How to Roast a Chicken, my version

Ingredients
Whole chicken
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Herbs (I prefer parsley, turmeric, paprika)
2 carrots
2 celery
1 onion

Supplies
Cutting board and knife
Pan (I use a rectangular pyrex dish with 2 inch high sides)
Kitchen twine
Veggie scraper
Oven
I like a pair of helping hands

Directions
Start by roughly chopping the carrots, celery and onion. Place them in the bottom of your pan.

Cut a lemon as if into slices, but not all the way through so it stays in 1 piece. I find more juice gets into the chicken keeping it moist and flavorful, but without having stray lemon slices flopping all over the place.

Turn the oven to 350 degrees.  I like to do all my dishes at this point so that the sink is empty when I take the raw chicken out of its package.

 
This is the point where I call my husband for help--I do all the raw chicken parts, and he touches all the supplies to keep raw chicken germs from getting everywhere.*

Take out the giblets, and reserve in a container in the fridge for later. I will use them for a soup recipe with this chicken's carcass. Recipe to follow in a later post.

Rinse the chicken inside and out.

Pat the chicken dry with paper towels.

Loosen the skin from the meat of the bird.

Set the bird in the pan over the bed of veggies, and have helper pour olive oil into your hands. Rub the oil all over the bird outside and inside, getting under the skin.

Shake pepper and salt all over the bird, inside and out.
Stuff with the lemon--when I have it, I add a half head of garlic.

Cover with your favorite herbs and spices--I usually use parsley, paprika and turmeric. Sometimes I add basil and oregano if I want an Italian flavor, sometimes cumin and coriander if I want a more Middle Eastern flavor, cardamom and cinnamon if I want a more Indian flavor.

To help the bird cook more evenly, I like to truss it with kitchen twine. Wrap twine around one of the drumsticks, then the other, so that there is a "figure 8" shape between them.

 Pull tight to use them to close the whole in that part of the bird.

Wrap the twine around the sides of the chicken, tucking the wings in and bringing them to the stump where the head is. 

Tie it tight, and then tuck the head under it. Set it in the pan, legs pointed up *the opposite of my picture*.

Put it in the oven.
I usually bleach my sink and counters at this point, to remove contamination from handling raw meat.

Bake at 350 degrees for 2.5 hours for a smaller bird--if the skin gets too brown, tent some tinfoil over it.** The breast meat has to reach 170 degrees inside and the thigh meat has to reach 180 degrees inside to avoid food poisoning.  When poked, the juices will run clear--that is sometimes hard to tell depending on the herbs and spices.  Do not reuse knives or forks that you use to check the meat, you could spread bacteria from the raw meat to the later cooked bird and cause food poisoning.

Let the bird rest before carving.

Enjoy!

IF IN DOUBT, DO NOT EAT THE ROAST CHICKEN. Follow on to my next recipes for soup and other things, if you're worried.


*I like to put the chicken in a plastic bag when I buy that, and use that bag for the raw chicken garbage to try to keep from cross-contaminating my work surface. I cut open the chicken package while in the bag to keep my counters clean, and then keep the bag close for the paper towels.

**I know that most recipes call for a higher temperature, but I prefer the longer cooking time and lower temperature since in my experience, the meat stays moister and it cooks more evenly.  I welcome comments with other suggestions about cooking time and temperature!

Taste of Saint Louis

To give visiting friends a Taste of Saint Louis, we headed downtown on Saturday, October 3rd at lunchtime.
We tried:
1. Chicken korma from Everest Cafe (delicious, but skimpy portions)
2. Turkey sausage with cranberry and onion confit from L'Ecole Culinaire (well cooked, fun blend of flavors)
2. Garlic-asiago fries from Portabella (tasty but on the greasy side from the cheese)
3. Steak tacos from I can't remember where (unremarkable)
4. Lamb gyro from I can't remember where (too much onion, too little tomato, bland industrial tasting)

Overall impression was of an excess of burgers being offered, and unremarkable, over-priced food. A fun concept, but poorly executed from the restaurant-side. The entertainment was varied, and there were several rows of art stands or products for sale to things up, but for continuity's sake it would have been better to distribute the food stalls amongst the other types of stalls, as the "restaurant row" was rather overwhelming.

Hubby's Birthday Dinner

For my husband's birthday dinner, I made his ideal, meat-and-potatoes dinner followed by chocolate cake.
Caveat: I have never made a steak before. If we had steak when I was growing up, my dad grilled it. I was a little apprehensive about ruining a perfectly good (and more expensive than our normal budget) piece of meat! I asked the butcher for directions, and followed them religiously to delicious results!

Menu:
Ribeye steak
Green beans
Mashed potatoes
Chocolate cake

I bought fresh green beans at a local Farmer's market (see previous post) and I blanched them in chicken stock (reserved it), then dressed them with olive oil, lemon juice and cracked pepper.
I boiled potatoes, and mashed them with the reserved chicken stock and some margarine.
For the rib-eye steak: I seared it in a frying pan until browned on both sides, then placed it on a cookie sheet covered in foil, gently tented foil over it leaving room to breathe, and baked it in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. I then let it rest, still covered, for 10 minutes before serving.

The final product:


For the cake, I followed the Barefoot Contessa at Home recipe for Beatty's Chocolate Cake and chocolate frosting.

For the cake, I did not have two same-sized round cake pans so I improvised with two different sized ones. For the frosting, I missed the direction about not using chocolate chips due to stabilizers, so after being in the fridge the frosting turned lumpy as the chips tried to maintain their pre-melted shapes. I also left out the egg yolk and instant coffee.

The very homemade-but-still-tasty looking final product:

Merguez

I decided to explore Tower Grover Farmer's market looking for things to cook for my husband's birthday dinner. While I did find some great green beans, I did not find the perfect steak. What I did find, however, was merguez, Moroccan-style lamb sausages. They were slightly thicker and less spicy than I prefer, but with them I made wonderful Merguez shakshouka, my style.

Ingredients:
1 onion
2 small bell peppers, (I prefer sweeter red, yellow or orange)
1 very fresh tomato
4 Merguez sausage links
2 eggs

Supplies:
Frying pan
Knife and cutting board
Wooden utensil for stirring
Bowl and fork for beating eggs

Start by preparing the vegetables:

Chop the onion into thin slices.

Chop the peppers into thin slices, discarding the seeds.

Dice the tomato, keeping the juice.

Heat up a large pan to medium and cook the merguez in their own grease until the outside is browned and they are no longer raw. I punctured the casing to prevent them from popping.

Remove them from the pan, and chop into bite-sized chunks.
Add the vegetables to the pan to cook in the sausage grease until they reach desired consistency ( I like the onions and peppers on the softer side.)

Beat two eggs and return the sausage chunks to the pan to heat through.

Turn the heat up slightly, and pour the eggs over the meat and veggies. As they set, stir gently so that they scramble.

Plate and enjoy!

Convenience Food

I'm a longtime Jamie Oliver and Mark Bittman fan, recently Kitt'sKitchen brought their and other articles about convenience, simplicity and education to my attention. I wonder how my husband and I fit into these bigger issues. We don't eat out frequently but we also don't eat recommended quantities of fruits and vegetables. We come from families at different income levels, we have different habits, and different kitchen literacy. How can we as a couple come out healthier, faced with the time constraints of time and money? The comments on Mark Bittman's article about the cost/benefits of fresh sage fit into bigger arguments of the problem with produce in the U.S. Either you buy to last, and lose flavor and nutrients (canned, frozen, underripe), or you buy for taste and lose the ability to control how long it is stored, which affects how long it will keep and how much you can buy (which impacts the price).

Blogging

I'm trying to come up with a name and layout for this blog, so if anyone reads it, please bear with me as the format changes.

Summer (July)

Summer is 3/4 over, Independence Day approaches, and my summer project list is woefully underfinished!

So far completed:
Research Proposal for Spring 2010 PPRI exchange (A comparative project of the Moroccan-origin Muslim and Jewish communities of Paris exploring identity)

Yet to do:
Decide whether to submit an abstract Aug 1 for an October conference
Write paper (about the intellectual history of Tariq Ramadan?)
Review Arabic grammar and vocabulary
Clean and pack apartment (figure out clothes situation, file/discard school papers, etc)
Figure out what I'm doing after June 2010 (PhD? Work? Temp jobs?)

As usual, I have chosen procrastination. I made disastrous muffins--it was an attempt at raisin bran muffins that has a bitter, lingering aftertaste. Possible culprits: use of oat bran instead of wheat bran, expired oat bran, or cheap molasses. *sigh*
On the bright side, I made fantastic fish: rainbow trout baked on a bed of green onions, marinated in chermoula and covered in lemon slices. I went to Bob's Seafood for the fish--good choice. Next plan is to try the fish at some of the Asian supermarkets to see how it compares in quality, price, and ease.

This weekend's plan involves copious amounts of barbecue with Mark S. I want to make some sort of sumac-flavoured kebabs, steak, grilled fruit, and s'mores. Should be a delicious 4th of July weekend, then off to Minnesota where it is always delicious!