real life test kitchen: melissa clark’s roasted chicken with chickpeas
Among my many obsessions are great cookbooks. If a cookbook is truly lovely, I can read it like a novel – cover to cover, ogling every photo and fantasizing about the event for which I’d make every recipe.
I’ve clearly been living under some sort of rock, as I didn’t know much about Melissa Clark before now, other than that she’s the food writer for the New York Times. But from the moment I cracked the spine of her latest book, Cook This Now, I was a devoted follower. Organized by month, Clark walks you through what’s in season and great to cook with every month of the year, so you can adhere to her strict localvore attitude or mix-and-match recipes throughout the year.
As mouth-watering as every recipe appeared, I had to give things a try before I committed to our new love. So, I tested her recipe for Roasted Chicken with Chickpeas. Friends…all I can say is that roasting chickpeas and lemons underneath a chicken is pure culinary genius. They get all crunchy and delicious from the long cooking time, and the butter-slathered chicken drips down on the chickpeas as it cooks…the whole thing is complete genius.
For once in my life, I made this recipe exactly as written. And I wouldn’t change a thing…but I do have a few comments/helpful hints:
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real life test kitchen: no-stir oven risotto
I enjoy making risotto, when I have the time. Since that doesn’t happen as much as I’d like and I had a container of arborio rice staring me in the face, I looked up “oven risotto recipes” online. To my surprise, there were quite a few, ranging from recipes that required just a few minutes of stove-top prep to ones that required closer to 15 minutes of prep. Since I didn’t have most of the ingredients for either on hand, the decision was easy: Keep it simple. After coating a casserole dish with oil, I threw a cup of rice in the bottom, grated a little nutmeg, stirred in some minced garlic and added three cups of low-sodium chicken stock. (Low sodium is important, since the liquid will reduce.) Then I covered the dish tightly and threw it in the oven. After 20 minutes, I jiggled the casserole dish and there was still an inch or so of liquid on top. I let it go another 10 minutes and checked again. Bingo. I cubed up the butter and gently stirred it in, then did the same with the parmesan and seasoning. Total effort? Five minutes for a creamy and flavorful risotto. Not bad. I’ll definitely try this again, experimenting with adding a few more ingredients. Click through to the next page for the recipe!
Another one-pan rice dish you may like:
Broccolli rabe with sausage and rice
how’d we miss this? spaghetti hot dogs!
Good old Facebook, the place where I (disturbingly) get more and more of my first news reports, and where a friend just hipped me to this hilarious hot dog dish, which a Livejournal thread), but there’s a great post and photos at Filth Wizardry, where they take it to the next level with carrots and ham. Would you make this dish for adults? How would you serve it? — Mary T.
real life test kitchen: roast chicken with parsley & lemon
These days, during the height of winter, I feel like I could roast a chicken a week and be happy. It’s just the easiest, loveliest, most satisfying meal — not to mention it warms up your house and provides plenty of leftovers. This past Sunday I decided to give a recipe from the new Martha Stewart Living a try, roast chicken with parsley, lemon and parmesan. Blessfully simple, the only prep work is to rub the bird with some oil, salt and pepper, and stuff the cavity with some parsley and a half a lemon. Toss some fingerling potatoes with oil and salt and add them to the pan. First you bake it at 425 for 15 minutes, then lower heat to 375 for 25 minutes, rotate pan, and then roast another 25 minutes. Meanwhile chop up some parsley (I used a small food processor), add oil, lemon zest, lemon juice and parmesan. Dollop some over the chicken and potatoes and serve the rest on the table. Heavenly. Click here for the recipe at MSL.com. — Angela M.
What’s your favorite way to roast a chicken? Here are some of our favorites, and leftover recipes, too.
Roast Chicken with Chick Peas and Lemon
Jamie Oliver’s Lemon Chicken
Lemon Rigatoni with Chicken and Broccoli
panini-schamini: do you have a kitchen gadget that always lets you down?
The other day, I got a wild hair and decided to make myself a grilled PB&J for lunch. Sure, I could have just opted for a regular old frying pan, but I thought I’d go for gold. So, I unearthed my Le Creuset panini pan from the nether regions of my kitchen cabinet (no doubt banished there for good reason), got it smoking hot, popped my sandwich inside, and ended up with this:
Not exactly the delicious, satisfying lunch I had in mind. If anything, it conjured more of a gag reflex than hunger pains. As I scraped the sorry remnants out of the pan, a series of flashbacks of prior mishaps appeared before my eyes. In reality, this panini pan has plagued me since the day it arrived. I didn’t return it after the first stick-tastic catastrophe, thinking it was just a fluke, or I was doing something wrong. A year later, I’ve determined there’s just no amount of grease sufficient to prevent this pan from destroying everything it touches. And, as you might expect, clean-up is – well, not a breeze. But I spent so much money on it…you know how it goes.
We all have them. Those appliances, gadgets or tools in the kitchen that we absolutely despise. Something we probably shelled out a good chunk of change to buy, with hopes of it transforming our culinary lives. Only to discover, once we put it to use, that it’s an utter horror to have around. Yet for some reason, you just can’t bear to throw it out.
As for me, I’m finally ready to admit defeat. I’m sending this pan off to my local Goodwill, complete with the residual PB&J crud I couldn’t free from its clutches, where some poor sap will undoubtedly discover it and think they’ve hit the thrift store jackpot. That is, until they get it home.
Please…tell me I’m not alone. Do you have any gadget wreckage cluttering up your kitchen? –Becki S.
