Yet Another Roast Chicken

Finding the perfect roast chicken is my life's mission, and while I think I've come close (Gordon Hammersley's & my friend Karen's French salt encrusted chicken) I haven't found the perfect chicken recipe yet.

The Zuni Cafe roast chicken/bread salad recipe keeps popping up in the blogosphere, so tonight I figured I'd give it a shot.

I followed the recipe pretty much to the T, so I won't re-post Judy Roger's extensive recipe here.  Just google it and you'll find it.

I was pretty nervous going into this chicken endeavor because the recipe was over 5 pages long, and I am TERRIBLE at reading recipes and paying attention to them.  Also, I decided not to make a whole chicken and instead used just a whole bone-in breast roaster and was pretty sure that would be the ruin of me.

Shockingly, everything worked out well!  I didn't spill salt, the kitchen wasn't a mess.  Aside from massive amounts of acrid smoke pouring out of my oven due to the high roasting temperature, everything went smoothly!  (Thankfully, in this house I have a vent AND a window that opens easily.  Ah, modernity.)

I probably overcooked the chicken by about 3 minutes, but other than that, the bread salad was awesome.  I think if we had used a nice, local chicken the flavor would have been better, but alas, we cooked a frozen grocery store bird.  Going forward, if we're going to make a simple chicken recipe like this one, or Thomas Keller's, we'll get a local bird.

I'll make this one again, even if it's just for the bread salad.

 

No Lycopene Shortage in this House.

Today was sort of a meh day in the Messy Chef Central Mass household.  We got about a foot of snow, which at this point in the season is depressing, not "picturesque." In addition, Mr. Messy Chef lost a colleague quite unexpectedly over the weekend in a tragic accident.  It was a tough day in the office.

Given everything going on, nothing said "dinner" more to me than a nice, creamy risotto and a lot of nice wine.  Tonight I popped open a bottle of Hogl Riesling, which I discovered at the Slanted Door in San Francisco.

I didn't have much on hand, except for some slow roasted tomatoes and fennel.  I also had the standard onion & garlic, as well as leftover tomato soup and frozen pesto.

Given that I had pretty much nothing in the fridge, I figured I'd make some roasted tomato risotto, using the soup to add additional tomato flavor, and use the pesto instead of fresh basil.

I chopped the fennel and the onion and sauteed them in butter/olive oil and red pepper flakes.  About this time, I realized that we don't have any Arborio rice in the house.  I have about 900 half-empty bags of basmati rice, two boxes of wild rice, and a box of ditalini pasta.  My husband and I TORE UP the house looking for the missing box of Trader Joe's Arborio Rice, but no luck.  Um ... so, looks like I was making risotto out of ditalini.

Ingredients

1/2 lb ditalini pasta

1/4 - 1/2 cup of white wine

small fennel bulb

small onion

1 tablespoon of pesto

1 cup chopped slow roasted tomatoes

2 tablespoons tomato paste (or 1 T paste and 2 T tomato soup)

chicken broth (1 and 1/2 cans Swanson broth)

Parmesan, to grate over the pasta

Saute the fennel and onion with a pinch of red pepper flakes in butter and olive oil.

Add the pasta and stir for a minute or so.  Add the wine and stir for another 2 minutes.

Slowly add in the chicken broth, a ladleful at a time.  Wait for the broth to be absorbed by the pasta before adding another ladle.  While this is going on, add the tablespoon of pesto and the tomato paste/soup to the pasta.  (I used soup because I had some in the fridge.  It added a really nice flavor to the pasta.  I used the pesto since I didn't have any fresh basil.  It worked).

Once the pasta has absorbed enough broth to be fully cooked, add the chopped roasted tomatoes.  

Spoon the risotto into bowl and grate fresh Parmesan over the top.

What? We disappeared for a year??

So, the Messy Chefs had a kinda hectic year since we last saw you.  The following things have happened, in no particular order:

a) Messy Chef Cambridge got married.

b) Messy Chef Manhattan got a dog.

c) Messy Chef Manhattan was in grad school, working as a personal assistant to the wife of an Important Titan of Finance, interning for NY Historical Society for free (but she got a cool tri-cornered hat), and interning for an unnamed-yet-famous designer (from whom Messy Chef Cambridge scored a lovely handbag).  All at the same time.

d) Messy Chef Cambridge and her husband had a life crisis, moved from Cambridge and out to The Woods (aka, central Massachusetts) into her parent's summer house.  The house is a good 45 minute drive from the nearest Whole Foods.  Oh, the tragedy.

e) Messy Chef Cambridge took a new job that required massive amounts of travel to San Francisco.

However, we are now back, and better than ever.  Especially since Messy Chef Central Mass now has a vent over her stove and a working oven.

Messy Chef Manhattan's kitchen is still about 4 sq feet total.