Festive Roast Chicken with sage stuffing, roast potatoes and sautéed green beans

Monday night was always a night for roasts in our household. Being a family that placed a lot of store by food, I think it came from the school of thought that if you started the week off with a good , sturdy roast, then you were more or less set, what ever events would unfold themselves later on in the week.

This Monday proved to be rather a different reason than the fact that the frivolities of the weekend had  passed and that we were now firmly ensconced in the working week. Truth be told there seems to be very little work to do and since it is the festive season, but more so this Monday was a day to celebrate because my sister had arrived from Oz and one of my best friends had arrived from London.

So there we are, when we celebrate, we eat and this Monday called for more than just an ordinary roast chicken, but a festive one.

A note on roast chicken: It is the easiest thing in the world to cook. Once it is in the oven, your work is done. 

One of the flavours that rings true of festivities and the Christmas season has to be a sage stuffing. I love sage, I have to say and have been planning a blog on the herb for some time – oh, how evert-day life gets in the way! -– because it can be used in so many dishes to impart its somewhat fresh but earthy flavour. And where better to start than in a sage stuffing?

So for the stuffing:

2 thick slices of seed bread.

1 celery stalk

¼ onion

2 rahsers of bacon

1 T lemon zest

1 T dried sage

salt and pepper

This is easy, easy easy:

Make breadcrumbs out of the two slices of bread in a blender and pour them into a bowl

Zap up the onion and celery and add that to the breadcrumbs. Do the same with the bacon.

Season with salt and pepper and add the sage and lemon zest. Mix the whole lot up and then put ¾ of the stuffing into the cavity of the chicken and then place the last quarter carefully under the skin that covers the chicken breasts. Be careful not to break the skin as you pack the stuffing. Putting the stuffing here not only creates additional basting for the white meat that can dry out, it also provides extra flavouring.

Place the bird in a roasting dish. Roughly chop up the rest of the onion and place around the chicken. Cook at 180 degrees for about ½ hour.

For the rest: As many carrots and potatoes as you need

In the mean-time, peel as many potatoes that you may need and then proportionately same amount of carrots. After the ½ hour, throw these into the same baking pan, adding a few glugs of olive oil and a generous grinding of salt and black pepper and some sprigs of rosemary. Return to the oven and allow to cook for another hour at 180 degrees.

For the beans:

1 pkt green beans

1 truss vine baby tomatoes

5 T sunflower seeds or flaked almonds

1 t mustard seeds

2 T butter

1 T olive oil

In a pan, toast the sunflower and mustard seeds. Add the tomatoes, and then the butter and the olive oil.  Add the beans and toss. Season with salt and pepper and toss again. Remove from the heat.

To check that the chicken is cooked make a small incision between the thigh and the body and if the juices run clear then the chicken is done.

Lay the beans on a platter. Then put the chicken in the center and surround with the veggies that you've just roasted.

I always make the gravy in the roasting pan that I made the chicken and the veg in. For one thing there are all the spices and the drippings and the flavour of those now wonderfully caramalised onions!

Carve the chicken and voilá!

Oh, a note on the wine:  we started on a nice bottle of bubbly with a little bit of finger food. There must be Mediterranean blood in me because we ended up eating at 9:30 pm - but that is no matter because we were chatting and there were hors d'ouvres. We opened a bottle of merlot to have with the dish and it went down extremely well even though we were eating white meat. Sage is quite a strong flavour and so it compliments reds quite well.  You don't always have to follow the white wine / white meat rule!

A little Tuesday dinner at Bizerca Bistro

An odd name to choose for a restaurant, but the evening did turn out to be a little on the odd side, so I guess that that was fitting then.

I was delighted to be picked up for the evening even though my companion's driver was evidently off that night and because he stayed almost adjacent to the restaurant, was told that I was lucky to get a lift. None-the-less, I could live with this considering he was a fellow gourmand who had wooed me into giving him my number with rose water-flavoured promises of an eight course tasting menu at Cellars-Hohenort's Greenhouse.


There was a big walk going on in Cape Town central that held up the traffic and which seemed to complicate parking arrangements. These were eventually reached after circumventing the venue, via Heerengracht Traffic circle... and then through the Adderly street circle because we couldn't get around the first, driving through a police barrier (kindly moved aside by a bergie) and then reversing 100 m down Hans Strijdom Avenue (happily not busy because I assume that the barrier that we had driven through, had now been replaced by an official. I fear that this was something of an oddity for my companion, who is a Joburger and who assumes that one always parks at a venue and not near it.

But, the bistro was just down the road and my heels, high but sensible (as a seasoned Capetionian, I am accustomed to find the first available parking within 500m and then walking to my destination)  were up for the little stroll down to Tilbugh square, where we found ourselves at Bizerca.

The  restaurant is elegant and we were lavishly welcomed by the host in French as we were swept inside and taken to our table.

Starters and mains were chalked on blackboards but we were given the seasonal menu as well. The asparagus with prawns and hollandaise sauce immediately caught my attention. I was in for a treat I thought smugly.

The wine selection is excellent, though don't expect a sauvignon blanc or a wooded chardonnay by the glass.

None the less, the waiter waxed lyrical about the hollandiase sauce pairing with the viognier, which was slightly more on the melted butter side and less on the sauce side and not all together that tasty. And then there were little cubes of tart tomato which I snobbishly ignored and left on my plate. The viognier which the waiter recommended was excellent and a beautiful honey colour, but not with the starter where it became overly acidic. The unwooded chardonnay, whcih was more acidic at first might have mellowed out and proved better at pulling the dish through, especially with the tomato. (Which might have been nice if they were boiled in cream. I can't really comment on the prawns in the dish since they were hardly there.

My companion's veal tongue looked very interesting, but I wasn't sure if it was beyond the boundries of politesse to ask for a taste. He was definitely enjoying it so I didn't want to interrupt.

The courses were well paced and there was a great deal of chit-chat and laughing, as we talked of travel and art and, well, food like old friends.

The main course however was superb! The beef bourguignon was delicious and the malbec which we had with it complemented it superbly! The beef was tender and the little mushrooms, onions, carrots and potatoes that attended the beef were all cooked to perfection. I have to say that I could not leave any of it behind. I did briefly consider mopping up the sauce with a bit of bread but then my companion did that for me.

And how could I deny him the pleasure of tasting that delicious sauce?

Dessert was a surprise as the berry panacotta trifle came in a martini glass. Quite pleasantly it came with an aside of berry sorbet that had a shot of vodka at the bottom of the glass.

Refreshing. I always like a bit of a digestif – in fact I had been craving a vodka martini the whole evening because I had just signed a contract and as everybody knows, a vodka martini is the only way to celebrate. But I fear that the vodka perhaps did me in. Oh who am I kidding? When I mix white and red wine, even with food, I'm a cheap date and I was having a very entertaining time.

That said, the espresso was excellent. Though it does mean that I am still up at 1am writing this post.

Mr Vidulich, you will be pleased to know that after all, that you were indeed right in your estimation and that I would still give the place a 6 out of 10.

 A little harsh, I know, but mostly becuase of the aircon that was suddenly set to artic blast at around 10:30. And that we were constantly asked which dish we had ordered. So service could do with a bit of a dusting up.

No lingering there then, unless you went to go and peruse the cellar, which was slightly warmer than the 14 degrees it should have been but a more comfortable temperature than the restaurant itself, like that of a sunning room in fact, in comparison to the rest of the restaurant. I could have happily sat down and opened one of the expensive bottles of wine (a bottle of boujoulais and the Russell-Hamilton pinot noir caught my eye) and enjoyed it in there. Indeed both the location and temperature were conducive to being a little on the mischievous side - except the walls were glass and the wine would have cost a fortune if we had been caught at it!