Cockerel stuffed with citrus fruits

Here's how a simple recipe can be turned into a real feast. Get yourself a nice cockerel, possibly raised free-range and fed with healthy feed. Also buy, or make, some salt-preserved citrus fruits such as lemon, lime and clementines. Finally, take a small onion, and you're almost done! A few simple ingredients for an absolutely finger-licking recipe, perfect for two people, and really quite cheap! What more do you want from life? Add a nice green salad, fresh and crisp, and your Sunday lunch for two is served! This recipe is also ideal for Christmas lunch or as a special family dinner. You could buy a pair of them, or substitute a turkey for the cockerel, just follow the recipe and feed a crowd! Serve with a nice side dish of roasted potatoes and vegetables. If you have never made this kind of recipe, don’t panic: it practically cooks itself and doesn’t require much effort. Below the salt layer, the dish maintains its nutritional properties and retains a greater richness of flavour and fragrance. As soon as you break the salt shell, you will be literally overrun by all the delicious citrus fruit aromas from the cockerel stuffing.

Clean the cockerel well, and smear its insides with a teaspoon of chili paste and then stuff it with pieces of salted citrus fruits. Also add some coarsely chopped onion to the inside of the cockerel. Let it marinate for at least an hour. When the time’s up, put the marinated cockerel in a baking dish, sprinkle with coarse salt and bake at 180°C for 40 minutes.