Roast chicken and a knockout sauce: a chef’s best Sunday lunch recipe

Any random assortment of people can sit down around a roast chook and instantly become a temporary family, says Dave Verheul of Embla.

Jill DupleixFood writer

Mar 22, 2024 – 5.00am

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Chefs love Sundays. Who doesn’t love their one day off a week? For Dave Verheul of Melbourne’s wood-fired wine bar Embla, “Sundays are laid-back, low pressure and inherently special” – the perfect combination of time, motivation and people.

He rates Sundays so highly that he has written an entire book of recipes to suit every Sunday mood and type of gathering throughout the year. And the most iconic dish in On Sundays: Long Lunches Through the Seasons, he says, has to be roast chicken.

Roast chicken with sauce vin John, by Dave Verheul. Kristoffer Paulsen

“It hits your memory banks as well as your taste buds,” he says. “What I love is that any random assortment of people can sit down around a roast chook and instantly become a kind of temporary family.”

His tips are valid. “Just start with a really good bird, season it properly, and pay lots of attention when cooking it,” he says. “And use a cast-iron pan instead of a roasting tray, for super-crisp skin.”

But it’s the wine-based sauce that’s the real knockout, typical of the chef’s endless mission to intensify everyday flavours.

“Vin jaune is a classic French wine that’s oxidated and aged, almost sherry-like. But with a little cream and butter, it becomes a legendary sauce for chicken,” says Verheul.

“Sadly, it’s also rippingly expensive, so we broke down its flavour profile and recreated it with sherry, mustard and fenugreek, calling it sauce vin John.”

The best thing about Sunday lunch, he says, is that the food isn’t so finicky that the cook is out of the conversation for too long. “If you wanted to be stuck in a kitchen while others have all the fun,” he says, “you’d be a chef.”

Roast chicken with sauce vin John

Degree of difficulty ★★☆ | Serves 4

Ingredients

1.6kg chicken
Sea salt to taste
50ml sherry
2 cloves of roasted garlic, see tip
1 tsp Dijon mustard
Half tsp fenugreek seeds, soaked in 1 tbsp water overnight
100ml chicken stock
1 tbsp butter

Method

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 for another day.

To cook, heat a wood-fired oven to 450C. Failing that, use a gas pizza oven or convection oven at 220C.

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 a medium heat for 5 minutes, or until it starts to brown.

This feature appears in the April issue of AFR Magazine out on March 22. Damian Bennett

Place the pan into the oven and cook for around 14 minutes. Remove the pan and flip the chicken over so that it is skin side up and leave in a warm spot to finish cooking through, around 5–8 minutes.

When you are ready to serve, give the chicken a flash through the hot oven for 5 minutes, then remove and transfer to a serving plate.

Make the sauce in the same pan by putting it over a 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.

Tip: To roast garlic, cut 1cm off the top of a whole head of garlic to reveal the cloves, drizzle with 1 tsp olive oil, scatter with sea salt, and wrap in kitchen foil. Bake at 180C for 1 hour until soft. When cool, squeeze out the nutty garlic puree.

On Sundays: Long Lunches Through the Seasons by Dave Verheul is published by Hardie Grant Books, April 2024.

The April issue of AFR Magazine is out on Friday, March 22 inside The Australian Financial Review. Follow AFR Mag on Instagram.

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