Italian summer roast chicken with garlic, anchovy and parsley butter

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I'm not really into traditional sytle Sunday roast dinners, but sometimes a gloriously golden roast chicken is called for.

Delicious on warm days with simple salad and some bread, and keen to inject yet more summery-ness into the chicken I decided to go a little Italian; anchovies, garlic, butter and parsley are all great friends and they help make a good free range chicken very aromatic and more succulent.

Dinner for 2 with leftovers for the following day:

One medium sized chicken (around 1.4kg)

Two lemons, quartered

2 red onions, peeled and quartered

3 carrots, peeled and halved

Groundnut oil

Sea salt and black pepper

For the butter:

150g butter

Rind of one lemon

100g anchovies, drained from their tin

A medium handful of curly parsley

6 cloves of garlic

Several scrunches of salt

Method:

- Preheat your oven to 250 degrees (or as hot as it will go)

- Blitz the ingredients for the butter together in a food processor until smooth

- Carefully using your fingers, separate the breast skin from the flesh beneath, without tearing the skin

- Using your fingers, gently scoop up and push about a third of the butter under the skin of the breasts, smoothing it down under the skin gently from on top of the skin

- Using a spoon, put the rest of the butter in the cavity, smearing it on the inside of the ribcage

- Stuff the chicken with half the red onions and all the lemon quarters

- Sit the chicken breast side down in a lightly oiled roasting tin and lightly oil the surface of the chicken, season with salt and pepper (be careful in sitting it down as you don't want all the butter to squidge out)

- Place the chicken in the oven for 10 minutes

- Remove the chicken from the tin and place the carrot halves down in the centre of the pan with their flat edges facing down - like this the carrots act as a platform for the chicken to sit sturdily on and for its fat to drip out and into the carrots (tasty and stops it being overly greasy)

- Place the chicken onto the carrots and lightly oil the skin, salt and pepper it and surround the chicken with the rest of the onions

- Bake in the oven for a further 10 minutes then remove the chicken and turn the heat down to 175 degrees

- Add a glass of white wine to the roasting tin and now tent the top of the chicken with tin foil (or if your roasting tin has a lid, put that on) return it to the oven and cook for an hour and twenty minutes

- Use a meat thermomitor to make sure the chicken is cooked, but once it's done, remove it and let it rest for 10 minutes before carvin

- Serve with salad and warm bread