You need: a chicken, an oven dish, a knife or a fork, a diced garlic clove, salt and pepper and a ton of fresh herbs.
Pre heat oven to 200C.
Get the chicken out. It can be a kosher chicken, or it can be a grain-fed non-kosher chicken, or it can be a fancy organic chicken. Remove any string or plastic sheets. Put it in the oven dish, legs up. Pull the legs apart, revealing the inside cavity. Remove any giblets, neck or other inside bits left inside.
Dice the garlic clove and put it inside the chicken. If you like, you can also dice a small onion and put it in, but it isn’t necessary. Wash the herbs and put them on the chopping board, then chop them roughly. Then stuff them into the chicken. I used a large handful of parsley, and a large handful of mixed thyme, oregano, sage and basil. If you don’t have any fresh herbs on your balcony, or if it is winter, I’d suggest buying a bunch of parsley and maybe another of basil.
Wipe your hands on the outside of the chicken. They’ll be covered in little bits of herbs, from when you picked the herbs up to put them in the chicken. Wash your hands, and sprinkle the outside of the chicken with salt and pepper. Then stab the breast four times and each leg twice, using either a fork or, if none of your forks are kosher and you want it to be kosher, a sharp kosher knife.
Put the chicken in the oven and bake for an hour and three quarters. OK, bake for 20 minutes a pound plus 20 minutes, but with an ordinary chicken, that comes to an hour and three quarters. I did two chickens like this together in the big dish for two hours, and that worked. (N.B. Pounds and kilos are different!)
Serve with, well, anything. Vegetables baked around it, or potatoes, or rice, or pasta, or salad, or bread, or… When serving, carve the chicken up and offer people some of the herbs too.
The meat of the chicken will taste all through of the herbs, of summer and sunshine and tasty good things.
In winter, squeeze a lemon over the chicken and drizzle a teaspoon of honey over that. People need a little sweetness in winter.
