Harvest Roasted Chicken with Grapes, Olives, and Rosemary

Fall is here.  Well, it's officially here, but we've had plenty of days that still feel like summer.  I'm not complaining.  Summer was so short this year in Chicago that I welcome the gorgeous days where I can spend my weekend basking in the sun.  I know it's going to hide behind the gray clouds of winter soon enough, so I want to enjoy every last minute before that happens.



But that doesn't mean I'm not ready for fall foods.  The summer produce is dwindling.  Last week was the glorious bit of time where the peaches were OK enough to make peach applesauce - the Monkey Scientist's favorite - with the first of the fall apples.  I think by this week that short overlap of seasons will be over.  I'm just waiting on pumpkin as long as I can so I don't get sick of it too quickly.  And so the season of roasting begins.



My first autumn meal was this roasted  chicken.  I love the sweet grapes with the savory rosemary, contrasted by the brine-y olives.  I picked up the world's largest shallot at the Farmer's market (which sadly has only 3 weeks left) as well as some small pink potatoes to serve on the side.  It was a perfect and hardy warm dinner that the Monkey Scientist even loved, despite his hatred of olives (he picked around them).  And when Deb says your guests will slurp this up with a spoon, she's spot on.  I totally found the Monkey Scientist with a spoon in the serving dish as we were cleaning up.



Harvest Roasted Chicken with Grapes, Olives, and Rosemary
from Smitten Kitchen via Serious Eats

Ingredients
2-3 lbchicken parts (thighs, drumsticks, and/or breasts), with skin and bones
Table salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
1 c seedless grapes
1 c pitted Kalamata olives
2 small or 1 very large shallot, thinly sliced
1 tbsp finely chopped fresh rosemary
1/2 c dry white wine
1/2 c chicken broth

Instructions
1. Put the oven rack in the middle of the oven. Preheat the oven to 450.
2. Heat the olive oil in a cast iron skillet over medium high heat. Pat the chicken dry then season well with salt and pepper. Once the oil is hot, add the chicken skin side down and cook until the skin is seared and golden brown (3-5 min). Then flip over and sear on the other side, 2-3 minutes.
3. Turn the heat off and add the shallots, then olives and grapes to the pan in all of the gaps around the chicken pieces. Sprinkle half of the rosemary over the chicken.  Carefully move the skillet to the oven and bake for 20 minutes or until the meat is no longer pink. (I like to poke the chicken with my finger to tell when its done using the finger test it should feel at least "medium").
4.  Remove from the oven and transfer the chicken, grapes and olives to a serving platter.  Return the skillet to the stove over medium to medium-high heat.  Add the wine and scrape the pan as it's boiling off to get all of the remaining chicken bits.  Add the chicken broth and allow to simmer until the liquid thickens and reduces by at least half.
5.  Pour the sauce over the chicken.  Garnish with the remaining rosemary and serve immediately.

Gardening in an Apartment

While this blog is about cooking, it's also about how to prepare great food at home even if you're living the apartment life, like me. I have just 1 oven, 4 burners (3 of which are small), and limited counter space. Yet nearly everything on this blog, I made at home. Which means you have no excuses. So when it comes to gardening, I want to encourage you to know that you can do it in your apartment, too! You're not going to grow an apple orchard, but there is no reason you can't grow some herbs and things!



The first thing I've been practicing with is what I call shot glass scallions. This is the easiest thing you can try at home! I have managed to kill many a plant in my day, but this has been a great success!

When you're cutting up your green onions, leave just a little bit more than the roots at the bottom. Instead of tossing the ends, plop them in tall shot glasses with a little bit of water. I forgot to take a picture the first day, but after 2-3 days they had already started to sprout this much.  You can see from my arrow where I had cut them.  The green had all grown in that quickly!  I was excited.



I changed the water once every 3 days or so.  After another week, this is how big my green onions were.  Almost usable!!  I'm so excited.  They needed barely any maintenance: no soil, just a little water and sunlight on our windowsill.  My mom had this great bud vase growing up that was the shape of 6 shot glasses connected to each other.  I think that would be perfect for this if I could find one. I might never need to buy scallions again if I just keep re-growing them!!



This was such a success that I'm going to start trying to grow a few more herbs - basil, rosemary, thyme, and peppermint - in pots outside.  I have a history of killing all of the above herbs (and even letting a small basil plant disappear off my DC balcony in a thunderstorm once) so we'll see what happens.   We're also trying some cherry tomatoes and habanero peppers, which are even more of an experiment.  I have a pretty little flower, too.  So we'll see what happens.  I'll give you an update in a couple of months!

Twice-Baked Potatoes with Feta and Rosemary

I had these last week and I have been waiting very impatiently to share them with you.  Omigoodness.  Now, I could bake little red potatoes covered in olive oil every day and probably be quiet happy.  They're definitely a favorite comfort food.  But add rosemary and feta cheese? Deliciousness.



We served these with some simply seared and baked bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs and they were perfection. They're perfectly salty and fill my ever-existent carb need. They actually crisp up so nicely that you can pick them up with your hands, which means I think they can pass for appetizers (as long as you use little enough potatoes). This recipe is so super simple, I promise anyone can pull it off and impress their guests!



Twice-Baked Potatoes with Rosemary and Feta
from fresh365

Ingredients
10-15 tiny or 6-8 medium red potatoes
olive oil
1/2 c crumbled feta cheese (crumbled goat cheese would work too)
3 tbsp fresh rosemary leaves
salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 450F. Scrub potatoes and poke each one with a fork. Line a baking sheet with foil.
2. Place stabbed side up, in a single layer, on the baking sheet. Drizzle with a good amount of olive oil.
3. Bake 35-50 minutes, until fork can be inserted easily. Remove the baking sheet from the oven, and cut a deep X into each potato. With a fork or a paper towel, push the top of each potato until it opens (it will look messy).
4. Drizzle each potato with a bunch more olive oil. Sprinkle with feta cheese, rosemary leaves, salt and pepper (they won't need much salt - I think I forgot the salt and pepper and they only were lacking the pepper). Return to the oven and bake for an additional 15-20 minutes until the edges and cheese are golden-brown and crunchy.


This recipe was featured on Full Plate Thursday on 10/18/12!

Roast Chicken with Lemon and Bacon-Rosemary Roast Potatoes

I've finally taken the plunge.  I roasted a chicken.  I realize my timing for this couldn't be worse, since - as my coworker described it - there's some sort of jello-mold type weather pattern of heat and humidity making the outside unbearable today. Probably not the type of weather you want to turn the oven on for, but you can just save this recipe for when the heat finally passes (it's going to pass right?).



In any event, before the heat really came, I roasted my first chicken.  I'd make a turkey before, for a Thanksgiving feast at my apartment in college, and it actually came out really good. But roasting a chicken is..well it's just different.  When I roasted a turkey, I used a turkey-bag to keep the moisture in...but that didn't seem necessary with the chicken. This was uncharted territory.



Now, of course there were some deals to be had.  The organic chicken was on sale, so it actually cost less than the regular, Purdue chicken.  $1.39/lb for organic chicken is a pretty good deal.  Also, my store had local, organic rosemary for the same price as the imported, regular stuff, so I got that as well.  I'd love to grow my own, but I haven't quite figured it out on my balcony.  Finally, I had a $0.75 off coupon for turkey bacon, plus it was on sale 10 for $10 so I got the pack for $0.25.  Too bad they didn't double my coupon or it would have been free!




Once I got my nice organic chicken home I discovered something... not so pleasant.  When I made the turkey in college, the giblet and all of the organs were in a nice little bag.  It was gross, but I could pull out the bag, dump it in the trash, and adios!  But in this chicken, everything was just hanging out in the cavity. Not bagged. Which meant hands, pulling organs, out of a chicken's butt.  Several times.  Now I love chopped liver...but it doesn't look or feel like a liver...here I could see and feel every organ. I think the lungs were even in there.  Nasty.




Once that little step was over, everything else went pretty swimmingly.  I wanted to really have that rosemary taste in the potatoes, so I added dried crushed rosemary to the water I boiled them in.  I figure, if I'm going to boil something, I better boil it in flavor.  I feel that way about a lot of things (have you ever boiled your pasta in water mixed with red wine? mmmm!!)




Also, I kinda forgot to stab the lemon before I shoved it up the turkey's butt... I mean inserted it into the cavity.  This wasn't a huge deal... we stabbed it after the first 45 minutes and I think it was still fine.  I also decided to squeeze the lemon onto the potatoes at the end....it'd probably be wise to check the temperature of the lemon before you do this so that you don't get salmonella poisoning.




I tried to get a little pretty with the bacon (actually I thought this was how I remembered it in the picture... I was wrong).  This meant that where the pieces all crossed, the lower pieces didn't get crispy.  I just didn't use these sections when I added it back into the potatoes.  Next time I'll use strips across the chicken so that they crisp up really nicely.




We really loved this recipe overall.  It's a pretty easy thing to throw together... as long as you account for needing about 2 hours before you're ready to eat.  The ingredients are fairly minimal... you may even have many of the ingredients in the house. The chicken was incredibly moist and the potatoes were tender and flavorful.  Plus, since I met the Monkey Scientist, I rarely have leftovers from dinner to bring to work for lunch the next day...but with this I had lots!  This recipe is definitely a go-to dinner.  And if you wanted to have it for Friday night dinner,  you can totally leave off the bacon (although that really would be a shame...).  Bacon, YUM.



Roast Chicken with Lemon and Bacon-Rosemary Roast Potatoes
adapted from Ezra Pound Cake who adapted from Jamie Oliver's Jamie's Dinners

Ingredients
1 4- to 4 1/2 lb chicken (mine was about 4 3/4 lb)
salt (I used table, but next time I'll use sea salt)
freshly ground pepper
dried crushed rosemary (optional)
4 lb Yukon gold potatoes
1 large lemon
1 whole bulb of garlic, broken into cloves (I peeled them)
4 sprigs of fresh rosemary, on the stem
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, sliced
a handful of fresh rosemary sprigs, leaves picked
2 slices of pork bacon or 4 slices of turkey bacon

Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. Prep the chicken: Remove the giblets and liver from the chicken's cavity.  Rinse the chicken under cold water, set it in the roasting pan, and dry it well with paper dowels, inside and out.  Rub it inside and out with a generous amount of salt and pepper.  Let the chicken rest in the roasting pan at room temperature while you prep the potatoes.
3. Prep the potatoes: Season a large pot or Dutch oven with salt and dried rosemary, if using, and bring to a boil.  While you're waiting, peel the potatoes (if you haven't already) and cut them into golf ball-sized pieces.  Put them into the boiling water, along with the whole lemon and the garlic cloves.  Cook for 12 minutes (I cooked closer to 15 because it took a while to get the water back to boiling).
4. Drain, and return the potatoes, garlic and lemon to the pot to steam dry for 1 minute.  Transfer the lemon and garlic to a small plate.  Grab a wooden spoon, and toss the potatoes in the pot, so their outsides get a little wrecked and shaggy looking (and you can find all the garlic). This will make your potatoes nice and crispy later.  Set aside.
5. Rub the chicken all over with olive oil.  Stab the lemon about 10 times, and push it into the chicken's cavity, along with the garlic cloves and rosemary sprigs.  Add the potatoes and sliced onions to the pan, spreading them around the chicken. Cook for 45 min.
6. Remove the pan from the oven.  Transfer the chicken to a large plate, but leave the potatoes in the roasting pan.  Add the rosemary leaves to the potatoes, and using a wooden spoon or spatula, toss the potatoes and rosemary with the chicken fat in the pan.
7. Return the chicken to the center of the pan.  If you're adding the bacon, lay the slices over the chicken breast, and roast for another 45 minutes, or until a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh registers 165 degrees F. If you're not using a thermometer, look for the thigh meat to pull away from the bone easily and the juices to run clear.
8. Transfer the chicken to a cutting board and let it rest for 10 to 15 minutes.  Remove the bacon slices from the chicken, and crumble the bacon over the potatoes.
9. Remove the lemon, rosemary, and garlic from the inside of the chicken.  Squeeze the lemon over your potatoes and crush the garlic into your potatoes.  Toss the rosemary sprigs.
10. Carve the chicken and serve with potatoes.