5-Spice Roast Chicken

This is another family recipe that has been a favorite ever since I can remember; it's pretty simple, with fantastic results. I never realized how lucky I was to have a mom who could take two different cultures and blend the best characteristics and flavors of each into fabulous meals. I did know we were different though... Whenever my dad's family came over, they thought she was cooking American food and whenever my mom's family visited, they thought it was Vietnamese. Kenny and I thought it was perfectly normal, so I'm not sure what that makes us. Just plain old eurasians, maybe?

Ingredients:
- 1 whole roasting chicken
- 1/2 teaspoon Ginger Powder
- 2 tablespoons Salt
- 2 tablespoons Pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon Five-Spice Powder.

- 1/2 cup Honey
- 1/4 cup Soy Sauce

Roast:
Preheat oven to 425*.
Rinse the chicken, and remove the giblets and any other unwanted items that are sometimes included in the chicken's cavity. Mix all the dry spice ingredients in a small bowl, then rub the whole chicken (inside and out) with the dry rub. See if you can get some under the skin, between the skin and the meat. Place in a roasting pan, preferably one not too much wider in circumference than the chicken, with at least a two-inch edge; you want the juices to be able to gather, and not spread out over the whole pan and dry up.
Bake for an hour. Mix together honey and soy sauce (you can heat the honey slightly to help it incorporate) and pour over the top of the chicken. Bake for 10-15 more minutes.
Basically, you want to pour the honey mixture about 10 minutes before you take the chicken out; so if you have a big chicken and it needs to cook longer, wait a little longer before you pour the sauce on. You get the idea.

We usually served this with jasmine rice and a green vegetable (asparagus with garlic and butter...mmmm..). Make sure you collect the juices from the roasting pan, skim the extra grease off the top, and keep the sauce to pour on your rice. Yum.