Roasted Chicken Conquered

If you are a Food Network fan, or even casual observer, than you’ve probably noticed that just about everyone on FN insists that roasted chicken is one of the simplest meals one can make and also the mark of a good cook. I have found this terribly frustrating, because my first few attempts at roasting a chicken could not be called simple. Was this a sign that I’m not destined to be a great home cook? Most of my frustrations with roasting chickens involved hungry crowds and chickens that took way longer than expected to cook. On one occasion my mom and I even cut of finished portions and returned the rest of the now mutilated bird to the oven. I’ve also had beautiful birds that my poor carving skills turned into piles of indistinguishable pieces of meat and bones in slimy skin. Every time by the time the thigh meat reached the appropriate temperature, the breast meat was usually dry and tasteless. Well, last night I had my first truly successful roasted chicken. The skin was crisp and tasty, meat flavorful and moist, and best of all the whole chicken was actually done when I took it out of the oven. Yum and yes, simple. Throw some root vegetables into the roasting pan and this makes a great dinner. There are also many good uses for leftover chicken. I’ll explore these in future posts.

Here are some of the tips I’ve learned from my trial and error experiments with roasted chicken:

1. An instant-read probe thermometer is essential. I bought a probe thermometer last September, and it has dramatically lowered the stress level in my kitchen. It has a temperature probe that you simply insert in your roast or baked good or whatever, a thin, heat proof wire that runs out the oven door, and a base that rests on the counter.

Restaurant Review #1: Avoid M Bar and Restaurant

 

 

Last night, at the request of a visiting out-of-town friend, my husband and I made the mistake of choosing the promise of entertainment over the promise of good food and agreed to try the M Bar and Restaurant just north of
Santa Monica and Vine. (http://www.mbarhollywood.com/index1.htm) I’m no comedy critic, and every comedy club must have bad nights every now and then, so I’ll just say that the show wasn’t good enough to make up for the horribly rude service and bad food. In order to get a seat at the 8pm show, we had to make reservations for dinner, and there was a $10 food order minimum, in addition to the $5 cover at the door. Now, this may sound cheap, but the food was really horrible, and much of it cost more than $10. Despite having a reservation, the three of us were seated at a table for two that was awkwardly placed in the main servers’ thoroughfare. There was no apology for this bad table.

Back to California Winter Roasted Vegetables Dinner

Returning from a wonderful busy holiday season, full of family, friends, and lots of heavy food, it was quite a joy to return to Los Angeles and visit the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market this past Wednesday. This market is incredible, just walking through it makes me feel like a chef. Farmers’ Markets here are truly one my very favorite things about living in California. Even in January there is still a huge variety of vegetables, and I was craving vegetables. Determined to celebrate our return to California with a dinner that came entirely from the market, I decided to throw everything in a pan and roast it. The results were quite good. I left the market with lovely little sweet Nantes carrots, a small bag of brussel sprouts, yellow potatoes, red beets, yellow beets, and Jerusalem artichokes (also called sunchokes). I also had a variety of other tastey treats, but these are the items that made it into that first night’s roast. Wanting to develop a simple recipe, I decided to just prep the veggies and cut them to chunks of about the same size and see what happened. All peeled and washed, the raw veggies were a lovely array of colors in the pan. My red beets turned out to be red and white striped. They weren’t as sweet as other roasted beets I’ve had, but they looked lovely.