Occasional recipes: poulet au Jean le Forgeron

This is a development of Sophie Grigson's beercan chicken, reported on last year. The problem with the original is it requires the chicken to be mounted vertically on top of a beercan, which basically takes up the entire oven. And it's quite time limited, while we needed a long slow roast to happen whilst at church. Our cunning resident Swedish chef hit on the notion of a pot roast instead. So, take:

• 1 chicken
• 1 can of beer

Stuff the chicken with an onion, cloves and sundry other spices as desired. Put in a casserole dish, pour over the beer, add a similar amount of water. We also rubbed on olive oil and paprika, which was a hangover from the original recipe. Put on lid, put in the oven at mark 3 and forget about it for the next three hours. At the end of this time the chicken will be cooked to perfection, with meat so tender it falls off the bone. Literally. I lifted it out of the pot and the legs stayed behind. Proof that beer makes you legless.

I name this dish in honour of the beer used. It would work equally well as Poulet de la Chateau Nouveau Brun, Poulet aux Directeurs or Poulet au Deux Syllabes, Semblable aux Relations Anormales.