Hi, it’s me, your favorite disappearing blogger! I’ve been tied up with work and taking care of the doggies while Gil’s away this week, but I didn’t want to let too much time pass before posting about this heavenly dish – skillet rosemary chicken. I still haven’t quite figured out what makes it so wonderful because there’s nothing out of the ordinary about it. I mean, combining chicken with lemon, potatoes, garlic & rosemary…

STOP THE PRESSES!

ROSEMARY! Why didn’t anyone in the history of the world ever think of adding rosemary to chicken?! Brilliant!

But really, there’s just something about it that knocked my socks off.

It’s probably the copious chicken fat the potatoes and mushrooms roast in, now that I think about it. Mmmmmm….

recipe after the jump

Skillet Rosemary Chicken lightly adapted from Food Network

If I plan ahead next time, I’ll probably marinate the chicken for a couple of hours before continuing with the recipe. The skin is quite flavorful but if you eat your chicken skinless, you’ll be relying on the potatoes and mushrooms for most of the impact. Not that this is a huge problem…

3/4 pound small red-skinned potatoes, halved, or quartered if large
Kosher salt
2 sprigs fresh rosemary, plus 1 1/2 tablespoons leaves
2 cloves garlic, smashed
Pinch of red pepper flakes
Juice of 2 lemons (squeezed halves reserved)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4-6 skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs (6 to 8 ounces each)
10 ounces cremini mushrooms, halved

Preheat the oven to 450. Cover the potatoes with cold water in a saucepan and salt the water. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and cook until tender, about 8 minutes; drain and set aside.

Pile the rosemary leaves, garlic, 2 teaspoons salt and the red pepper flakes on a cutting board, then mince and mash into a paste using a large knife. Transfer the paste to a bowl. Stir in the juice of 1 lemon and the olive oil. Add the chicken and turn to coat.

Heat a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken, skin-side down, cover and cook until the skin browns, about 5 minutes. Remove chicken from pan; add the mushrooms and potatoes to the skillet, place chicken over mushrooms and potatoes and drizzle with any marinade remaining in the bowl and the juice of the remaining lemon.

Add the rosemary sprigs and the squeezed lemon halves to the skillet; transfer to the oven and roast, uncovered, until the chicken is cooked through and the skin is crisp, 20 to 25 minutes.

Sometimes it’s best just to keep things simple, especially when trick-or-treating starts before 4pm around here. Zuni roast chicken, mixed greens salad with parm & persimmon and sautéed mixed mushrooms.

recipe (and doggie Halloween pics) after the jump

Otis loved RuPaul’s Drag Race as much as anyone.

Technically, he’s Princess Leia, but sans buns, he’d do a mean Elvis.

SuperRu!

Superman and Princess Leia apprehend the international jewel thief.

Zuni Roast Chicken courtesy of The Zuni Cafe Cookbook via the NBC website

The length of this recipe seems daunting, I know; the instructions are detailed and precise, but not difficult or time-consuming to follow in any way. If you haven’t made this yet, please don’t be put off by the number of words, but do follow them to the letter. You’ll be rewarded with the best roast chicken you’ve ever made.

One small chicken, 2-3/4 to 3-1/2-pounds
4 tender sprigs fresh thyme, marjoram, rosemary or sage, about 1/2 inch long
Salt (about 3/4 teaspoon per pound of chicken)
About 1 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
A little water

Seasoning the chicken
(Can be done 1 to 3 days before serving; for 3-1/4- to 3-1/2-pound chickens, at least 2 days)

Remove and discard the lump of fat inside the chicken. Rinse the chicken and pat very dry inside and out. Be thorough — a wet chicken will spend too much time steaming before it begins to turn golden brown.

Approaching from the edge of the cavity, slide a finger under the skin of each of the breasts, making 2 little pockets. Now use the tip of your finger to gently loosen a pocket of skin on the outside of the thickest section of each thigh. Using your finger, shove and herb sprig into each of the 4 pockets.

Season the chicken liberally all over with salt and pepper (we use ¾ teaspoon of sea salt per pound of chicken). Season the thick sections a little more heavily than the skinny ankles and wings. Sprinkle a little of the salt just inside the cavity, on the backbone, but don’t otherwise worry about seasoning the inside. Twist and tuck the wing tips behind the shoulders. Cover loosely and refrigerate.

Roasting the chicken

Preheat the oven to 475F. Depending on the size, efficiency and accuracy of your oven, and the size of your bird, you may need to adjust the heat to as high as 500F or as low as 450F during the course of roasting the chicken to get it to brown properly. If that proves to be the case, begin at that temperature the next time you roast a chicken. If you have a convection function on your oven, use it for the first 30 minutes; it will enhance browning, and may reduce overall cooking by 5 to 10 minutes.

Choose a shallow flameproof roasting pan or dish barely larger than the chicken, or use a 10-inch skillet with an all-metal handle. Preheat the pan over medium heat. Wipe the chicken dry and set it breast side up in the pan. It should sizzle.

Place pan in the center of the oven and listen and watch for it to start browning within 20 minutes. If it doesn’t, raise the temperature progressively until it does. The skin should blister, but if the chicken begins to char, or the fat is smoking, reduce temperature by 25 degrees. After about 30 minutes, turn the bird over — drying the bird and preheating the pan should keep the skin from sticking. Roast for another 10 to 20 minutes, depending on size, then flip back over to recrisp the breast skin, another 5 to 10 minutes. Total oven time will be 45 minutes to an hour.

Finishing and serving the chicken

Remove the chicken from the oven and turn off the heat.

Lift the chicken from the roasting pan and set on a plate. Carefully pour the clear fat from the roasting pan, leaving the lean drippings behind. Add about a tablespoon of water to the hot pan and swirl it.

Slash the stretched skin between the thighs and breasts of the chicken, then tilt the bird and plate over the roasting pan to drain the juice into the drippings.

Set the chicken in a warm spot to rest for 5 minutes. The meat will become more tender and uniformly succulent as it cools.

Set a platter in the oven to warm for a minute or two.

Tilt the roasting pan and skim the last of the fat. Place over medium-low heat, add any juice that has collected under the chicken, and bring to a simmer. Stir and scrape to soften any hard golden drippings. Taste-the juices will be extremely flavorful. Cut the chicken into pieces and serve.

Mixed Greens Salad with Sherry Vinaigrette

Serves 2

I can’t even believe I’m giving you a recipe for this, but it’s really become one of my favorite things to eat lately so I wanted to share. The sherry vinaigrette softens and offsets the dense greens with a touch of sweetness and the fruit/cheese combo adds a nice salty-sweet dimension to an otherwise plain salad. This recipe is for the salad pictured above, but feel free to play around. I’ve also tried it with toasted walnuts, dried cranberries, gorgonzola, pears, apples, grapes… well, you get the idea. But definitely use chard; it’s a wonder in a salad.

1 large shallot, minced
2 teaspoons sherry vinegar
4 teaspoons olive oil
a squirt of lemon
salt to taste
Dijon mustard, if you like
a drop of honey, if the dressing is too tart
a handful or two each of different greens (spinach, mizuna, arugula and swiss chard pictured above)
1 fuyu persimmon, cored and chopped
Parmesan shavings

In a small bowl, let the shallot sit in the sherry vinegar for a few minutes while you tear, wash and dry the greens. (I’ve read that the brief soak takes the edge off the shallots. Don’t know if that’s really true, but I always do it because it makes sense in my work flow.) Add the olive oil, lemon and salt and mix vigorously with a fork until emulsified. Taste. Add Dijon mustard and/or honey if you like.

Toss greens with dressing, adding a final layer of fruit and cheese before serving.

A couple of months ago, I was inspired by Maggie Mason’s Mighty Life List (a Bucket List for the young, healthy and positive-minded) to make my own (though I’m not so young and some might argue the other two points). As you probably could guess, quite a few cooking-related items are on there, despite their relative unimportance to the bigger stuff. But I’d argue that perfecting my smoker technique or turning out a sublime focaccia could add more value to my daily existence than seeing the Northern Lights, becoming fluent in French or going on an Auntie Mame-style journey around the world. (OK, maybe not that last one, but you get the idea.)

Not one to dawdle when I have a goal in mind, I took my first steps to making the Weber Smokey Mountain my bitch this weekend. I’ve selected Gary Wiviott as my mentor/guru/pitmaster for this journey, based on Jason Perlow’s review of his program at Off the Broiler. I used my smoker a few times last year with imperfect results, so I consider myself enough of a novice to follow Wiviott’s program to the letter (begging forgiveness for changing the marinade to something more of my liking). The entire thrust of this book is that everything you know about BBQ is dead wrong and what you really need to do is learn to build a proper fire, arrange the meat correctly, leave it the hell alone and trust your instincts. No futzing with a fancy thermometer or different fire-building techniques for different meats for him; because I run from complicated grilling/smoking setups, this works wonderfully for me too. He gives explicit instructions in the book, so I’m confident that someday I’ll be able to get all Jedi on that BBQ.

Anyway. I marinated chicken halves in harissa with some olive oil, sauteed onion and the juice of a small (and old and somewhat withered-but-still-going-strong) lemon. Building the fire proved a bit, um, challenging with the windy day I chose, but I eventually got the whole thing built to spec, assembled the smoker, and let it go. An hour and a half later, I opened the lid to find The Most Gorgeous Chicken I’ve ever seen (at least at my house):

Daaaaamn…

After the chicken came off at the perfect temperature and at the exact moment Wiviott said to start checking for doneness, I threw a few hard boiled eggs on the top grate for smoked deviled eggs. As a mini experiment, I peeled three of them and heavily cracked the shells of the other three before smoking, hoping to get a Chinese tea egg effect on the whites. (It didn’t work; the eggs were much less smoky-tasting even with the cracks in the shells, so live and learn.) Because the fire was so low after 90 minutes with the chicken, I smoked the eggs for about 45 minutes, until the shelled ones turned a gorgeous amber color.

Homemade mayo has been vexing me lately, separating at the drop of a hat just to mock me. For these eggs, I wanted to give it one more try, and used the milk mayonnaise recipe from Food52 (which I’ve just joined – yay!). It came out thick, creamy, thoroughly delicious and was much, much easier for me to make than egg-based mayos (but also much, much messier).

I made a couple of fillings for the eggs and was pretty happy with both (though I lean more toward pickle flavor in my deviled eggs – personal preference).

with sun-dried tomatoes, up front

also, chives

So all told, it was a pretty good weekend for the Life List (which I’ll have to rename for myself sometime). Changes I’ll make for next time:

• Marinate chicken for 8-12 hours — it was a pretty powerful marinade, but didn’t come through as strongly as I wanted, which was also the fault of…
• Use pecan wood instead of hickory for chicken — hickory was delicious, but overpowered the marinade
• Peel all eggs before smoking (and make the deviled eggs right away — a night in the fridge didn’t do them any favors in the looks department)

Recipes after the jump

Smoked Deviled Eggs — Sun-dried Tomato Version

12 smoked hard-boiled eggs
1/2 cup mayo
2 tablespoons sundried tomatoes packed in oil, or to taste
4 teaspoons Dijon
4 teaspoons capers, plus a splash of brine
1 medium shallot, minced
salt & pepper to taste
smoked paprika, for dusting

Cut smoked eggs in half lengthwise, scoop the yolks into a small bowl and mash with a fork. Mix in the rest of the ingredients until thoroughly combined and creamy, then fill the egg whites with the mixture. Dust with smoked paprika.

Smoked Deviled Eggs — Chive and Hot Pickle Version

12 smoked hard-boiled eggs
1/2 cup mayo
1 medium shallot, minced
4 teaspoons Dijon
2 tablespoons chives
4-8 hot pickle slices, minced (amount to taste), plus a splash of pickle juice

Cut smoked eggs in half lengthwise, scoop the yolks into a small bowl and mash with a fork. Mix in the rest of the ingredients until thoroughly combined and creamy, then fill the egg whites with the mixture.

In the late 90s, when the first anti-Gwyneth Paltrow backlash was in the news gossip pages, one of my contrarian friends made the conscious decision to become a Paltrow supporter. If something negative came up (and working at a sports magazine with grizzled black-hearted former newspapermen, it did), he’d extol her virtues, her beauty, her cerebral screen presence — basically, anything he could do to get under a detractor’s skin.

Now that the second wave of backlash has come around, I think I might just find myself taking on his old role. Like many people, I signed up for the GOOP newsletter looking for a laugh, but something odd happened — I didn’t always delete them. In fact, I’ve kept nearly every recipe sent from the beginning. (I make no such claim about the lifestyle or shopping tips, but this is a food blog after all.) And let’s be honest — who among us wouldn’t want to be in her position, culinarily speaking? She’s buds with Batali hisownself and probably picked up a thing or two traveling through Spain with him. So when she speaks (and mentions him in the newsletter), I listen.

Last week’s menu featured a few dishes from a meal she had at his home — a meal to which Emeril was invited, btw. Yes, the eyes do roll, but damn, this meal sounded pretty fabulous. And it didn’t disappoint, even with a few changes made to the menu. The chicken dish pictured above is a Spanish affair, complete with thinly sliced onions, lemons and fennel sautéed together with white wine and pimenton, then roasted in the oven. As if all of that weren’t enough, the whole cloves of garlic that baked and softened in the broth were absolute heaven and force me to apologize here and now to anyone who happened to be next to me at the gym yesterday. (I confess to being agnostic about preserved lemons, so when I ran out a few months ago, I didn’t bother restocking. The pomegranate pips were another story. There were none to be found in the few markets I visited, so they were a necessary deletion, but sorely missed.)

Blood oranges. Mmmm. They’re one of my favorite things about this time of year. We’re all just barely hanging in there, waiting for a Spring that seems to retreat the closer we march to it, but at least these beauties bring a dash of color and verve to the last gray days of winter.

The fennel and blood orange salad recipe offered with the chicken was incredibly simple to make and tasted fresh, light and healthy. Because the oranges aren’t terribly acidic, I added a splash of white balsamic to the mix to brighten up the flavors a bit. I’d imagine some thinly sliced red onion would be very good in here, too.

The flatbreads were a bit problematic. My kitchen was a little too cold, so the dough didn’t rise in time to have them with our meal. That’s ok, though. I made them later, and we snacked on them with agave nectar all afternoon; they worked just as well for dessert.

So I don’t know where you stand on GOOP, but I’d heartily recommend the newsletter if you’re looking for a few (mostly healthy) ideas for dinner. And if you don’t enjoy that, you can join in the schadenfreude, I suppose.

As you can see, I’ve been cooking. Oh, how I’ve been cooking. But there hasn’t been a lot to say about the food. I mean, we can all get behind a great roast chicken, but really, what more could I possibly tell you about it? Well, OK, just a word about this one, then we’ll move on…

I was craving another Zuni roast chicken for dinner during the week, but my way-back machine was in the shop and I couldn’t have one seasoned in time for that evening’s meal. So I did the next best thing; I used Thomas Keller’s method of seasoning and dry roasting a chicken in a 450-degree oven for an hour. (Thanks for the heads-up, Dietsch.) It’s very similar to the Zuni method, only it requires no advance planning. It’s also very similar to my grandma’s roast chicken: 500-degree oven for an hour, but she bastes it in butter whereas this one stayed completely dry, the better to crisp the skin, my darlings. It was a delicious bird, only not seasoned through the way it would have been if I’d started the project three days earlier. Live and learn.

One thing among many I’m grateful for is that my husband remains unmoved by chicken butt. Rufus and I go crazy for it, so there must be some primal instinct that Gil’s missing. Whatever — more for me. (What? You don’t really think I’d actually share this little morsel with a dog, do you? He got a few bites of chicken skin after we’d finished eating, which was all the reward he was getting. Did he help me lift the heavy cast iron pan into the oven? No. Did he help me make gravy from the salty pan drippings? No. He just napped cutely while I did all the hard work.)

*   *   *

Yet another craving from last weekend, I think — spaghetti and meatballs. Nothing special about them, but it was the perfect meal for a blustery day. I didn’t even mind eating these leftovers, which should tell you something.

*   *   *

And then there were tea eggs. I was lucky to take my last vacation day of 2008 this past Wednesday during the snow/ice storm and thought I’d try these since they didn’t require a trip to the grocery store. Chinese new year had come and gone, but wasn’t so far in the distance, so they were very nearly on trend.

To be honest, I made them mostly for the pictures.

But they were ridiculously good — savory with just a touch of sweetness — so I’ll definitely be making them again.

*   *   *

UPDATE: I forgot to mention these!

I first read about the lure of olives, harissa and goat cheese with honey over at Orangette, but it took cook, eat, FRET’s hearty endorsement to get me to try it last year. And ever since, I’ve gone through long periods where I’ve wanted nothing else for breakfast. The craving struck again last weekend, when my kitchen was sadly depleted of both flatbread and olives, but there was no way that could stop me. For the wrap, I tried my hand at crepes, adapting the helpful article/tutorial in Martha Stewart Living to make a heartier version with whole wheat flour to stand up to the fillings.

Hmph! I turned out only a few crepes that didn’t tear, bunch up, or otherwise look “off.” It didn’t help that the article’s opener kept running through my mind:

If you were to tell a French friend that you find making crepes rather intimidating, she would likely smile incredulously. You see, in France, even the average home cook has been flipping crepes since she was barely tall enough to see above the stove top.

Being quite a bit taller than my stove top, I felt enormous frustration, but I took those few, those proud, those unblemished crepes as my base, added goat cheese thinned with Fage yogurt and a few dabs of freshly made harissa before folding them up. With a few of these tempting pockets on my plate, I added a liberal drizzle of honey and tucked in.

You know, I really can’t say why I ever eat anything else for breakfast. I didn’t even miss the olives and the flavor wiped out all memory of the crepe-making debacle, at least in the short term.

Basic Crepes from Martha Stewart Living

Makes thirty-two 6-inch or twelve 10-inch crepes

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
2 cups whole milk, room temperature, plus more if needed
3 large eggs, room temperature
2 1/2 ounces (5 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted, plus more for skillet

Sift flour and salt into a large bowl. Whisk together milk and eggs in a medium bowl. Pour milk mixture into flour mixture, whisking to combine. Whisk in butter. Strain mixture into a medium bowl, and refrigerate for at least 2 hours (or up to 1 day). Batter should be the consistency of heavy cream; add more milk if needed.

Heat an 8- or 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat, and brush with butter. Ladle or pour 3 tablespoons batter (for small crepes) or 1/3 cup batter (for large crepes) into pan, turning and tilting skillet to coat bottom evenly with batter. Cook until top of crepe appears set, bottom is firm and golden brown in spots, and center is lifted by pockets of air, about 1 minute. Run a spatula around edge of crepe to loosen. Slip spatula under crepe, and gently flip in one swift gesture. (If it doesn’t land quite right, that’s OK; use the spatula to unfold or rearrange it.) Cook until bottom is firm and golden brown in spots, about 45 seconds. Transfer to a plate, and cover. (The first one will not be your finest.) Repeat with remaining batter, brushing pan lightly with butter as needed (every 2 or 3 crepes). Serve immediately.

Chinese Tea Eggs adapted slightly from Steamy Kitchen

6 eggs
3/4 cup soy sauce
2 star anise
2 tablespoons black tea (or 2 tea bags)
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon sugar
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon Sichuan peppercorn

Gently place the eggs in a medium pot and fill with water to cover the eggs by 1-inch. Bring the water to a boil, lower the heat and let simmer for 3 minutes. Remove the eggs (leaving the water in the pot) and let cool under running cool water. Using the back of the teaspoon, gently tap the eggshell to crack the shell all over. The more you tap, the more intricate the design. Do this with a delicate hand to keep the shell intact. (I went a bit too far with a few of them, but my enthusiasm only harmed the final pattern on the egg white, not the flavor.) To the same pot with the boiling water, return the eggs and add in the remaining ingredients. Bring the mixture to a boil and immediately turn the heat to low. Simmer for 40 minutes, cover with lid and let eggs steep for a few hours to overnight. The longer you steep, the more flavorful and deeply marbled the tea eggs will be. (I steeped mine for 5 hours.)

Harissa adapted from Global Gourmet

3 1/2 tablespoons dried chili flakes, soaked in the same amount of hot water
1 1/2 tablespoons crushed garlic
1 1/2 tablespoons sweet paprika
2 teaspoons caraway seed
2 teaspoons coriander
1 teaspoon cumin seeds, dry roasted then ground
1 teaspoon salt

Place ingredients in small food processor and blend or grind in mortar until a paste is formed. I stored the extra in the fridge with a small amount of olive oil floated over the top. Not sure how long it lasts, but I’m not going to keep it much longer than a week because of the fresh garlic in the paste.

This slushy winter weather has pressed my cast iron skillet into heavy rotation lately. As our mothers and grandmothers knew, cast iron cookware is perfect for homey meals or stove-to-oven cooking with a minimum of mess.

Awash in laziness last weekend, I decided to try my hand at a Spanish torta, as it required the relatively simple journey from living room to kitchen instead of a more arduous trek to the grocery store. The recipes that turned up in a Google search varied only slightly from each other, so I got the gist of them, used Martha’s (yes, we’re on a first-name basis) as a guide to ingredient amounts and oven temperature and set out to create my own vegetarian version.

To the basic recipe, I added diced red bell pepper, sautéed broccoli rabe (leafy greens only), garlic and a hefty dose of hot pimentón. (Several of the recipes I found called for chorizo, which I agree would be a superb addition, but there was that whole going-out thing to avoid. The pimentón seemed an acceptable substitute under the circumstances.) Since I don’t have much experience with cast iron pans, I was concerned that the potatoes would stick, but with the pan preheated and coated with a thin film of oil, that wasn’t a problem in any way.

The torta alone was our lunch, but I had a few tricks up my sleeve for dinner. OK, only one trick, but what a beauty — Zuni Café roast chicken. I made the turkey version for Thanksgiving and was so shockingly pleased with the outcome, I had to try the chicken sooner rather than later. And it didn’t disappoint. All of the raves you’ve probably read across the internet are absolutely true — the chicken is moist and perfectly seasoned with delicious crispy, browned skin. Mmmmm. We managed to keep some of it for leftovers the following day, but only just. I think it’s likely to go into the weekly rotation.

recipes after the jump

Spanish Torta adapted from Martha Stewart

Olive oil
1 medium Spanish onion, sliced into 1/4-inch-thick half moons
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 medium red bell pepper, diced
1/2 bunch broccoli rabe, leafy greens only, chopped
3 medium Yukon gold or other floury potatoes, sliced into 1/4-inch-thick rounds
7 large eggs
1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
Pinch freshly ground pepper, plus more to taste
1 teaspoon pimentón (smoked paprika)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a 10-inch oven-safe skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion; sauté, stirring, until golden, about 8 minutes. Add chopped garlic to pan and sauté, stirring, until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a small bowl.

Return the skillet to heat, and add 1/2 tablespoon oil. Sauté bell pepper until soft, then add chopped broccoli rabe and sauté until wilted and just beginning to char, about 3 minutes. Add to bowl with onions and garlic.

Return the skillet to heat, and add 1 tablespoon oil. Add potatoes, cover, and saute until soft, stirring, 12 to 15 minutes. Transfer to the bowl with onions, sprinkle with pimentón and combine.

Whisk together eggs; add salt and pepper. Transfer to the bowl with onions and potatoes, and combine.

Return the skillet to the heat, and add 1 tablespoon oil. Add egg mixture, and cook until edges set and start to brown, about 1 1/2 minutes. Cover, and bake in the oven until set, about 10 minutes. Remove cover, and broil until top is golden.

Zuni Roast Chicken courtesy of The Zuni Cafe Cookbook via the NBC website

The length of this recipe seems daunting, I know; the instructions are detailed and precise, but not difficult or time-consuming to follow in any way. If you haven’t made this yet, please don’t be put off by the number of words, but do follow them to the letter. You’ll be rewarded with the best roast chicken you’ve ever made.

One small chicken, 2-3/4 to 3-1/2-pounds
4 tender sprigs fresh thyme, marjoram, rosemary or sage, about 1/2 inch long
Salt (about 3/4 teaspoon per pound of chicken)
About 1 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
A little water

Seasoning the chicken
(Can be done 1 to 3 days before serving; for 3-1/4- to 3-1/2-pound chickens, at least 2 days)

Remove and discard the lump of fat inside the chicken. Rinse the chicken and pat very dry inside and out. Be thorough — a wet chicken will spend too much time steaming before it begins to turn golden brown.

Approaching from the edge of the cavity, slide a finger under the skin of each of the breasts, making 2 little pockets. Now use the tip of your finger to gently loosen a pocket of skin on the outside of the thickest section of each thigh. Using your finger, shove and herb sprig into each of the 4 pockets.

Season the chicken liberally all over with salt and pepper (we use ¾ teaspoon of sea salt per pound of chicken). Season the thick sections a little more heavily than the skinny ankles and wings. Sprinkle a little of the salt just inside the cavity, on the backbone, but don’t otherwise worry about seasoning the inside. Twist and tuck the wing tips behind the shoulders. Cover loosely and refrigerate.

Roasting the chicken

Preheat the oven to 475F. Depending on the size, efficiency and accuracy of your oven, and the size of your bird, you may need to adjust the heat to as high as 500F or as low as 450F during the course of roasting the chicken to get it to brown properly. If that proves to be the case, begin at that temperature the next time you roast a chicken. If you have a convection function on your oven, use it for the first 30 minutes; it will enhance browning, and may reduce overall cooking by 5 to 10 minutes.

Choose a shallow flameproof roasting pan or dish barely larger than the chicken, or use a 10-inch skillet with an all-metal handle. Preheat the pan over medium heat. Wipe the chicken dry and set it breast side up in the pan. It should sizzle.

Place pan in the center of the oven and listen and watch for it to start browning within 20 minutes. If it doesn’t, raise the temperature progressively until it does. The skin should blister, but if the chicken begins to char, or the fat is smoking, reduce temperature by 25 degrees. After about 30 minutes, turn the bird over — drying the bird and preheating the pan should keep the skin from sticking. Roast for another 10 to 20 minutes, depending on size, then flip back over to recrisp the breast skin, another 5 to 10 minutes. Total oven time will be 45 minutes to an hour.

Finishing and serving the chicken

Remove the chicken from the oven and turn off the heat.

Lift the chicken from the roasting pan and set on a plate. Carefully pour the clear fat from the roasting pan, leaving the lean drippings behind. Add about a tablespoon of water to the hot pan and swirl it.

Slash the stretched skin between the thighs and breasts of the chicken, then tilt the bird and plate over the roasting pan to drain the juice into the drippings.

Set the chicken in a warm spot to rest for 5 minutes. The meat will become more tender and uniformly succulent as it cools.

Set a platter in the oven to warm for a minute or two.

Tilt the roasting pan and skim the last of the fat. Place over medium-low heat, add any juice that has collected under the chicken, and bring to a simmer. Stir and scrape to soften any hard golden drippings. Taste-the juices will be extremely flavorful. Cut the chicken into pieces and serve.

Last weekend’s kitchen adventures were spent in the service of Cinco de Mayo with a chicken and hominy soup and a recipe for beans that took the better part of a day to make, but were worth every last stinkin’ second.

But by the time the fifth rolled around, I just couldn’t bring myself to post anything about it.

What’s that word again? Oh yeah, Procrastination.

Which brings us to today.

The aforementioned soup.

Looking for a quick lunch to tide us over, I foraged in the freezer and came up with some chicken stock and shredded cooked chicken which turned into the underpinnings of a rich, smoky soup. I’m relying on my sometimes-faulty memory here, but I’m pretty sure I cooked some onions, garlic, and celery down in a little olive oil before adding the chicken, stock, and a can of plum tomatoes, which I broke up with the back of the spoon. I blended together a small can of chipotle chilis in adobo and added a hefty dose of that to the pot along with some hominy and chopped cilantro, gave it a good stir, and let it simmer for about an hour. It’s entirely possible I added cumin and oregano as well, but I couldn’t swear to it in a court of law.

Served with lime wedges, it really took the edge off our hunger, but didn’t fill us up too much before our mega-mega bean-filled dinner.

Not anasazi beans. But I caught them just as the mothership was approaching and thought it was too important not to document.

The centerpiece of our dinner was Cassoulita, or braised anasazi beans. The recipe was long and involved; therefore, you will have to follow the link for it, because that procrastination thing? It was caused by my desire not to type out this recipe, even though my changes were so minor as to be almost not worth mentioning. But here I go, mentioning them! I substituted mostly dried chipotle chilis and some other mystery dried chili our friend Tom brought us from New Mexico, where they obviously know their stuff.

The person who wielded that Sharpie did not lie. All the other Sharpie-wielders of New Mexico, I gots no opinion of.

So the beans were mildly spicy, is what I’m saying, but awfully good.

They were also not photogenic in any way, which is why they’re blurred out. Go, shallow depth of field!

The beans went great with our grilled chicken and asparagus that night, but were even better the next day, refried with a bit of bacon fat and converted to some hot burrito action.

No picture of the hot burrito action. It was a burrito. Use your imagination.

Since I didn’t have quite enough of that smoky chipotle flavor last week, I used more of the frozen adobo mixture in a chicken marinade for lunch today. I pounded a couple of skinless, boneless chicken breasts (I KNOW!) to about 1/3 of an inch and marinated them in a mixture of chipotle/adobo, ground cumin, lime juice, honey, olive oil, and salt. Thinking that pounding the breasts to within an inch of their lives would speed the cooking process and keep them moist turned out to be the correct assumption. For once. I topped them with an avocado-lime-sour cream sauce, and Gil actually complimented me on the meal, so I had to pat myself on the back.

Now, have I mentioned how much I love grilled asparagus?

I make it All The Time…

because it is delicious…

and let us not forget healthy…

but mostly delicious, if repetitive.

Even Rufus agreed.

nomnomnomnom

We wish you a Merry Christmas …
and a happy new year! Take care, everyone, and thanks for stopping by.

For all Advent Calendar posts, click here.

recipe after the jump

Chicken and Sausage Gumbo courtesy of my dad

This is a good basic template for a gumbo, and makes enough to feed an army. Feel free to substitute meats at will, though andouille really gives the gumbo a flavor you won’t find elsewhere.

2 large chickens, cut up
1 lb. smoked sausage
1 lb. andouille
2 large onions, chopped
2 large bell peppers, chopped
2 ribs celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/4 cups vegetable oil
2 heaping tablespoons chicken base (similar to bouillon)
Cajun seasoning, to taste
cooked long grain rice
hot sauce
filé (ground sassafras leaves) 

In 12-quart pot, boil chicken in water to cover by 2 inches. Boil for 10-15 minutes. Remove chicken to cool; strain and reserve broth, keeping warm in another pot on stove. Skin and debone chicken and cut into bite-sized pieces.

Cut sausage and andouille in half lengthwise and then into 1/4″ pieces. Fry sausages in large pan to degrease before adding to gumbo. Drain on paper towels.

Heat oil in 12-quart pot over medium heat. When oil begins to shimmer, add flour and stir constantly to prevent burning. Cook until deep brown (darker than peanut butter, lighter than mahogany). Add chopped onions, bell pepper, celery, and garlic, and stir constantly for 1-2 minutes.

Add hot chicken broth to pot, stirring to prevent lumps. Add chicken base and additional water to raise level of water to 3/4 of the pot. Add about 1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning and boil for 10 minutes.

Add reserved chicken, sausage, and andouille; boil for 10 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning. Boil an additional 10 minutes. Skim as much grease from the top of gumbo as possible, or if you’d prefer, cool to room temperature, refrigerate overnight, then skim grease the following day. Like most soups, gumbo always tastes better the next day, anyway.

Serve over hot long grain rice with hot sauce and a pinch of filé. Warm potato salad on the side is a real treat.

Thanksgiving dinner was a big, rich, traditional affair, followed Friday by pizza and Saturday by dim sum, all of which left me craving nothing more than fresh, bright flavors with a minimum of fat by Sunday. Because dim sum was preceded by a stockpiling expedition to the Asian market, I had big, new jars of sauces whose expiration dates hadn’t passed who-knows-when calling out to me and a recipe from Cookthink that served as inspiration for that light meal I was craving.

For our Sunday dinner, I brined a chicken in kosher salt and brown sugar for a few hours, rinsed and dried it, then marinated it for about 30 minutes in a mixture of sambal oelek, dark honey, and heroic amounts of garlic. In the meantime, I halved a two stalks of celery and laid them out in a roasting pan with two carrot sticks, half of a red onion, and some peeled, chopped fuyu persimmon. Just before I put the bird in the oven (at 500 degrees for an hour), I stuffed the cavity with the remaining half of the red onion and another peeled and chopped persimmon.

Because the chicken was so moist from the brining, I didn’t need to add any water at all to the pan, but did tent it with foil about 30 minutes in to keep the honey in the marinade from burning the skin to a crisp. The chicken was succulent again, but the real star was the persimmon chunks, which picked up just enough chicken flavor to add savory to their list of qualities, but almost no fat and definitely no greasy feel. I served the chicken and persimmon with a little fresh sambal and nothing more on the side than boiled greens topped with a little sesame oil and sea salt and felt nearly virtuous after our weekend of gorging and lounging.

Last night, I wanted to use some of the leftover chicken, so I threw together a quick soup when I got home. I sautéed a thinly sliced stalk of celery with a clove of minced garlic for a few minutes, then added enough chicken broth to the pot to make about four servings of soup. (Sorry, no measurements — I just eyeballed it.) I shredded the remaining chicken breast and added that to the pot, brought it to a boil, and lowered the heat to simmer. While those flavors were melding, I chopped a package of baby mustard greens and added them about 15 minutes later, letting them cook down for a few minutes before adding the final ingredients — chopped green onion, parsley, and celery leaves, about a tablespoon of Korean red pepper paste, and a drizzle of sesame oil.

The soup was more green than gold, which suited me fine. More vegetables, please! Oh, and a gym, if you don’t mind.

Posting will be light for the rest of the week, but will pick up again this Saturday, when I unveil my brand new project! You’re on the edge of your seat, I can tell.

When Gil’s traveling, I like to take advantage of my time alone to tackle projects I just never seem to get done when he’s around — things like cleaning, winnowing down my enormous stack of magazines, and outlining design/photography/home projects I want to do over the next few months. So when he left for Vegas yesterday afternoon, I got right to work. Literally. I offered to help a friend with a design project, so I spent some time brainstorming while cooking and cleaning and whenever a good idea hit me, I took a break to jot it down or do a little work on it.

Somehow, I’ve gotten a LOT done this weekend, even though I watched a ton of football, finished the last Harry Potter book, and even squeezed in another viewing of American Splendor after LSU’s 20-bazillionth turnover to Alabama. So I felt I’d earned a nice dinner this evening.

My weekend cooking experiment was supposed to be a smoked chicken, but I dry cured it instead of brining and wimped out when the time came to fire up the smoker. I thought it might be too dry without the extra moisture from brining (and trust me, smoking meat is too much work to attempt if you have doubts about the outcome), so I oven roasted it instead, using my grandmother’s time-honored technique: One hour at 500 degrees. After 15 minutes, I added some water to the pan and at about 30 minutes, covered the chicken with foil because the skin was starting to burn from the sugar in the cure. This cooking method never fails to deliver moist, tender chicken, so I knew it would be a winner, and set my sights on other parts of the meal I hadn’t yet tested.

Earlier in the week, I saw a recipe for cherry barbecue sauce on epicurious and thought that would be a good match for the chicken. Why is it that homemade barbecue sauces always surprise me? I’ve made them often enough to know they’re usually greater than the sum of their parts, but I always find myself making surprised “Oohs!” and “MMMMMs!” when I try them. And this one was no exception. Alright, it was maybe just the teensiest bit too sweet for me (I might try sour cherry jam next time), but it didn’t stop me from going back for seconds.

Rounding out the meal, I made wild rice with cherries and porcinis to tie it all together. And so at 5pm, I finally poured myself a glass of wine, put my feet up, tucked in, and enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment that comes from Getting Stuff Done.

recipes after the jump

Cherry Barbecue Sauce from epicurious

I added a little veal demi-glace to the sauce at the end and I think it really made a difference, but if you don’t have any on hand, please don’t let it stop you from trying this.

1 cup canned low-salt chicken broth
1/3 cup cherry preserves
1/3 cup orange juice
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon peel
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 cup ruby Port
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1/4 cup orange marmalade
1 tablespoon ketchup
Generous pinch of cayenne pepper

Combine chicken broth, cherry preserves, orange juice, lemon juice, lemon peel, cinnamon, and cloves in heavy medium saucepan. Boil over medium-high heat until broth mixture is reduced to 1 1/2 cups, about 6 minutes.

Whisk Port and cornstarch in small bowl to blend. Whisk Port-cornstarch mixture, orange marmalade, and ketchup into reduced broth mixture. Bring to simmer over medium heat, whisking constantly. Simmer until flavors blend and sauce thickens slightly, whisking frequently, about 5 minutes. Season sauce to taste with salt, pepper, and cayenne. Serve warm or at room temperature. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature or rewarm over low heat before using.)

Wild Rice with Porcini Mushrooms and Cherries

2 teaspoons olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt
4 oz. dried porcini mushrooms
1/4 cup dried cherries, roughly chopped
1 1/2 cups wild rice, rinsed and drained
1 3/4 cups chicken stock
1 green onion, thinly sliced

Pour two cups of hot water over dried porcinis and soak for 10 minutes. Remove mushrooms from soaking liquid and chop, reserving soaking liquid.

Heat olive oil in heavy pot until almost smoking. Add onions and garlic to pot and cook, stirring, until onions are translucent. Add mushroom soaking liquid (being careful not to add the residue from the bottom of the bowl) and remaining ingredients and bring to boil. Lower heat to simmer, cover pot, and cook for 40 minutes or until all liquid has been absorbed.

Top with sliced green onion before serving.