Easy roasted chicken with butternut squash, butter beans and tomatoes

I think every blogger has their blogger heros. My hero is Bea from Bea w kuchni. She is a great lady dedicated to seasonal, healthy cooking, that is crazy about pumpkins. Her blog is one of those places in the network, where you feel at home and you can always take part in a real conversation with real person.

At some point Bea praised cookbooks of Maria Elia, so once I saw one in a shop on sale I bought it. The cookbook is beautiful. I won’t tell you if it is good, I’ve just tried one recipe and I can say it’s brilliant. I mentioned more than once I’m a lazy cook. I appreciate recipes that made themselves, but still use unprocessed food and taste delicious. I must admit we cheated a little bit, we didn’t refrigerate the chicken as we were in hurry. I’m sure it would improve the flavours, but they were great anyway. I’m not a big fan of warm tomatoes, but these ones add great acidity to the quite sweet dish. The recipe may look quite long, but it’s very simple.

From Maria’s Elia cookbook “Full of flavour” with some little adjustments

• 1 butternut squash
• sea salt and black pepper
• olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 Tbsp smoked paprika
• 1 whole chicken
• 400 g cooked butter beans
• 200 g cherry vine tomatoes
• handful of basil, roughly chopped

Instructions

Grease a roasting tin or line it with parchment paper.
Wash the butternut squash and cut it into chunks (leave the skin on). Place it in the tin and sprinkle with salt and drizzle it with some olive oil.
Make a chicken marinade. Grate the garlic finely and mix it with the salt, smoked paprika and enough of olive oil to make a runny paste.
Spatchcock the chicken (what does it mean? For a step by step tutorial with photos click here, but basically you need to place the chicken on the table (breast down) and cut along the backbone to remove it. Open the chicken, flip it over and press it down to make it flat.)
Rub the marinade into the chicken.
Place the chicken in the pan atop the butternut squash. If possible refrigerate at least for an hour or preferably overnight.
Preheat the oven to 180°C /160°C fan. Place the pan with chicken and butternut squash in the oven and bake for 30 minutes.
Lower the temperature to 160°C /140°C fan and cook for further 1 1/2 hour, pouring the chicken with its juices every 20 minutes.
Remove the chicken from the tin, cover it with a tin foil and let it rest for 10 minutes.
In the meantime add the butter bean and tomatoes to the pan and put it back to the oven, just to warm it up.
Take the veggies out of oven and sprinkle with some salt and pepper.
Toss in the basil leaves.
Cut the chicken and add place it on a plate along with veggies.

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