When Anne McNally—chronic hostess, Air Mail Editor at Large, and general bon vivant—is sourcing the raw materials for her famous roast chicken, she does not mess around. To procure the bird, she heads straight to Dellapietras Brooklyn, a butcher on Atlantic Avenue that specializes in dry-aged meats and free-range, locally raised poultry. (Not too local, we hope.) And while McNally occasionally serves the dish in her Brooklyn Heights apartment, it’s on very heavy rotation at her weekend home, in Litchfield County, Connecticut. “I serve it with mashed potatoes in winter, and with basmati rice, cilantro, and green peas in the summer,” she says. But, really, any old side will do.

Anne’s Roast Chicken

The ingredients:

  • a whole chicken (as free-range and organic as possible)
  • a lemon
  • handfuls of chopped thyme and rosemary
  • olive oil
  • sea salt
  • pepper

The method:

  1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
  2. Slice the lemon in half and place one half of it inside the cavity of the chicken.
  3. Sprinkle chopped thyme and rosemary all over the exterior of the bird.
  4. Drizzle approximately one-third of a cup of olive oil onto the bird until it is fully covered.
  5. Finish with generous applications of coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper.
  6. (If you’re so inclined, scatter a sliced onion and the cloves from one full head of garlic in the Dutch oven, to produce a delicious gravy.)
  7. Roast the chicken for an hour at 400 degrees, lower the heat to 350 degrees, and let it cook for an additional 15 minutes. Voilà!