Level-up your roast chicken with this prized recipe from a hatted restaurant

Growing up in New Zealand, Sundays were always about mum’s classic lamb roast, says chef Dave Verheul of hatted Melbourne restaurant Embla.

“Even after I’d gotten older and moved to another town, I always tried to be front and centre when she brought it out of the oven,” he writes in his new cookbook On Sundays.

“No matter what mischief you’d put yourself through that week, that meal – and the conversations you had around it – made you whole again.”

Verheul’s new collection of recipes centres on this same theme: Sunday lunches, often seasonal or with a sense of occasion, made for social feasting.

“While these recipes might be a little more involved than my mum’s roast, this book is about that same feeling and being able to share it with the people you love.”

Here are two recipes to try at home.

Roast chicken with sauce vin John

Vin Jaune is a classic French wine that’s oxidated and aged – almost sherry-like – and so strong that it’s quite hard to drink a lot of on its own. But with a little cream, butter and a few aromats, it becomes a legendary sauce for serving with chicken. Sadly, Vin Jaune is also rippingly expensive, so we broke down its flavour profile and gave it a more approachable name.

INGREDIENTS

• 1 × 1.6kg chicken
• 50g sherry
• 10g roasted garlic
• 10g Dijon mustard
• 1g fenugreek seeds soaked in 20g water overnight
• 100g chicken stock
• 20g butter

METHOD

1. Place the chicken on a cutting board, breast side up. Using a sharp knife, trim the wings off at the joint and remove the wishbone. Halve the chicken by cutting lengthways between the breasts and down over the ribcage. Lay the half flat, skin side down, and remove the bone on the leg. Repeat with the other half. Reserve all trim to make stock on another day.
2. When you are ready to cook, preheat a wood-fired oven to 450C. Failing that, a gas pizza oven or convection oven at 220C will work.
3. Heat a cast-iron pan big enough to fit the half-chicken. Lightly oil the pan and season the chicken’s skin with salt. Sear, skin side down, over medium heat for 5 minutes or until it is starting to get golden brown. Place the pan into the oven and cook for about 14 minutes. Remove the pan, flip the chicken over so that it is skin side up and leave in a warm spot (on top of your oven or something with radiant heat so it doesn’t cool down quickly) to finish cooking through about 58 minutes.
4. When you are ready to serve, give the chicken a flash through the hot oven for 5 minutes, remove and transfer to a serving plate.
5. Make the sauce in the same pan by putting it over medium heat and deglazing with the sherry. Once the alcohol has cooked off, add the garlic, mustard, fenugreek (including the soaking water), stock and butter. Bring everything to a simmer and reduce to a light coating consistency, then season with salt. Finally, spoon the glaze over the chicken and serve.

Serves 4

Choccy ripple-misu (aka “The Rippa”)

This dessert is our mash-up of a classic tiramisu and the much-loved Australian choccy ripple cake. It’s bogan meets Italy, kind of like driving through Portofino in a VL Commodore, with just as much impact. We’ll be making all the components, from the biscuits to the coffee and mascarpone cream. Get this into the fridge the day before so it has time to do its thing.

INGREDIENTS

Chocolate biscuit

• 150g unsalted butter, softened
• 300g sugar
• 1 egg
• 200g plain flour
• 80g cocoa
• 20g instant freeze-dried coffee powder
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• ¼ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt

Marsala caramel

• 250g marsala, plus 25g extra
• 200g sugar
• 900g espresso, plus 25g extra

Mascarpone mousse

• 5 egg yolks
• 5g gold-grade gelatine sheets
• 200g sugar
• 50g marsala

• 5 egg whites
• 90g sugar

Mascarpone cream

• 600g mascarpone
• 300g cream
• 50g marsala

To finish

• cocoa powder, for dusting

METHOD

Chocolate biscuit

1. Preheat an oven to 160C fan-forced (180C conventional). Line several baking trays with baking paper. Add the butter and sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and whip until the mix has a creamy consistency. Add the egg and beat until combined. Sift all the dry ingredients and add to the mixer bowl, then slowly beat until fully combined.
2. At this point, you will need to decide which serving dish you will build this dessert in. Divide the dough into four, then roll each piece out to the same size and shape as the final serving dish. The dough needs to be 4mm thick when raw. Bake the biscuits on the prepared trays for 6 minutes, then remove to cool.

Marsala caramel

1. Place the first three ingredients in a small pot and stir over low heat to dissolve the sugar. Bring to the boil and skim well. Cook over medium heat until it has reduced to a thick caramel consistency, then freshen with the second measures of marsala and coffee. Chill.

Mascarpone mousse

1. Place the yolks in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. Place the gelatine sheet in a small metal bowl and cover with cold water. Leave to bloom for 5 minutes, then drain off the water. Place the sugar and 100g water in a small pot and warm over low heat until the sugar dissolves. Turn the mixer to high speed and turn the heat up on the pot. Cook the sugar to 117C, then slowly pour into the mixer while it is running. Once you have added all the sugar and water mixture, knock the speed back to medium. Put the bowl of gelatine over a low heat until it dissolves, then slowly pour it into the yolk mix with the marsala. Reduce speed to low while you make the rest.
2. Whip the whites to soft peaks using a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, slowly adding the sugar. If you don’t have a stand mixer, whisk them by hand.

Mascarpone cream

1. To make the mascarpone cream, add the mascarpone, cream and marsala to a bowl and whip to soft peaks. When you have prepared all three elements (yolk mix, egg whites and mascarpone cream), gently fold the mascarpone cream into the yolk mix, then finally fold in the egg whites. Season with more marsala if needed.

To assemble

1. Grab your final dish. Working in layers, start with a layer of mousse, then drizzle (for lack of a better word) the caramel over, then add one of the biscuits. Repeat until you finish with a layer of the mousse, then chill for a minimum of 4 hours so that the mousse sets and the biscuits hydrate slightly. When you’re ready to serve, dust with some good-quality cocoa.

Serves 4

This is an edited extract from On Sundays by Dave Verheul, published by Hardie Grant Books, RRP $55. Photography by Kristoffer Paulsen. Buy now