Sometimes you just need to roast a chicken. Am I right? Here's a delectable tasty thing to pull together for a fancy night with company, or a fancy night with your own company. You are definitely worth it.

Miso Sage Roast Chicken, fresh out of the oven. So juicy.

Sure, there are lots of super foods here. I won't go into the details of what's good for what here. Listen, it's just food. Real. Good. Food.

MISO SAGE ROAST CHICKEN
yep it's an original, tweaked I'm sure from my years of perusing food magazines and thinking of flavours
Because I'm a fan of making gravy with roast meats, know that this one is one that should be good to go for everyone at the table. No one will be left out of this one.

THE PLAYERS
one whole chicken, preferably pasture-raised
1 small onion
1 lemon, juiced
2 tbsp miso (I used this one but you can find a few different kinds in a few different spots in town)
18 leaves of sage, fresh
2 tbsp Harissa Olive Oil (this one came from the good folks at Blue Door Calgary)
1/4 cup ghee or butter
paprika

THE VEG TRIVET
this is the first layer you'll lay down in your roasting pan, it will cook under your chicken and become your scrumptious gravy
2 parsnips, chopped in big chunks (swap for 1-2 carrots for GAPS)
1 carrot, chopped in big chunks
1 onion, peeled and quartered
3 celery sticks, chopped in big chunks
1 head of garlic
Thyme Fused Olive Oil (a limited edition item from Blue Door Calgary)

THE HOW-TO

Pre-heat your oven to 475ºF.
Chop your vegetables for the veg trivet, and scatter them on the bottom of a good roasting pan, including the whole head of garlic (keep it whole, just trim a bit off the top). Drizzle your Thyme Fused Olive Oil on top of all veg. Set aside. (Thyme and chicken and veg. Kind of a match made in heaven, wouldn't you agree?)

In a small blender or using your hand blender, blitz together the small onion, the lemon juice, miso and sage leaves along with the Harissa Olive Oil. Set aside.
Set your ghee or butter in a small pan and heat just to melt.
Pop your chicken on top of your veg trivet, tucking the wings underneath the chicken. Using your hand, slip under the skin on top of the chicken, and separate the skin from the breast meat. You will need to gently pull it away from the meat, especially in between the two breasts where there is a sort of seam. Once it is separated, fill the space between breast and skin with your blended miso/lemon/sage/harissa paste, getting all that good paste right to the top corners. This will infuse your chicken with a most delicious flavour, and ensure it stays juicy. It will also influence the flavour of your gravy! Yum.
Wash your hands. Drizzle the melted ghee or butter on top of the skin, and sprinkle with a dusting of paprika on top.

Tuck your roasting pan in the oven and close the door, reducing your heat immediately to 400ºF. Let it roast until it is cooked through, temperature reading of 165-170ºF on your meat thermometer. I'm not as adept at knowing when the meat is done as my mom is (comes from working in a commercial kitchen where you HAD to ensure the chickens were roasted to an appropriate temp in order to make sure no one would get inadvertently sick) but my mom swears by jiggling the leg, and if it seems loose in the joint, your chicken is done. (For a 3-4lb chicken, you are looking at approximately 1.5 hours of cooking time.)

Take the chicken out and pop on a plate, top with foil in order to keep it warm and let it rest for 15 minutes in order to distribute the juices. Slice either at the table for that fancy dinner effect, or simple prepare just before serving. While the chicken is resting, return your pan to the stovetop with your veggies and pull out the head of garlic and set aside. Using a hand blender, blitz the veggies together with the juices that have accumulated in the pan. Squish out the roasted garlic out of the paper, and add to your gravy, blitzing again and adding water if it's too thick for your liking. Adjust the flavours with salt and pepper and if you'd like more of a punch of flavour, you can add some more paprika too.

And hey, because I like to multi-task, once your chicken is in the oven, you can prepare the side veggies that will go along. I put a medium pot of water on to boil, chopped some carrots into carrot sticks and broccoli into 'trees', blanched them separately in the boiling water until softened just a bit. Once they were soft, in an oven-proof dish they went and drizzled on top with a bit of fat and some flavour. For the carrots, my fat was a plain olive oil and the flavour was a maple balsamic vinegar, S+P. For the broccoli, I used ghee and a lemon-pepper spice blend with just lemon and pepper with a smattering of sea salt. Make sure to tuck these babies in the oven with the chicken for that last half hour of cooking. Yum!

Bon appetit!