Thank you Mr. Marks, Mr Spencer and Mr. Tesco

Saturday morning means, apart from the 'normal' early rise for mens group, shopping in Tesco later for all the stuff to keep us going until Tuesday when Chris does the main shop run. Milk, bread, fruit and meat.

Ah, meat.

Supermarkets seem to have adopted the concept of meal-deals from M&S - they sell you the ingredients to make a decent meal for less - in keeping with their character. So M&S will flog a pre-prepared 3 course dinner with a bottle of wine for a tenner. Tesco OTOH are happy to just let you have the basic ingredients at around half price and let you make a mess/cook great food according to your ability.

So this Saturday we found their £5 meal deal consisted of a medium size fresh chicken, a bag of Estrelle (I think) poatoes, pre-packed unwaxed lemons (yum) english Onions (not yum - usually way too strong) and a pack of picked parsley.

I wasn't aware of the offer before we hit the store, there weren't any recipes readily visible and wasn't interested in spending time searching online for how to cook stuff, so making it up as we went along seemed the way to go. It turned out so nice that I thought I'd share, in case anyone else wanted to give it a (higher-priced) go.

The main thing about this seemed to be the lemons and chicken, so I quartered up 2 of the lemons along with a couple of small cloves of garlic and stuffed the cavity fairly tightly. The chicken went into a roasting tray on a little olive oil and more oil was poured over the breast. Dried oregano was sprinkled on the breast and then each side covered with a piece of smoked bacon. This was baked at 45 min/kilo plus about 25min, and was just perfectly cooked all the way through, with the bacon being crisp and all fat rendered out.

Chris boiled (reluctantly - isn't that boring?) the potatoes and some carrots in the normal way, and they were covered in melted bertolli & parsley before serving. Gravy was just the juices thickened with cornflour - no need for extra salt or flavouring.

The result was excellent - savoury yet slightly tart sauce, tender & very juicy meat, and with a flavour that made a nice change from the usual chicken roast with bisto overtones. Worth the effort.