Roasting Chicken

There is nothing so perfect as a whole roasted chicken. To me it is the ultimate Sunday dinner. Something about it just screams family. The first step to roasting a wonderful chicken is ensuring crispy skin, while keeping the meat moist and tender, once you have perfected that you can start to play with the flavor. I still love my go to chicken recipe, based on the Barefoot Contessa's "Engagement Chicken", but I was in an allspice kind of mood and this was a wonderful change of pace. As a bonus I tossed in some zucchini and made this a lovely one dish meal.



Roast Chicken with Sherry and Allspice:
1 5-6 lb roasting chicken
1/4 cup olive oil
4 cloves of garlic
3 medium onions
2 medium zucchini
1 tbsp of whole allspice
1/3 cup of sherry
1/2 cup of chicken stock
Salt, Pepper

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Rough chop the zucchini and onions, and toss in the bottom of a baking dish (reserving 2 or 3 pieces of onion) with salt and pepper and about a table spoon of olive oil. Wash the chicken, inside and out, then pat dry. salt and pepper the chicken inside and out. Stuff with the reserved onions, the garlic cloves (smashed slightly) and half the allspice. Sprinkle the remaining allspice through out the pan. Drizzle or rub the rest of the olive oil onto the chicken. Bake for 20 minutes, then lower the heat to 350 and pour the sherry over the chicken. Bake for another 20 minutes then pour the stock over. Continue cooking until the popper pops up, basting the chicken stock occasionally with the juices from the pan, about 20 minutes per pound. Let rest 10 minutes before carving. Serve and Enjoy.

Happy Eating

Beer for Breakfast

I was browsing the wonderful recipes over at Brown Eyed Baker, hunting for something delicious to bake, when I came across this very intriguing recipe for Three Cheese Beer Bread, yum. Apparently beer bread is a fairly known baked item, but I had never heard of such a wonderful thing. I love cooking with beer, so I gathered the ingredients and planned on making it one lazy Sunday. Then I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and could not fall back asleep, at that point mad at my pre-dawn internal alarm clock, I decided I deserved a most decadent and delicious breakfast, enter a wonderful veggie and cheese omelet, thick sliced bacon, and cheesy beer bread.



Veggie and Cheese Omelet:
3 egg white (or whole eggs if you prefer)
1 small jalapeño, diced (from my garden, on the milder side, optional)
1 small to medium tomato (also from the garden)
1 cup swiss chard
1 tbsp of sour cream
small handful of fresh chives
1/4 cup shredded Gruyère cheese
salt, pepper

Heat a small skillet or omelet pan over medium-high heat, use butter, oil or PAM to coat the pan if not non stick. Put the chard and jalapeño in the pan and allow to cook for a few minutes. Meanwhile beat the egg whites (or eggs) with the sour cream (the secret to fluffy omelets). Add the tomatoes and chives to the pan, salt and pepper to taste. Pour the egg mixture over the veggies. Cook until it is almost set in the middle, then cover with half the cheese. Flip in half and top with the remaining cheese. Serve and Enjoy.



Cheesy Beer Bread:

3 1/4 of cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tsp red pepper flakes (optional, or to taste)
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tbsp of oregano
1 small handful of fresh chopped chives
1 cup of low fat plain yogurt
1 cups beer
1/4 cup of tomato juice
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 eggs
1 cup of Gruyère cheese, shredded (this one I had to grate myself)
1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese, shredded
1/2 cup of Pecorino Romano cheese, shredded
1 cup of cheddar cheese, shredded

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, stir flour, baking powder, salt, mustard, pepper, red pepper flakes, and chives. Toss in 1/2 cup of the Gruyère and cheddar cheese, and 1/4 cup of the Parmesan and Pecorino cheese. Stir so all the cheese is coated with flour. Whisk together the yogurt, beer, juice, Worcestershire, and egg in a small bowl until fully combined. Add to the flour mixture and stir together until just combined. The dough should be sticky and fluffy. Pour dough into a 9 inch by 5 inch greased loaf pan. Use the back of a spoon to smooth dough. Top with the remaining cheese. Bake for 45-50 minutes until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool 5-10 minutes before removing from the pan. Serve hot, cool or toast (it was especially delicious the next day toasted).

(adapted from Brown Eyed Baker)

Happy Eating

Making Jam

When I was little I very rarely ate store bought Jam. The simple reason was my grandmother seemed to have/be making a never ending supply of jam, mostly strawberry. I remember standing on a stool as a little girl, wearing a handmade apron, watching the strawberries boil away. When she stopped making it, it took me years to adjust back to the store bought variety, granted there are some very fancy store ones now, that are much better than average, but nothing compares to homemade, fresh jam made from deliciously in season fruit. So, for the first time ever, I whipped out my canner and mason jars, and made some fresh jam. The only problem with making jam is that I simultaneously want to share it with everyone I know and keep it all for my hungry self.



Before making your own jam for canning, I recommend checking out The National Center for Home Food Preservation's website. They have lots of useful information about canning safely, the different canning methodologies, using pectins (which I didn't), and recipes too. Here are both the recipes I made, the way I processed the jars is at the very bottom.

First I pre-sterilized the jars by filling them with warm to hot water, and putting them in a canner(a giant pot with a special rack for the jars) and then filling the rest of the canner with warm/hot water. Bring to a boil, then boil COVERED for 10 minutes, it was probably a little longer, because I just boiled them while I was making the jam and left them in there until I was ready to ladle the jam in, since it is best to hot-pack the jars. Leave the pot covered as much as possible and keep the water boiling.

Strawberry Preserves:
6 cups of strawberry
4 1/2 cups of sugar

Wash the strawberries. Slice the strawberries in half or quarters for large strawberries and mix with sugar in a big bowl. Refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight. Heat in a large skillet or pot until boiling, then boil until the mixture becomes thick and gels, about 20 minutes, stirring frequently. Skim the foam off the top as best you can before filling the jars. This made enough jam to fill 5 half pint jars, although one definitely had a little less than the others.

(Adapted from the he National Center for Home Food Preservation)

Spiced Peach-Blueberry Jam:
4 1/2 cups of peaches, chopped (about 3 lbs)
3 1/2 cups of blueberries (approximately one large container)
2 tbsp of lemon juice, about half a juicy lemon
1/2 cup of water
1/2 tsp of salt
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 tbsp of whole allspice (this doesn't have to be exact)
1.2 tbsp of whole cloves (this doesn't have to be exact)
a piece of cheese cloth

Wash all the fruit. Chop the peaches into pieces similar to what you would find in canned fruit salad (so pretty small). I left the skin on and the jam came out wonderful, you can peel them (in the original recipe they did). Heat the fruit, water and lemon juice in a large skillet or pot, bring to a boil for about 10 minutes. Tie the cinnamon stick, allspice and cloves in a piece of cheese cloth. (Note: Tie very tightly because if you don't it will spill out into the jam, which is fine the jam will still seal and is perfectly delicious, but biting into a whole clove is not pleasant). Stir sugar and salt into fruit until combined, when fully combined add toss in cheese cloth. Allow to boil for about 15 minutes until jam is thickened. Stir frequently, but gently (again to prevent the cloth from opening). It is definitely a little extra work to "spice" the jam, but it is so delicious and totally worth it.

(Adapted from the he National Center for Home Food Preservation)

To fill and process jam:

Remove Jam from heat. Ladle jam into hot, pre-sterilized 1/2 pint jars leaving about a 1/4 inch of head space. Basically, fill until just below where the grooves on the top of the jar are, then wipe the top part clean. Put the 2 part lid on the jars and screw the lids on tightly. Place the jars back in the rack and load into the canner/pot, that is already full of boiling water from the pre-sterilizing process (it is easiest to just keep the water covered at a boil the whole time). Boil for 10 minutes to seal jars. Remove jars from the water and let cool on a counter with a few inches in between each jar. When the jars have cooled completely, test to make sure they are sealed by pressing on the lids, if the lid pops back when you press on it then the jars are not sealed, refrigerated immediately and use it up within 2 weeks. If the lids are sealed then the jam is shelf stable for about 18 months, but refrigerated after opening.

The blueberries and peaches cooking...



The strawberries boiling away...



The peach-blueberry jam I didn't seal cooling (so I could eat it immediately)...



The sealed jars cooling...




Happy Eating.

Warm Summer Pasta Salad

I will admit, that when I started making this, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know what the end product would be or how it would taste. I couldn't decide if I was going to have separate components or one dish, mostly I was just upset because I had planned on making fried chicken cutlets, only to discover I was out of chicken. Life goes on, and becomes what is arguably the best pasta dish I have ever made. And so summery too, something about tomatoes and goat cheese, it just tastes like summer and so does this pasta.



I don't know about the rest of you out there, but the tomatoes in my area have been absolutely stunning this year. Better than I can ever remember. My 2 main sources of tomatoes have been my garden and my CSA, although I occasionally supplement with LOCALLY grown tomatoes from my friendly neighborhood Wegmans. I don't think I have had a bad (forget bad, a not fantastic) tomato all season. I hope your's have been just as delicious.



Warm Pasta Salad:
1 lb of penne or rotini
2 large tomatoes
1 large onion
1 tbsp of brown sugar
1 tbsp of olive oil
2 tbsp store bought pesto
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup Pecorino Ramano cheese
2 oz of soft goat cheese
salt, pepper, red pepper flakes

Boil water for the pasta and heat the olive oil in a large pan. Slice onion into thin slices and toss with the brown sugar. Put onions into a hot pan and reduce heat to medium low, cook until soft and brown (when the pasta is done) and stir occasionally, so nothing burns. About before the pasta is ready to be strained, chop the tomatoes and add them to the onions, stir and raise heat to high. Drain the pasta, leaving a little water clinging to the noodles. Pour the noodles into the tomatoes and onions and stir to combine. Reduce heat to low and add the pesto and Parmesan and Pecorino cheese. Mix together, add salt, pepper and red pepper flakes to taste. Crumble in the goat cheese right before serving.

Happy Eating.