Archive for March 18, 2009
Garden Update
My garden is still a ways away from the green eden that I imagine it will be in a few months, but it’s coming along. Last weekend my dad came down to visit and brought a little electric chain saw that my grandpa used to use in his own tiny back yard in Jersey back in the 80s. We used it to cut down some dead trees that were hanging precariously over the garden (one of them already fell down a few weeks ago on a particularly windy day), and then chop up the tree branches and trunks to use as fire wood and for lining out my garden beds. The beds are still empty and I need to get some more good compost to fill them with, but it’s exciting to see where my food will be growing this summer. I plan to get test the yard soil tested to make sure I don’t end up poisoning myself – I hear you can send it to Rutgers and they’ll test it for you. Which reminds me, I should call them. Later!
One Chicken, Two Meals
Roasting a whole chicken is one of the easiest ways to make a delicious meal. And then when you’re done with it, you can get a whole second meal out of the carcass.
Most contemporary Americans go straight for the boneless chicken breasts when shopping for poultry, but not only are they expensive, those little cutlets are lacking in flavor and doomed to end up dry and mediochre on your plate. I recommend going for a nice big hunk of bone-in chicken, like wings and legs (great for the BBQ), and I’ma particularly big fan of the whole chicken. This is how most chickens come at the farmers market, and pound-for-pound it’s the cheapest way to buy a bird.
Roasting chicken is easy. You simply rub it down with salt and pepper, put it in a pan and throw it in the oven at 450 degrees for about an hour to an hour and a half. Don’t cover it, don’t stuff it (make sure there isn’t a bag of organs in there, though) – just put it in the oven and watch TV or something until an hour has passed. You can tell it’s done because the skin gets a beautiful golden brown color. Take it out of the oven, spoon some juice from the bottom of the pan onto to the top to give it a nice, juicy shine and let it rest for a couple minutes before diving in and carving it up. It goes great with potatoes and winter root veggies (throw them in the oven in a different pan while the bird is cooking), or with a salad in the summer time.
Once you’ve gobbled (clucked?) up the roaster, hold on to the leftover carcass. It’s still good.You can pick the extra meat off the bones and make a nice chicken salad sandwich with it, or put the meat aside and use it in a chicken soup. The rest of the carcass gets thrown in a pot – skin, bones and all – and boiled in several cups of water until you’ve got a nice broth. Don’t stir the chicken while it’s boiling – you want to leave it alone and get a nice, clear broth out of it.
Usually I use my chicken broth in chicken soup (broth, salt, chicken, onions and veggies – very simple and delicious). But you can also use it in sauces, polenta, stir fry or anything else that calls for broth. This time I made a nice borscht with it. (more…)
