spatchcocked poussins with cucumber-dill salad and sweet potatoes

One of my favourite things about cooking is experimenting with new flavours and sampling new foods, but after a few years of voracious "lab work" in my kitchen, it sometimes feels as though there isn't much new to try.

Last night, I found much pleasure in learning a new technique – spatchcocking – whilst preparing Cumin-Yogurt Chicken with Cucumber Dill salad, a recipe I found on the BBC website.

The recipe called for one large chicken, already spatchcocked, which are often available in larger supermarkets. However, I wanted to spatchcock my own – and decided instead to use poussins.

Whilst spatchcocking sounds complicated, the method is simple – use a carving knife or kitchen scissors to cut out the backbone of the chicken. Then spread the chicken flat. This method reduces the cooking time for the chicken quite dramatically – especially if the spatchcocked chicken is seared in a sauté pan or griddle before roasting.

Enough of the spatchcocking talk in any case. This recipe is an extremely good one, though, as always, it calls for too much oil.

I needed only two teaspoons of olive oil for searing the poussins.

And, as for the cucumber-dill salad (which was lovely and fresh – a perfect use of dill), FOUR TABLESPOONS of oil is completely unnecessary. It would completely drown the cucumber. Rather, a few sprays of olive oil (maybe 10) is all that's necessary.

I also added some roasted sweet potato chunks in with the chicken whilst roasting – they were a fabulous counterpart to the creamy yogurt marinade and the tangy dill.

One last thing: I used a chunk of sweet potato to wipe up some dill on the plate. Wow – an absolutely stunning combination that I otherwise would have never thought of. So actually, I learned two things last night.