Since we did not get round to doing any preparation before leaving for church yesterday morning, we needed a way of speeding up the roasting of a chicken to feed the guests who were coming round for dinner after church.

The solution was to spatchcock it, which involves cutting down the middle and flattening out. Typically you would remove the backbone but I have not got a pair of kitchen shears so opted to cut through the cartilage along the chest instead. This results in a flatter piece of meat which takes less time for every part to become properly cooked. In fact, for my “reverse spatchcock”, I also cut the wings off and cooked those alongside the rest of the bird — I wanted to avoid them sticking up too far and get burned.

The result was a tasty, well-cooked bird but with less than an hour in the oven (typically I would probably have needed an hour an a half for a chicken of that size).