Yesterday my mother in law gave me a cookbook that a person I used to know has compiled of her family's recipes. It is a cookbook that is designed for families with children, detailing "kid-friendly" recipes. Had this been two years ago, I would have turned up my nose at this and proudly let people know that I had no use for such a cookbook, as my child ate whatever was served to her. That was B.S., and by B.S., I mean, not the obvious, but Before Sam.
My daughter, Gabby, is a culinary superstar. She has a palate that many adults could be jealous of. Her favorite food is sushi, she loves vegetables (except for mushrooms, as the above quote can attest), and she will try just about anything. She is just as at home ordering off a noodle shop menu off the main drag in Chinatown as she is ordering off the menu at Applebee's. It's quite amazing--after watching her down an entire plate full of pickled ginger BY ITSELF, I had brief thoughts of sending her out on the freaky kid circuit to do Ellen with those kids that have the bass voices or can paint Dali-esque prints with bathtub paints. She is a marvel--a Gourmet magazine thrown haphazardly in a stack of Highlights.
Enter my Sam. Sam is five, and religiously follows the five food groups: chicken, potatoes, ham, macaroni and cheese and breakfast food. He doesn't eat anything that doesn't fall into that list in some way. Moreover, even if one of these items contains a sauce of any kind, it's not going into his mouth. He hates sauces, condiments, and even sometimes, for inexplicable reasons, pepper. If something is purported to be healthy, he is not interested and is not afraid to share these feelings, loudly listing his disdain to anyone who will listen. He is not only a picky eater, he is a jerky eater, famously thumbing his nose at anything that doesn't fit his high standards. He is everything that Gabby is not, and this bothers me to NO END. I have no idea how this has happened to me, me, the mother who once pushed her kids three extra blocks THROUGH THE SNOW to get them to a Ukrainian restaurant I had read about in a New York City For Kids: Gourmet travel book. I can take many things as a mother--hell, if Sam came home in 20 years and told me that he was a gay garbage man, I would be just fine. But a picky eater? Nothankyou. I want to take him to a church and have him exorcised.
Thankfully, there is one thing in the world that keeps me from doing this, and that is roast chicken. Roast chicken is the one thing that my entire family can agree on--it is economical (which my husband likes), my kids love it, and, yes this is going to set back the women's movement 50 years or so, nothing makes me feel more like a woman than roasting a chicken. Plus, it looks like you tried so hard, when in reality, you just kinda put it in the oven and forget about it. Which is perfect for me, because I like praise but I also like to spend a Sunday afternoon doing nothing other than snuggling up in bed with a Lifetime movie and a stack of magazines.
So...in the interest of fulfilling my daughter's wishes, I will give you my perfect recipe for roasted chicken, and a Sunday afternoon of bliss.
Morgan's Roast Chicken
1 5-6 lb. chicken (you can use a smaller one, but I've found that this size gives us enough for at least one more meal during the week, which falls into that whole "economical" thing--hey, more money for beer and shoes is not a bad thing...)
a few handfuls of fresh herbs, chopped roughly--anything you have on hand (basil, parsley, and chives are generally the ones I go to, but you could really use anything)
one rock hard bulb of garlic, seperated into cloves
olive oil, salt and pepper
1 lemon
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Take the chicken and lay it breast up in some sort of roasting pan. If you have a rack, use it, but if you don't, just use a large baking dish of some sort. Remove any giblets. Ok, now look at the breasts (the fourteen year old in me just guffawed)--you should see some skin at the top that you can grab a hold of. Go ahead and take that skin and pull it up so that you can run your fingers between the skin and the meat of the breast. Start shoving in the herbs. It should kind of feel like a pocket that you are stuffing. When your herbs are stuffed, put a little salt and pepper in the pockets, and leave it alone. Then drizzle a bit of olive oil over the top of the bird and use your hands to rub it in. Salt and pepper the outside of the chicken--you can actually go a bit heavy on the salt because it will keep it moist, and despite the fact that I've used what I consider to be a lot of salt on a few occasions, I've never really had salty chicken. Kosher salt is good for this. Then salt and pepper the cavity. Use a few of the garlic cloves to put into the cavity, and cut the lemon in half and shove that in too. Place the rest of the garlic cloves around the chicken. Don't worry about peeling the garlic, because after it roasts a while, it will just pop out of the skin. Yum.
Roast for 2-2 1/2 hours. If you have a chicken that has one of those little thermometers that pops up when it is done, then you are in business. You can baste it a little if you want--you don't really have to, but I think it makes the skin nice and brown if you do. Just use a brush to paint some of the juices back on the skin as it cooks.
Ok, now what to do on the side? Glad you asked. As you roast the chicken, think about roasting some veggies. I usually put them in when the chicken has a 45 minutes or an hour to go. I generally start with a combination of onions, peppers, and mushrooms, and then add 1-2 seasonal veggies to go along with it. When I made this last Sunday, I used acorn squash, which was pretty good. Just take the veggies, cut them up, and then drizzle with a bit of olive oil (don't go overboard here--you want these to be mildly healthy) and sprinkle on salt and pepper and a bit of Italian seasoning. Roast for 45-60 minutes, but check every 20 minutes or so and flip them around their pan.
You can serve your chicken and veggies with mashed potatoes and baguette smeared with the roasted garlic like I do (I'm not giving you my recipe for mashed potatoes, so don't ask. :-) ). Or, be like my friend Mara who serves hers with potato leek soup and baguette spread with herbed goat cheese. I wouldn't turn down a good white wine with either of these meals. Anyway you do it, it's a great meal that will give you leftovers and should please even the most picky of eaters.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment