Keep your pigskins. Unless it's roasted on a spit.

I do not watch football. Thankfully, and probably one of the many reasons I married him, neither does Mike. So instead we spent our Sunday (one of) the way(s) young couples are supposed to: curled up on the couch together watching silly movies and dozing. (Something tells me we'll be spending Sundays when we're old doing the same thing.) Of course, later, inevitably, Mike started playing "Mass Effect"  on his Xbox (zzzZZZzzzZZZzzzZZZzzz...) so I went to start dinner.

Sunday Dinner = Roast Chicken

I don't know why but this winter this has become the norm. Not every Sunday, but if a whole chicken is on sale I end up buying it and only find the 2+ hrs to make it (that's including prep, roast, rest, & serve) on Sunday when Mike is either getting in some last-minute video game playing before the school week starts, or when he's actually preparing for the school week.

Sadly for you, readers, this was not one of the weeks that I made my fabulous roasted potatoes (No, seriously, if you like crispy brown potatoes, mine are some of the best in the world.) because they take the better part of an hour themselves, and I was just feeling lazy. So, I went with mashed instead. (Which are also quite fabulous.)

<-- Various ingredients for the preparation of dinner, ready to go. (Check out my adorable slide-y top bamboo salt pig. I just love it.)


Step one: remove possible gizzard bag, rinse off (inside and out) your birdie and pat 'er dry.

Step two, season cavity and stuff her full of lovely aromatics. Like so:

I use a segmented lemon and wedges of shallot.

 I used to use garlic cloves instead of shallots, but I found that they did not cook at all inside the bird (probably because it's a small bird) and so instead infused it with the taste of raw garlic, which I do not enjoy at all.

So, shallots.  I also stuffed the bird with a bunch of sprigs of fresh thyme after taking this photo.

Next, season the outside of the bird and coat it with either melted butter, softened butter, evoo... whatever your preference. I used a combo of melted butter and evoo. (This helps the bird to brown, especially in basting. If you're just basting with water in the bottom of the pan, your chicken will not get good color.)  I also tossed some chopped fresh thyme on the skin as well.

Sometimes I stuff the herbs and salt, etc, under the chicken's skin so the meat really gets the flavor, but last night I was just feeling lazy, so I did it the simple way.

You may notice my birdie is breast-down.  This means a lack of crispy skin on the breast meat, but I cleverly remove the skin that does get crispy and serve it along with the breast meat.

Now, many chefs (including Julia) will tell you to rotate your bird while cooking, to brown all sides and keep the juices moving throughout the bird.

This is a MASSIVE PAIN IN THE ASS! And if you're only roasting a 4-5 pound bird (technically a fryer, I know Julia. I'm sorry.) the bird isn't going to roast long enough for the breast meat to dry out anyway, so unless you're really anal about presentation, skip it.

(Yes, on the above logic, I also could have roasted my birdie breast-up without worry of dry meat, but I don't like to chance it, and this way the dark meat cooks faster since it is more exposed and we're all happy in the end.)

If you are going to attempt to rotate your bird, I suggest having a pair of those mini-pitchfork spear thingies, because an oversized fork and a pair of tongs DO NOT CUT IT.

Make sure you have about an inch of water in the bottom of your pan to start with as well, or else drippings will start smoking and your alarms will go off and we all know how godawful that noise is. And the fact that you have to get closer to it to turn it off rather than just run away goes against nature.

So I follow the theory of 20-30 min at 425˚, followed by however much longer the bird needs to cook at 350˚. (My general rule is you have a base cook-time of 45 min. plus an additional 7 minutes per pound. So, 45 + (5.12 x 7) = 81 so about an hour and 20-25 minutes total cooking time.) I toss the baby carrots and leftover shallot into the pan when there's about 45 min left cooking time so they cook through.

About half an hour before the bird is done, (and all this back and forth is necessary anyway, since you want to baste the bird every 10-15 minutes) I was started boiling those sliced red potatoes you saw above. When fork-tender I mixed them with some ricotta cheese and salt and mashed them together. Tasty, quick, and less fattening than if you use butter and cream.

Forget the sad, pale, fairly icky looking bird you saw above. HOW GORGEOUS IS THAT BIRD?!?!

I remove the rack to a lined baking sheet and cover to rest, scoop out the carrots, and turn those little brown bits you can see in the pan on the left into a nice pan gravy with a little white wine, etc.


Mike got the white meat and all that lovely golden skin I removed before flipping the bird (heh) to carve, and I got the leg which basically came off right in my hand (a sign it is cooked thru, so a good thing.)

Portion out the carrots and potatoes, cover with your pan gravy, and Voilà!

Yes, this is a time-consuming meal to prepare, and yes, you have to get up every 10 minutes to baste the birdie, but it's soooooooo tasty and a 5lb bird (coming in around $7) will feed me and Mike for two dinners plus a lunch for me. So it's a very good deal if you have the time.

In some future post I shall write about the tasty ways to play with leftover roast chicken, but for now:

Buon Appetito!

I Heart Julia

No one can be seriously interested in food or cooking without learning about/from Julia Child. I also think it is damn-near impossible not to love her as a human being, once you know about how she lived her life. Her passion for France, and French food, and her husband were all limitless, and I think many cooks/chefs/women try to see a bit of themselves in Julia. I like to think I feel about Italy and Italian food on a similar spectrum to how Julia felt about the French. (I love French food too, but I always veer toward Italy in my heart.) I hope that I do get to live in Italy some day and that I experience life as fully as Julia did. Don't get me wrong. I don't see myself as the next Italian Julia Child, but it's a nice dream.

If you like Julia Child at all, I would definitely suggest reading "My Life In France" when you get a chance. The book was put together by Paul Child's nephew from conversations and old letters and is a wonderful story and insight into Julia's life and mind. 

So last night I finally got to see "Julie & Julia". I had waited to see it in the theaters with my mother, but somehow that never happened, so I Netflix-ed it and waited for the perfect time. Last night, Mike went out to a coworkers birthday shindig, so I curled up in bed with my cats and my Marquis and got ready to enjoy myself. 

Wow. 

I knew ever since I heard the whispers than Meryl Streep was going to portray Julia Child that I was going to love the movie. It was just a definite. The thing is, I didn't know just how much I was going to love it. Screw the Amy Adams part. Nothing against her personally, and maybe it was the fact that I was slightly shocked to be watching a character who loved Julia Child, was married, turning 30, and starting a blog... it felt a bit "doo-doo-doo-doo, doo-doo-doo-doo" but I could care less about that half of the movie. That whole true-story-blogger plot line was just an excuse to make a movie that wasn't a straight biopic. (Which I would totally watch if it were Meryl & Stanley! Hell I'd watch them read the paper together. I just love how they play off each other.)

Anyway, it's hard for me to describe the joy that went through my heart watching Meryl bring Julia to life. Because I had read Julia Child's "My Life In France" I already knew the details of that portion of her life, and could enjoy the fact that the movie was accurate but that some elements were merely inferred gently.  I actually had to pause the movie at one point to simply revel in the happiness I was experiencing watching Meryl/Julia savor food and friends, and watch the tender love between her and her husband. (Seriously, listen to the way she said "butter" and you will know a woman who knows pleasure on all levels.) Love and passion both came late in Julia's life, whether it was falling in love or finding what made her happy (which gives me hope on the what-to-do-with-my-life front). But even beyond her love of food I admire Julia Child's ability to see the positive, to persevere, and to just move on when anything didn't go her way. Whether it was her father's politics or her inability to conceive a child, I can only aspire to her ability to shrug things off and enjoy life. 

I think maybe that is part of why I love the movie "Auntie Mame" so much and watch it every Christmas. It's about a silly woman who loves people passionately and doesn't believe in prejudices and goes through life with the mantra, "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!" Whenever I get really low I need to remind myself of that. I want to revert to how I had my dorm rooms throughout college. I plastered my walls with quotes I loved from books and movies and mounted them on black poster board. Einstein, Byron, Angelou and Twain giving me advice when I just couldn't think anymore. I think I still have most of them in a bag in a closet somewhere. I just couldn't throw them away, those little connections to my soul.

So I had a bit of my heart and soul restored and rejuvenated this weekend. I may even go back and reread "My Life In France" just to extend my happy feeling. And I am definitely buying Julie & Julia on dvd. (Tho maybe I can just edit out the Julie parts...;) And maybe someone is reading this thinking I am just bonkers. Maybe it is possible for someone to not be moved by Julia Child. But if so, I don't want to know them.