Pimp my Roast

Nothing can beat an awesome roast chicken come Sunday, but sometimes it just feels a little repetative. It may seem crazy to slag off the holy grail of Sunday goodness, but the novelty can wear off when faced with the same old roasties and 2 veg. I'm constantly finding recipes for exciting vegetable dishes and forget to try them out. I had four lady friends (actually they ain't no ladies haha) coming round for Sunday lunch and wanted to add a bit of something different to the traditional roast chicken I had in the oven. The following two dishes, beans with preserved lemons and middle eastern potatoes are super simple and a delicious accompaniment to a good old roast chook. Quantities are roughly for five hungry people.

For the bean dish, boil/steam approx 400g green beans but leave with a bit of bite. Dran and refresh in cold water. Slice the skin of 1 preserved lemon finely (discard the flesh). Make a vinagrette by mixing the juice of one lemon, a decent glug of extra virgin olive oil and 1/2 teaspoon dijon mustard and salt and pepper. Dressings must be tasted and adapted to how you personally like it. Then just toss it all together and you're done.

For the Middle Eastern Potatoes mix 200g natural yoghurt with  2 crushed garlic cloves and set aside. Fry 700g cooked potatoes (new potatoes are good, cut the bigger ones in half) in 3 tbsp olive oil until nicely browned, add 3tsp gound cumin, 1tsp cayenne pepper, and stir it in well. Add 400g spinach and stir around until wilted. Then sprinkle over 1tsp cumin seeds, 1 tsp chili flakes, and you're done. Either serve the yoghurt on the side so everyone can help themselves (tastes ace with the chicken too) or blob all over the potatoes in a serving dish.

Then make loads of mess on the table in the garden and wait for the fox to come and go nuts (because he's excited about the scraps of food left on the table, not because he's angry you made a mess...).