Roast chicken with white beans and sausage.

It is mid September and last weekend it felt like it, though the sun was shining sometimes there was a chill in the air and so we felt like something comforting to eat. Nancy had bought at hopcott's chicken so since this was a free range organic chicken I wanted to cook it simply and let the flavour of the chicken come out, and at the end of the day roast chicken is one of the best meals.

To roast the chicken, all I did was truss it and sprinkle very liberally with salt.

Ready for the oven

I placed it on a rack and cooked in a 400 oven for about an hour until the skin was crispy and no pink juices came out of the chicken.

To accompany this delicious roast chicken I had prepared a white bean stew

• 2 cups of dried white beans soaked for one hour in boiling water.
• 2 shallots or one small onion finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 4 sausages (Italian would have been good)
• 2 carrots chopped
• 4 celery stalks chopped.
• Sprig of fresh sage
• sprig of fresh thyme
• about 2 cups of chicken stock
• bunch of fresh spinach

Sweat off the shallots or onion in the olive oil and when they are transparent add the sausage.  We were using a beef sausage because that is what we had and we had a non pork eater with us.

When the sausage was just starting to brown I added the vegetables stirred everything together.

Then I added the beans, stock and chopped herbs.

The stock should be almost covering the beans, if you added the beans with out soaking first (and I have been known to do this) then just add more stock.  

This simmered for just over an hour until the beans were soft and the liquid had all been absorbed.  Though I did check every once in a while to ensure that they had not dried out, I can not tell you the number of times I have burnt beans.

Just before serving I stirred in the fresh spinach until it was just wilting.  This then provided a perfect bed for the roast chicken.  Instead of carving the chicken, I placed it on top in pieces, just because I thought it presented better that way.

We had also slow roasted some plum tomatoes in the oven for about an hour as another accompaniment.

We served this along with some Roasted Parmesan zucchini and it was a perfect early fall meal.