It's starting to feel a bit like fall here in Menlo Park - which always brings to mind cooking roast chicken in the oven. We're mostly wintertime roast chicken people - not wanting to bother with it during the summer. But as we get into the fall season, and the days cool off, roast chicken comes to mind as one of our weekend dinners.
I recently came across this simple roast chicken recipe from Mark Bittman. Click through for the recipe and also a link to one of his Minimalist videos where he shows the technique.
It's a really simple recipe. His key breakthrough was discovering that the use of a cast iron skillet for roasting the chicken helped balance having the white/dark meat cooking appropriately. He recommends putting the skillet into the oven when you first turn it on - and use a high heat (he suggests 500 degrees which our oven won't quite reach!). As the oven warms, the skillet warms up with it - so that when the chicken is put into the skillet to cook, the warm skillet will help the thighs and dark meat cook a bit faster while letting the breast meat cook normally. It's this orchestrated imbalance that provides the magic to his recipe.
Today, for our Christmas dinner 2009, we'll be cooking a 14-lb Diestel turkey that we've dry-brined this week using this recipe from an article in the Los Angeles Times. Dry brining requires thinking ahead - like three days ahead when the turkey needs to be salted and tucked away in the back of the refrigerator.
Friends are bringing a couple of side dishes to have along with the stuffing we'll be making. Yum! - getting hungry already!
Update: Just a quick note to report that the Christmas turkey turned out to be excellent - moist white meat, great flavor! Our little experiment in dry-brining the holiday bird was a big success! Thanks to Russ Parsons for his article and recipe!
A couple of weeks ago, I came across Elise Bauer's recipe for "Mom's Ground Turkey and Peppers" on her outstanding Simply Recipes web site. We made the recipe and enjoyed it very much.
This afternoon, with family company coming, we needed to put something quick together for Saturday supper - and, as it turned out, we had a package of ground turkey in the fridge.
We also had a package of Trader Joe's "Fire Roasted Vegetables with Balsamic Butter Sauce" in the freezer. (These veggies are also our favorite as a base for a quick chicken and rice stir-fry!)
So, we tried a new variation on Elise's Mom's ground turkey recipe - using these ingredients we had on hand - along with an 8 oz can of Muir Glen Tomato Sauce that was in our pantry. The result was great - in about 20 mins - with a bit more liquid/sauce than in Elise's original recipe. We served it over a package of Trader Joe's brown rice - so easy to cook in 3 mins in the microwave. Very tasty indeed!
A friend said he was making braised chicken for a family get together tonight - which naturally got me interested in exploring recipes for braised chicken!
I came across one - a modified Food & Wine recipe - at The Kitchen Sink. I've always loved apple cider - and this one looked interesting. So, we made our own version earlier this evening and really loved all of its flavors. We paired the chicken with some sauteed vegetables with a splash of balsamic vinegar and fresh lime juice - yum!
This is one of my all-time favorite quick meals - you can literally walk in the door and have a wonderful hot and healthy meal on the table in less that ten minutes!
And, Trader Joe's would be happy - all of the ingredients come from there: Fire Roasted Vegetables in Balsamic Butter Sauce (frozen), Organic Brown Rice (frozen), and Just Chicken (fresh chicken pieces).
For our Christmas family dinner this year, we roasted a 12-lb turkey that turned out delicious. For the first time, we tried a new technique consisting of roasting the bird upside down (breasts down) and high-heat kickoff followed by a two step heat reduction while roasting (a total of 3 different temperatures are used). All you do is manage time and temperature - nothing could be simpler.
In the past, we've done brining and that works well to yield a moist bird. But the high-heat upside-down approach used here delivered just about the best, most moist turkey we've tasted - without the hassles of brining. Note: I kind of had to give up brining - my wife just can't stand the thought of open bowls of water and poultry in our refrigerator - she sees salmonella dancing everywhere around! Besides, as she says, there's never enough room in the 'frig anyway at this time of year!
A couple of years ago, the Chronicle tested a number of different recipes for roasting turkey and this particular best way brined turkey recipe came out on top - and has become a classic.
Update: We've come up with an alternative - without the mess of brining - that's also just delicious! Try our high heat upside-down turkey recipe instead.
We enjoy making this Lemon Pasta Salad on for lunch on a Sunday and then
munching on it cold throughout the week either for lunch or when we need a
snack. It's really good either warm right when you make it or cold.
Our inspiration for this salad came from one of our local markets, Andronico's, who makes a version of this salad for their deli. Our original base recipe comes from a recipe in Bon Appetit, July 2000 issue where the writer claimed it was her own version of the deli version from Gelsons Market in Los Angeles. We tried a couple of our own variations before settling on this particular version.
Everyone needs an everyday roast chicken recipe - and this is ours! It a minor adaptation of the original by Gordon Hamersley, chef-owner of Hamersley's Bistro in Boston -- as published in Fine Cooking magazine. We lived in Boston over 15 years ago and used to love hitting Hamersley's Bistro for this roast chicken dinner! We were back in Boston in 2007 and enjoyed another lovely edition of this dish!
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For our Christmas family dinner this year, we roasted a 12-lb turkey that turned out delicious. For the first time, we tried a new technique consisting of roasting the bird upside down (breasts down) and high-heat kickoff followed by a two step heat reduction while roasting (a total of 3 different temperatures are used). All you do is manage time and temperature - nothing could be simpler. 
