Mandarin roast chicken with celery hearts

The seasoning ingredients
Mandarins and peel soaked in water underneath the rack
The roast - before baking
End product - yum

So I wanted to make some kinda chicken roast... so I pulled out the chicken and some ingredients I had on hand and whipped up this recipe. The chicken came out surprisingly tender, fragrant, and flavorful so I'm definitely sticking to this recipe from now on =]

Ingredients:

- 1/2 a chicken (just double the ingredients if you use a whole chicken - I just happen to only need to feed two peopl and had half a chicken in the freezer)

- 2 tbsp honey

- 2 tbsp dry sherry / chinese cooking wine (I had wolfberry wine on hand so I used that instead)

- 1 tbsp white vinegar

- 3 tbsp cornstarch

- 1/2 cup parsley (broken up by hand)

- 2 tsp sesame seed oil

- 2 mandarins / clementines

- 2 celery hearts

- 3 slices ginger (2 mm thick)

- 2 tbsp soy sauce

- 1/3 cup hoisin sauce (oyster sauce) mixed with 2 tbsp water

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.

1. Peel mandarins and place peels face down and 1 1/2 of the mandarins (pulled apart and crushed) in some water in a roasting pan, place rack on top of pan.

2. Pierce chicken all over with a fork so that the sauce can soak in.

3. Mix together honey, wine, cornstarch, sesame seed oil, soy sauce, and vinegar. Brush onto chicken inside and out.

4. Stuff celery hearts, remaining half of a mandarin, and ginger inside the chicken (if using half a chicken tie up with some kitchen string so the pieces stay in - if possible, this isn't necessary).

5. Sprinkle parsley all over.

6. Place in oven and bake for 45 minutes (until golden).

7. Turn up heat to 400 degrees fahrenheit, turn chicken over and bake for 30 minutes.

8. Open up chicken and remove celery, mandarin, and ginger - bake for another 20 minutes.

9. Remove from oven and slice up while hot (don't burn yourself :p)

10. brush with hoisin sauce and water and serve.