Lemon and Herb Roasted Chicken

As you can probably tell from my lack of recent posting, I have been incredibly busy the past couple months. However, things are finally beginning to slow down and it is time to get back into the swing of things with my cooking!

I was out of town the past couple of weekends, so this weekend was all about catching up and relaxing. So after a day of chores, how better to end it than with an easy chicken roasted chicken? The key here was finding a recipe that sounded tasty but was also super, super easy (after all, I was trying to minimize my day’s work).

I went to the Food Network’s website, and the most enticing recipe was from Tyler Florence for a Lemon And Herb Roasted Chicken With Baby Potatoes. It was pretty strait forward and required few ingredients. It also sounded like it would create those great, aromatic smells that I expect from roasting a chicken. So I opted for this recipe.

Now you roast chicken purists may snub your nose at this recipe, as it doesn’t require the fancy techniques to crisp the skin to perfection or to make the chicken breasts as moist as possible. However, I think the point of this recipe is producing a great tasting chicken with minimal work—not the world’s most perfect chicken.

Note that the recipe calls for 1 ½ pounds red new potatoes. In memory of my days in London, where Sunday roasts populate every home and pub, I replaced some of the potatoes with parsnips and carrots. If you choose to also do this, keep in mind that the parsnips and carrots will take less time to roast. Therefore, do not add them until about 40 minutes from when you expect the chicken to be done. Also, when you do add them, be sure to mix them with the juices.
Okay, here is Tyler Florence’s recipe from the Food Network:

• 1 (4 to 5 pound) free-range chicken
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 lemon, halved
• 1 head garlic, halved
• 1/4 bunch each fresh rosemary, thyme, and parsley
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 1/2 pounds red new potatoes

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Rinse the chicken with cool water, inside and out, then pat it dry with paper towels.
3. Season the cavity with salt and pepper, and then stuff the lemon, garlic, and herbs inside.
4. Place the chicken, breast-side up, in a roasting pan. Tie the legs of the chicken together with kitchen twine to help hold its shape.
5. Toss the potatoes around the chicken. Season the whole thing with a fair amount of salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil.
6. Roast the chicken and potatoes for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Don't forget to baste the chicken with the drippings and rotate the pan every 20 minutes or so to insure a golden crispy skin.
7. The chicken is done when an instant-read thermometer says 165 degrees F when inserted into the thickest part of the thigh (the legs of the chicken should wiggle easily from the sockets too.)
8. Remove the chicken to a platter and let stand for 10 minutes, so the juices settle back into the meat before carving. Serve with the roasted potatoes on the side.

Enjoy!

Chicken with Roasted Sweet Potato Sauce

Last Sunday in New York was a gorgeous Fall day that made me crave a good, hearty Fall-like dish. Tis the season for root vegetables, so I decided to make a dish utilizing sweet potatoes. Better yet, I wanted to roast them so that they would develop that great caramelized flavor. Mmm…mixed with some olive oil, thyme, salt and pepper…it does not get much better than that!

As my head was brimming with all this yummy goodness, I was intrigued to take the potatoes a step further. I had some fresh pasta in my fridge that I needed to use up so I came up with the idea to puree the roasted sweet potatoes and serve them as a sauce with the pasta. (I get most my recipe ideas by simply deciding how to use up items in my fridge.) Okay now I was getting somewhere. As I later wandered the isles of my market (don’t you all do that for fun?) it striked me that a roasted chicken breast would be a better accompaniment to satisfy my yearning for a hearty, Fall-like dish. So a chicken breast with the roasted sweet potato sauce it was!

So here is the recipe for 4 servings. As a pre-warning, you will need a food processor for this recipe.

Chicken

• Olive oil
• 4 Chicken breasts with skin and on the bone
• Coarse salt and pepper

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees.
2. Place an oven safe fry pan over medium high heat and lightly coat the bottom with olive oil. Add chicken breasts to the pan, skin side down, and cook for 5-6 minutes until skin is lightly browned.
3. Flip chicken breasts over and move pan to oven. Cook chicken breasts through until juices run clear when pierced. (I had a large chicken breast, which took 25 minutes to cook through. My handy-dandy thermometer made knowing when it was done quite easy!)

Roasted Sweet Potato Sauce

• 1 lb Sweet potato, skinned and cut into centimeter cubes
• 2 tsp and 1 tbsp Olive oil
• 1 tsp Thyme (plus some for garnishing)
• 1 ¾ cups Whole milk (measurement will vary) (See Note 1)
• ¼ tsp Freshly grated nutmeg
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 40 Roasted pecan halves, quartered (See Note 2)

1. Heat oven to 450 degrees.
2. On a roasting pan add potatoes and mix with 2 tsp olive oil and thyme.
3. Place potatoes in oven and let roast until lightly browned. This will take approximately 40 minutes. Toss potatoes a couple times while roasting.
4. Once potatoes are cooked, remove about a fifth of them and put them aside. Place remaining potatoes into a food processor.
5. Add 1 tbsp olive and 1 cup of milk to potatoes and puree. Keep adding additional milk and pureeing until the mixture reaches a thick sauce consistency. The total amount of milk will be about 1 ¾ cups, but this will vary depending on the amount of potatoes and how much they roasted (roasting removes moisture from the food).
6. Add nutmeg, as well as, salt and pepper to taste.
7. Pour sauce into a small sauce pan over medium low heat. Stirring frequently, heat sauce thoroughly.
8. Spoon a generous amount of sauce onto the serving plates, covering the bottoms. Now place the chicken breasts onto the plates and top with the cubed potatoes that were set aside. Follow this by sprinkling the roasted pecans onto the chicken, and top off with fresh thyme.

Enjoy!


Notes:

1. As I was making this sauce I began pureeing the potatoes with heavy cream, which I quickly found was going to make the sauce way too rich given the amount of liquid required to form a sauce. However, the little that I did end up putting in the potatoes (1/4 cup) did add some extra creaminess than what the whole milk alone would have offered. I do not think you necessarily need heavy cream, but if you do want to add some extra richness to the sauce I do suggest that you combine a little heavy cream with the milk.
2. I find that the easiest way to roast nuts is stove top. Most people roast nuts in the oven, but this method doesn’t allow you to closely watch them to prevent burning (as you may know, they often go from raw to burnt quite quickly). Therefore, I suggest placing the pecans in a fry pan over medium heat. Toss them frequently until they are lightly browned and then remove them from the heat.

Chicken with Watercress Sauce

I grew up in the lovely city of Birmingham, AL where Frank Stitt was—and still is—the star chef. In fact, this Alabamian won a James Beard Award for the "Best Chef in the Southeast." His best-known restaurant is Highlands Bar and Grill, which serves French food with a southern influence by utilizing ingredients that are indigenous to the area. While growing up, it was such a treat to go here with my family. Today, the first thing my mom does when she learns that I am coming home for a visit is make a reservation at Highlands!

A couple years ago, Frank Stitt blessed us with his first cookbook, Frank Stitt's Southern Table: Recipes and Gracious Traditions from Highlands Bar and Grill. While home for Christmas and dining at his restaurant, my momma bought me his book (signed by him and my favorite waiter, who has been working at Highlands since I was a little girl). Not only are the recipes fabulous, but the cookbook is also a joy to read as it includes a lot about where Frank Stitt acquires his inspiration and finds his ingredients.

A couple weekends ago I had a “me weekend.” Amidst many weekends filled with friends’ weddings, bachelorette parties, and showers; I finally had a weekend to myself. So I took advantage of this time and treated myself to a lovely meal designed by Mr. Stitt. I had a difficult time narrowing down which dish I wanted to make, but ultimately decided upon the Chicken with Watercress Sauce recipe.

I really enjoyed this dish and will certainly make it again. I usually find chicken to be a bit boring, but this was quite tasty and the sauce went very well with it. Making the dish was a little overwhelming at one point as I was trying to organize it all in my head, but afterwards I realized that it is actually not so hard—I am just not used to having to follow someone else’s orders for a recipe! Now that I have made it, from hereon it should be much easier. I do recommend that you have all ingredients prepared before starting the dish.

So here is the recipe (for 4 servings):

• 1 large Bunch watercress, tough stems removed, blanched in boiling water for 1 minute, and cooled in ice water
• 1 ½ cups Homemade chicken broth or canned low-sodium broth, boiled to reduce to 1 cup
• 3 tbsp Unsalted butter
• 4 Large frenched chicken breasts (See Note 1)
• Coarse salt and freshly ground white pepper
• 8 Large asparagus spears, trimmed, blanched in boiling salted water until just tender, and cooled in ice water
• 8 Small radishes, trimmed and halved
• 2 Medium spring onions, quartered and glazed (or sautéed) (See Note 2)
• ½ cup White wine (See Note 3)
• 2 tbsp Heavy cream

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Squeeze watercress lightly to remove excess water. Place it in a blender and puree until smooth, 1 to 2 minutes (you may need to add a little of the reduced chicken broth to facilitate pureeing.) Set aside.
3. Heat a large heavy ovenproof sauté pan over medium heat and add 1 tablespoon of the butter. Season the chicken with salt and white pepper, add skin side down to the pan, and cook until golden on the first side, 5 to 6 minutes. Turn the chicken and place the pan in the oven to finish cooking, 4 to 5 minutes longer. (See Note 4)
4. While the chicken is cooking, slice the asparagus into halves or thirds, depending on the size, and place in a medium saucepan, along with the radishes and spring onions. Add 1 tablespoon of the butter, season with salt and white pepper, and warm gently; keep warm over very low heat.
5. Remove the chicken from the pan and place on a rack set over a platter. Pour out any excess fat from the pan, set over high heat, and deglaze with white wine, stirring up the brown bits. Boil until reduced by half. Add the (remaining) chicken broth and reduce by slightly over half. Add the cream and reduce slightly, about 30 seconds. Turn the heat down and swirl in the remaining 1 tablespoon butter and watercress puree. Season to taste.
6. Spoon the sauce onto warm serving plates. Top with the chicken and arrange the asparagus, onions, and radishes around it. Serve immediately.

I ended up making a little extra sauce because, personally, I don’t think you can ever have too much sauce. I also drank a Sauvignon Blanc with this dish, which I think went really well with it (but I am also biased because “Sauvignon” is one of my favorite words to say—“Szechwan” is another favorite).

Enjoy!


Notes:

1. Frenched chicken breasts are meatier than your normal chicken breasts and have the skin remaining on. They also maintain a little bone on the end, which is really just there for aesthetic purposes from what I can see. Your butcher will know what a “Frenched chicken breast” is and will properly prepare it for you. Frank Stitt notes that a regular chicken breast can also work, but you will need to use less time for cooking it. Personally, though, go with the Frenched style—it looks so much cooler!
2. He says spring onions here, which normally mean scallions. However, this seemed a bit odd to me because how does one quarter a scallion? And won’t they just get soggy in the sauce? And where are they in his prepared dish picture (trust me, they were not there)? Thinking that this is either a mistake or he is not referring to scallions after all, I used a Vidalia onion. The sweetness of this onion worked well with the dish.
3. Remember when cooking with wine to always use a wine that you would drink! This is because the flavor will concentrate when cooked.
4. Okay, so he says that the chicken will cook about 11 minutes. My chicken? It took about 45 minutes! Perhaps my breasts were too big? (I have always wanted to be able to say that.)

Chicken and Leeks with Crème Fraiche

Wow, this is one of the best chicken dishes I have made in a while—it is even up there with Ina Garten’s Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic! And y’all know I love cooking with crème fraiche—it makes me feel so sophisticated. Plus the use of the hard apple cider combined with the leeks is unbelievably good and also an interesting combination that I had not had before. In fact, this was also the first time I had cooked with leeks—I had no idea what a fabulous ingredient they are!

If you are not familiar with leeks, they are in between a scallion and an onion in flavor and texture. What I loved about them is that they are a bit milder than onions and hold up better in cooking so that you can actually make them as a side dish all on their own. Why do we not cook more with this awesome item?

So here is the recipe adapted from Martha Stewart. The original recipe is for 4 servings, but since I was cooking this dish for just me and my friend, Carrie, the recipe below is how I made it for 2 servings:

Ingredients

• 2 Chicken breasts on the bone (I swear chicken on the bone is always so much more moist and tastier when cooked)
• Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 tbsp butter
• 2 tsp olive oil
• 2 leeks, white and pale-green parts only, cut crosswise into 3-inch pieces and halved lengthwise, rinsed well (See Note 1)
• ¾ cup good-quality hard apple cider (See Note 2)
• ½ tbsp coarsely chopped fresh thyme leaves
• ¼ rounded cup of crème fraiche

1. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Melt butter and oil in a large sauté pan (I used my 5 quart sauté pan) or enameled cast-iron Dutch oven over medium-high heat until just bubbling.
2. Add the chicken pieces, skin sides down; cook, turning once, until golden, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Transfer chicken pieces to a plate and remove pot from heat; let cool slightly.
3. Return pot to medium-low heat, and add leeks. Cook, stirring frequently, until leeks begin to soften and are pale golden, about 3 minutes.
4. Add hard cider and thyme. Move leeks to edges of pot, and add all the chicken pieces to pot, skin sides down. Arrange leeks over chicken. Cover, and cook 15 minutes (if liquid is bubbling rapidly, reduce heat to low). Turn chicken pieces, and cook until breasts are cooked through, about 5 minutes more.
5. Transfer the chicken to the serving dishes leaving the juices behind. Remove leeks from pot, and arrange the leeks around the chicken.
6. Return pot to medium heat. Cook, uncovered, until liquid has reduced by about half (to about 1/2 cup), 8 to 10 minutes. (When I came to this step, the liquid was already cooked down. So I skipped this step and actually had to add a few tablespoons of cider so that there was about ½ cup of liquid in the pan. If you need to add cider like I did, let it cook slightly to rid the alcohol.)
7. Reduce heat to medium-low. Whisk in the crème fraîche and parsley. Ladle pan sauce over chicken and leeks. Serve immediately.

The final product with be one of the best chicken dishes you have ever eaten—super moist, delicious, and a unique combination of flavors.

Enjoy!

Notes:

1. Before I made this dish, Carrie warned me that leeks are super dirty. I was a little confused looking at the leeks though because they look perfectly clean. However, Carrie was right—the dirt is all inside the leek within the layers. So be sure you get all the dirt out! I found it was best to first cut the leeks as directed above, separate the pieces’ layers, and then run the leeks’ pieces under water.
2. As the original recipe notes, you can substitute hard cider with dry white wine, but I do strongly suggest using hard cider if possible. The flavor it gives is just too good! You can find hard cider at your grocery store in the beer section.