Not-So-Perfect Roast Chicken

Sam and I recently became obsessed with the idea of roasting a whole chicken with root vegetables. We got the idea from a dish we had while vacationing in Mexico, believe it or not, but really we'd been talking about it for a while and just happened to get re-inspired by our vacation meal.

We're fans of Ina Garten so we tried her recipe. The result was mixed - we LOVED the way the roasted vegetables came out; fennel, onion, baby carrots, and parsnips roasted until browned and caramelized. I've since realized that roasting is my favorite way to prepare vegetables. I just love caramelized-till-they-almost-burn yummy goodness! The chicken was not bad, it just needed to be cooked a little more and we both thought it needed a bit more flavor. We'd probably smear a paste of garlic and lemon and herb under the skin next time. But here's the recipe we used. Anyone else have a good recipe for roasted chicken?

Perfect Roast Chicken

Copyright, 1999, The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, All rights reserved

Prep Time:

20 min

Inactive Prep Time:

20 min

Cook Time:

1 hr 30 min

Level:

Intermediate

Serves:

8 servings

Ingredients

• 1 (5 to 6 pound) roasting chicken
• Kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 large bunch fresh thyme, plus 20 sprigs
• 1 lemon, halved
• 1 head garlic, cut in half crosswise
• 2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter, melted
• 1 large yellow onion, thickly sliced
• 4 carrots cut into 2-inch chunks
• 1 bulb of fennel, tops removed, and cut into wedges
• Olive oil

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Remove the chicken giblets. Rinse the chicken inside and out. Remove any excess fat and leftover pin feathers and pat the outside dry. Liberally salt and pepper the inside of the chicken. Stuff the cavity with the bunch of thyme, both halves of lemon, and all the garlic. Brush the outside of the chicken with the butter and sprinkle again with salt and pepper. Tie the legs together with kitchen string and tuck the wing tips under the body of the chicken. Place the onions, carrots, and fennel in a roasting pan. Toss with salt, pepper, 20 sprigs of thyme, and olive oil. Spread around the bottom of the roasting pan and place the chicken on top.

Roast the chicken for 1 1/2 hours, or until the juices run clear when you cut between a leg and thigh. Remove the chicken and vegetables to a platter and cover with aluminum foil for about 20 minutes. Slice the chicken onto a platter and serve it with the vegetables.

Smoked Fish

I absolutely ADORE smoked fish and feel lucky to have married a man who shares my passion! A few months ago we bought some amazing smoked wild salmon and smoked trout from our local farmers market. I decided to make a smoked fish plate for dinner one night with the following accompaniments:

• Beet Salad
• French Potato Salad (adapted from Jacques Pepin's recipe)
• Lemon Horseradish Dill Yogurt Sauce
• Sliced Lemon, Tomato, and Capers
• Cocktail Pumpernickel Bread

Omigosh it was sooo delicious! I started with some lovely beets. I boiled them until tender. Waited for them to cool, peeled and cut them and added some lemon juice and olive oil, salt and pepper and voila! Sweet and tangy goodness. I always like a sweet element to a meal when I have something smoked, like smoked fish. Sweet & smokey go together perfectly, making a well-balanced flavor profile.

Next, I made the delicious French Potato Salad. I pretty much followed the recipe exactly as Jacques Pepin created it, only I didn't have fresh chives so I substitutes dried and I omitted the hard-boiled egg garnish. I highly recommend this recipe. The fingerling potatoes work perfectly and cooking the onion and garlic and then adding them to the salad really adds great flavor without the sharp tang of raw onion and garlic. Plus the Dijon adds a nice zip. I used parsley for my herb (you could also use basil or tarragon).

The lemon dill horseradish yogurt sauce is simple. Take some Fage Greek Yogurt and add fresh lemon juice, salt, prepared horseradish and chopped fresh dill to taste. Voila!

Put it all together and you have a delicious cold meal for a warm summer night.

Yeah, summer's about gone but around these parts it's still warm.

So go out and enjoy the sun and the wild smoked salmon if you can! We clearly did:

Good Hood Food is BACK!

After a five month hiatus...Good Hood Food is baaaack!

Yes, I've got a few backlogged entries from as far back as June. April and May were no cook months as Sam decided to try a pre-packaged meal plan for a while (we didn't like it). We were back to cooking in June but really we ate a lot of take out food from restaurants -- getting completely hooked on Mexican food again. It's cheap and tasty and not too unhealthy if you're careful. Hope you like my first entry. It's good to be back.

Our comfort food and it's many sides

I decided to make the Turkey Meatballs with Quick Tomato Sauce again. It's the perfect comfort food for us. I love that it uses grated carrot and minced onion for added moisture in the meatballs without added fat. I love that I get to brown the meatballs by broiling them in the oven then soak them in the sauce on the stove. Turkey and vegetables with one slice of whole wheat bread, herbs, an egg, and spices - that's the meatball. I use 50% turkey breast and 50% dark meat.

To reduce calories even further, we don't put our meatballs over pasta or polenta. We instead choose to eat our meatballs with a greens. Last time I made braised kale with our meatballs. On Monday night I made a simple salad of baby arugula with a tart cherry apple cider vinaigrette. It was a lovely accompaniment.

Tonight, I reheated the leftover meatballs and sauce. (One of the benefits of this dish is that it's just as good if not better the second day.) I had picked up some beautiful red chard at Piedmont Grocery and decided to sautee it with browned onions and shallots and 3 large cloves of garlic. It was melty and garlicky but sweetened by the onions and shallots. I also added a splash of cider vinegar at the very end. Aaah, the power of acid in cooking. It really brightens food, rounding out the flavors.

I wanted to make whole wheat breadcrumbs to top the chard - texture is so important for me. So I defrosted a slice of bread in the toaster. (I have recently discovered the awesome benefits of keeping a loaf of bread in the freezer. Wow. Not only do I get a slice of bread whenever I need it, but I don't waste loaves like I ALWAYS did in the past. Having a toaster that easily defrosts the bread is a great thing. Wedding gift. Yay!)

Anyway, I pulsed the defrosted, slightly toasted slice in my small food processor, added some garlic powder, dried parsley, about a teaspoon of grated parmesan. Then I heated a nonstick pan on medium-high and put the breadcrumbs in, sprayed a spritz of canola oil and then kept moving the breadcrumbs around till they browned but did not burn. The result was delicious and still healthy. The crunchy texture was a great addition to the silky chard. Mmm!

And for dessert we shared one of the most delicious mangos I've ever tasted. Wow. Heaven. Too good and gobbled up too quickly to even take a photo...but it was yellow, soft and yummy.

I love smoked salmon but don't get to eat it very often because I don't eat farmed salmon at all, for health reasons, and unfortunately most restaurants do not serve smoked wild salmon.

But a couple weeks ago In Trader Joe's I came across beautiful Smoked Wild Salmon from Alaska - the best kind! I wanted to make fluffy scrambled eggs topped with Wild Smoked Salmon and lemon cream.

I finally got to make it today and it was so damn good. And quite easy. It felt so gourmet! I used Meyer lemon because that's what I had on-hand and worked off a recipe from Bon Appetit which I have pasted below. I used 2% Greek Yogurt in place of the sour cream to make the calories a little lower and used half the amount of dried thyme in place of the fresh thyme. Lemony good and a perfect accompaniment for the smoked salmon.

Scrambled Eggs with Smoked Salmon and Lemon Cream

Sophisticated lemon cream makes these simple scrambled eggs dinner table-worthy. Be sure to use wild smoked salmon, preferably from Alaska. Wild salmon is sustainable, healthful—and delicious.

2 SERVINGS

• PREP: 20 MINUTES
• TOTAL: 20 MINUTES

Recipe by the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen

Photograph by Misha Gravenor

February 2009

INGREDIENTS

• 2 tablespoons sour cream
• 3/4 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 teaspoon (packed) finely grated lemon peel
• 1/4 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
• 4 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 large green onion, thinly sliced
• 2 ounces thinly sliced smoked salmon

PREPARATION

• Mix sour cream, fresh lemon juice, finely grated lemon peel, and chopped fresh thyme in small bowl. Season lemon cream to taste with salt and pepper.
• Whisk eggs in medium bowl to blend; sprinkle with salt and pepper. Melt butter in medium nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add thinly sliced green onion and sauté 1 minute. Add eggs; cook until almost set, stirring often, about 1 minute. Divide scrambled eggs between plates. Top scrambled eggs with thinly sliced smoked salmon; drizzle with lemon cream and serve.

Ya Win Some, Ya Lose Some (Part 2)

Winner: Fennel salad with olive oil and lemon, red onion and spices.

Loser: Alaskan Cod breaded in panko and broiled. Blech.

Why oh why did I choose Cod? I mean, the recipe called for Cod and I hadn't ever cooked with it and it works so well battered and fried with chips and tartar sauce, right?

WRONG!

It sucked. Man. I hate to make a dinner and then watch it fail. Well, maybe that's dramatic. It was edible. Sam and I both ate the entire meal. But it wasn't delicious. The fillets were way too thick to cook properly and honestly, we both found the Cod to be pretty tasteless. Especially compared to my usual fish of choice to cook with the chock-full-of-Omega-3s-low-in-mercury, ever-so-affordable: Rainbow Trout.

I guess it wasn't a complete failure: the tartar sauce accompanying the fish was damn good! Sam actually said that it was better than many restaurant chefs' tartar sauce!

And of course, the fennel salad I served with it was absolutely fabulous. I used my mandoline again and dressed a medium fennel bulb and 1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion in 2 teaspoons olive oil, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, a pinch of ground coriander, cumin, some salt and pepper, and parsley. Mmmmmm!

1 package of ground turkey - two delicious meals!

I had a package of ground turkey, a desire to make spaghetti and meatballs and a craving for Middle Eastern food. What's a girl to do? Make two dinners, of course!

Ground turkey and chicken are becoming fast favorites of mine for protein. So versatile and easy to cook, ground turkey can be transformed into meatballs, chili, sausage, meatloaf, etc etc etc.

I bought some whole what spaghetti to keep it healthy (though Sam and I decided that the meatballs and sauce were good enough without the pasta and I never ended up cooking any of it!). I used a recipe from Ellie Krieger for Turkey Meatballs and a Quick and Spicy Tomato Sauce. I love how the smell of homemade tomato sauce permeates the apartment. Mmm.

But the middle eastern meatballs were what I was really looking forward to. Spiced Kofte on a bed of lightly dressed baby spinach in lemon juice and olive oil, with a tart apple raita in a toasted pita!!! Wow. The flavors were great. Thanks Bobby Flay! The savory, spicy meatballs went perfectly with the cool raita. Sam and I love yogurt sauces and we were both blown away by the unique apple raita. Plus, this meal was really easy to make. (Easier than the meatballs and tomato sauce!) Check it out!