Chicken Thigh and Potato Traybake

Heat the oven to 200C/400F.

Pat the chicken skin dry with kitchen paper, pressing rather than wiping, until the paper comes away dry.

Season the thighs all over with 4g of the fine salt, the smoked paprika and the ground peppercorns.

Toss the potatoes, onion wedges, garlic cloves and lemon slices with 2 tbsp of the olive oil and the remaining 2g of salt in a large roasting tin.

Spread them out so no piece sits on top of another.

Use a tin big enough to take all of it in one layer with a little bare metal showing. Piled into a small tin the potatoes steam in each other's water and never brown, however long you give them.

Set the thighs skin-side up on top of the vegetables rather than among them.

Keep the skin standing clear of the tin. Juices and rendering fat collect in the base within twenty minutes, and a thigh sitting down in that liquid poaches and comes out pale and slack on top.

Rub the last tablespoon of oil over the skin.

Tuck the thyme sprigs between the thighs.

Roast for 25 minutes.

Turn the potatoes over with a spatula, leaving the chicken where it is.

Roast for a further 25-30 minutes, until the skin is deep brown and taut and the potatoes are crisp and browned at the cut faces.

Push a skewer into the thickest part of a thigh, next to the bone, and watch what runs out: clear juice means it is done, and any pink means another 10 minutes.

Check the same spot with a thermometer if you have one, keeping the tip off the bone: 74C/165F.

Squeeze the reserved lemon half over the tin.

Scatter over the parsley.

Serve straight from the tin, spooning the juices in the base over the potatoes rather than over the skin you have spent an hour crisping.