Roast Chicken with Potato and Celeriac Rosti

Stephen’s mum was here for dinner last night and since it was the last evening before she returned home to South Africa, we opted for a traditional roast chicken. I was a bit disorientated while cooking though (due to yet another visit to the dentist) and forgot about the roast potatoes. I’d been thinking about potato and celeriac rosti for a while though and since I had both ingredients, decided to do that instead.

We’ve had intermittent success with rosti in the past and I almost gave up this time when the potato became almost liquid in consistency, this was largely due to the fact that the only grater in the house is a Microplane that I bought to replace our cheap, dangerous metal effort that’s supposed to be suitable for cheese (and therefore potato I assumed) but is actually only any good for very fine Parmesan. Knowing I couldn’t serve my future MIL just chicken and parsnips though, I persevered. I managed to squeeze a lot of water out of the potato which boosted my confidence and the celeriac behaved a lot better.

By the time I’d combined the two together (quite a long time after I’d started, note to self: buy a bigger grater), Stephen was home and he shaped the mixture into rosti-like patties and began to fry them. This was the second mistake: the patties were too big which meant the ratio of crunchy outsides to soft insides was skew.

We fried the rosti until they were browned on both sides and then finished the cooking in the oven, a technique I think would work well if your mixture wasn’t hideously glutinous to begin with. Since ours were, the insides ended up resembling wallpaper paste in both texture and colour. So, quite a large failure really. And I burnt the parsnips. The chicken was good though.