4 slices of bacon

Methods
Start out by cleaning the chicken, rinsing, patting dry and liberally applying salt and pepper to the inside and outside of your chicken.  Preheat the oven to 375 and allow your chicken to sit while you work on the potatoes.

Bring a pot of water to boil while you peel and cube the potatoes (golf ball size?).  Meanwhile, remove the garlic from its papery wrapper.  Boil the potatoes with the garlic cloves and lemon for about 12 minutes.  Drain the potatoes and remove the lemon and garlic.  Take a spoon and stir the potatoes around in the hot pot.  This makes them 'chuffy' as Jamie calls them.  I say it smooshes up the outsides and makes them roast even better!

Poke a handful of holes into the warm lemon.  Take the lemon, thyme (or rosemary), and garlic and place in the chicken cavity. Rub the outside of the bird with oil and apply extra salt and pepper if necessary.  Roast that bird for 45 minutes.

At the 45 minute mark take the bird out your pan.  Add the potatoes and some rosemary and stir them up in the pan, using your chicken drippings to coat the potatoes for roasting.  Place the chicken back in the center of the pan, surrounded by the taters.  Finally, the coup d'etat, put some bacon across the chicken breast.  Roast for another 45 minutes.  Crumble the bacon into the potatoes and serve.

Verdict.
Amazingly good.  Ok, maybe just good, I'm not sure.  This was the first chicken I've ever roasted.  I think that they can turn out badly, really dried out and bland.  Rumor has it that usually happens to your first roast chicken.That didn't seem to be the case -- this chicken was extremely moist, it had a good flavor, and was exceedingly appetizing.  The potatoes were good, the chuffy  thing appears to work.  In fact, i would say the parboil pre-roasting and chuffing thing is awesome.  I would recommend going in and tossing the potatoes mid cooking to get them good and roasty on all sides though.  Definitely a keeper -- I think David even enjoyed it. 

I even did things up fancy.  We had dinner at David's on Christmas Eve and at his Aunt's on Christmas night. This wasn't anything fancy (I had meant to steam some asparagus but lost track of time) but we did eat it off of my Christmas setting :)