Ad hoc at Home: Roasted Chicken on a bed of Root Vegetables

So, when I do these Ad Hoc posts I know it's definitely not fancy food and that's sort of the point of this secondary Thomas Keller restaurant.  It's a small place where they do family style meals and the recipes reflect that.

This particular recipe would be ideal at a fall festival or family gathering with a bonfire in the crisp October evening, especially since that's the perfect time to get some of the root vegetables that are used, even though they are available year round now.

So the bed of root vegetables included leeks, turnips, rutabaga, red potatoes, carrots, garlic, onion and thyme.  I cut the veggies into their constituent parts and tossed everything with olive oil salt and pepper.

Obviously, given the title of this post there would be chicken involved.  This is a whole chicken that I stuffed with some garlic and thyme and then coated it with oil, salt and pepper.

Once seasoned everything went into a roasting pan and then into a 475 degree oven for a half hour then I turned the oven down to 400 degrees for another hour.

And when it was done it looked like this. From there I let it rest for about 20 minutes before carving.

The final plate.  The chicken was delicious, the veggies, not so much, they did not cook all the way through.  This will be one I probably make again, but maybe in the fall.