Roast chicken with fries

This WE we were house-and-dogsitting at my mother's. For city birds like us, it's great to get out to the countryside, and have some space. We took advantage of the facilities and invited family and friends over for a very traditional Sunday dinner: roast chicken with fries and apple sauce. As a kid we had this every Sunday, except for the fries. We used to be a very untypical Belgian family who didn't own a 'friteuse' for deep frying for a very long time.

For starters I prepared soup in an enormous pot, according to my basic soup recipe, using onion, leek, green celery, fennel, broccoli, parsnip and 'knolselder' (root celery, celeriac?).

The fries were freshly cut from potatoes, since someone in my household strongly objects to deep frozen ones.

Some were cut by hand, with a very sharp Japanese ceramic knife

and some using a special tool for cutting fries - I couldn't believe I still could find this in my mother's house after perhaps more than 20 years.

After this the fries were soaked for min. 1 hour. Then they were pre-baked at 170°C, and later properly baked at 180°C. Baking them twice is a secret of Belgian fries.

The chickens were washed and dried. Inside they were seasoned very liberally with salt and pepper, and a little sage and rosemary. You can add a lemon cut in 4 on the inside.

On the outside the skin is loosened a little on top and then you put some sage and rosemary in between the flesh and the skin. These herbs should be fresh or soaked, to prevent the skin from breaking when in the oven. Then rub the skin with olive oil and season liberally again with pepper and salt.

Our helper in the kitchen said it was a pity that the chickens were dead, since they couldn't enjoy the massage any more.

Put them in a 200°C oven for about 15 min. Take them out of the oven, turn them upside down, season the other side and put them back in the oven and lower the heat to 180°C. Reverse them every 15 min and pour some of the juices over the chicken. Total cooking time is about 50 min- 1 hour.

The chicken was served with fries, apple sauce (from my mother's deep freezer ;-) salad and home made mayonaise. It all tasted terrific.

My guests brought cakes for dessert, but I forgot to photograph them. Labelga did though. Cakes on Sunday is also a real big tradition here.

I had also prepared a few healthy appetizers and brought real good pistachioes and fried corn from Istanbul.

To my surprise, the vegetables were very popular with the kids.

After the meal, albeit not without difficulty, we managed to stir ourselves for a walk.

A strange phenomenon was observed.

Thank you all guys for a very cosy afternoon - exactly like a Sunday should be.

Note

For my own records I noted the quantities. We were 9 adults, 2 big children and 3 smaller ones. We had 5 chickens which was a good estimate. We had 6-7 kg potatoes for the fries, which was far too much. 5 kg would have done. One big box of apple sauce would have done, I had opened another one. 2 bags of salad were OK and mayonaise made with 2 egg yolks as well.