Spicy, Spicy Failure
This was amazing. The rest of dinner, not so much. But this chicken made up for the rest of the spicy mess. It was flavorful, tender, and oh so very moist. The chicken was the only thing that wasn’t spicy, too.
We’ve cooked a few Alison Roman recipes that I saw on YouTube with great success. Zeke and the kids gave me this cookbook for Christmas and I was really looking forward to cooking from it. I skimmed through it and picked out the Citrus Chicken Rested in Herbs (phenomenal…worth the price of the cookbook).
To go with the chicken, I picked sides with similar flavor profiles thinking they would compliment each other.
Sticky Roasted Carrots with Citrus and Tahini and Spicy Caramelized Leeks with Fresh Lemon seemed to fit the bill. Rei is not a big fan of spice and despite toning it down, Rei ended up dousing the carrots in a makeshift sour cream/lemon sauce and by drinking copious amounts of milk. Neither of these dishes work out as planned. The thing is, I’ve been intentionally pushing myself out of my comfort zone in the kitchen and at the table — trying to get over my aversion to raw meat and spicy foods has been my mission recently. This was still too much for my poor taste buds to handle :(
Zeke was our trusty shopper and acquired the necessary ingredients (with some substitutions) and I tasked him with cutting the chicken in half as instructed by Alison. Check out my new cutting board…Zeke and the kids made me cutting boards for Christmas. We won’t be cutting onions/garlic on any of them. Dad made that board, I made another (prettier but smaller) board also for cooking, and Adam made two smaller and also very pretty boards that have been delegated to be cheeseboards.
The marinade was simple but tasty. Soy sauce, orange juice, freshly squeezed lemon and lime juice, grated garlic, salt, oil, and chopped jalapeno pepper.
Half the marinade went into the bag with the chicken to rest in the fridge and the other half was set aside to be poured onto the cooked chicken before serving.
Since there was honey in a few of the dishes, I thought that the Salted Honey Panna Cotta with Crushed Raspberries would be a good choice. We Meads love Panna Cotta and have a no-fail recipe. We are used to cooking with gelatin so we aren’t sure what went wrong. They never set. We just like the other recipe better, and this recipe could tell. It got jealous and sabotaged us.
Rei heated up the gelatin, cream, and (local) honey while I got the buttermilk, sour cream, vanilla, and whipping cream ready for the heated mixture. (This is the cutting board Rei made for me. I am totally impressed.) It was really fun to make, too (the cutting board, that is; the cream mixture was super easy).
Rei poured the mixture into our trusty panna cotta glasses. The recipe says they will set within an hour. They weren’t set this morning when we tried them. I don’t know if we screwed them up or if we just didn’t like the flavor but only Zeke will eat them now. Well, they had a really funky aftertaste and never quite set. Plus, the texture was weird — there were little chunks of something in there??
After marinating, the chickens went onto a pan and into the oven at 450 degrees for about 45 minutes. This couldn’t be simpler or more extraordinary. I don’t think we turned them at all, just let them bake, right? (Yep!~Terri)
Rei cut up the carrots while I worked on the onions. Even though I cut them up, if we make this recipe again, I’m cutting them thinner — they were not caramelized :(
The recipe called for half a red onion but we like onions so I cut up the entire thing and added some lemon juice, salt, and pepper to ‘pickle’ before adding to the carrots.
Rei sliced up a blood orange while Felix eyed the cheese snacks. I tossed the lot with some olive oil, crushed chiles de arbol, local honey, and olive oil. This went into the oven at 425 degrees. Don’t the blood orange slices look beautiful? Actually, this entire tray is pretty— look at all those colors!
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We roast carrots all the time so this should have been a no brainer. Maybe the carrots were too big. I don’t know. I do know that they were pretty spicy even with the tahini sauce on them. They were super spicy, which was a big oof.
Zeke sent a picture of the dinosaur leeks from the market which were unimaginably huge. Not sure if that contributed to the cooking issues. Those leeks were fucking massive.
Rei didn’t follow the directions 100% for the first leek but managed to figure it out for the second leek. I mixed together some olive oil and chili paste (Zeke couldn’t find harissa paste at the market) and then carefully massaged it into the leeks before putting them into the oven with the chicken.
I had to end this post on a positive note. Did I say how good this chicken was? Once it came out of the oven, we put the halves on a bed of chopped cilantro and sliced blood oranges. I poured the rest of the marinade onto the chicken and let it sit for about 10 minutes before Zeke carved the chicken.
We dined casually at the counter and no, the leeks don’t look anything like the picture in the cookbook. Sigh. That was probably partially my fault for not cutting them right, but the ones I did cut right didn’t end up very similar to expected either, so I’m not completely to blame? (Nope!~Terri)
Curious about my cocktail? Empress gin and tonic (thank you Michele L for the gin!). I am out of Freelands gin and need to restock but until then, I love my purple cocktail! (Purple is the Mead family color.)
As I write this, I am listening to the muffled sounds of Rei and Zeke out by the chickens. Rei is researching raising rabbits to eat, and methods of tanning their hides. We don’t have a big yard so I am curious as to how this is all going to work out especially since they are mapping out veggies/fruit for the spring. Rei asked if I would mind if there were veggies growing in the backyard. Oy vey.
I want to grow as many veggies and herbs as possible because I love fresh, home-grown produce, and we will probably have the rabbits out on the side yard, which will reduce the amount of veggie growing space unless we utilize the backyard. (We are not ‘utilizing’ the backyard.~Terri)
Oh, and this? A teaser for tonight’s dinner. Rei cut up (butchered?) their first rabbit. They were so proud. They picked up the rabbit from Gambrel & Co. I am not sure that we actually like rabbit so this should be interesting. We’re going to like the sauce I’m making it with, and beyond that, does it really matter? (At $50 a rabbit it does matter.~Terri)
Well hello there…not what I expected to see out my office window. Rei, is this Hermione? That’s either Ginny or Charlie — they’re identical and we don’t know which is which.
Rei? Rei? You can finish getting the composter ready later. Come on in from the cold and wrap this puppy up.
It isn’t really that cold out right now — and I want to go back out but someone made me come inside to do this. There’s probably dirt on my pants that’s getting onto that someone’s chair right now, so I’m getting her back for this.
Anyways, Dad and I were working on setting up a compost system (again — we haven’t had much luck in the past but are determined to make it work this time) when Mom so rudely interrupted us. What a shame — I might just have to wrap this up quickly before popping outside again to continue mucking around with the chickens.
Later, I’m going to start one of the things for dinner tonight — no more spoilers today, sorry — so it has time to rest, but the rest of dinner shouldn’t be too terribly hard. I’m not too sure, though, because I’ve never made this before and I’m not really following a recipe, but improvisation is my specialty. What could go wrong? (I don’t know. Maybe nearly everything like last night?~Terri)
And with those reassuring famous last words, I’m gonna wrap this up! Until next time, ciao, and have a manure-filled day (we love that farmer’s gold in this household)! (Did you tell them to have a shitty day, Rei? Nice.~Terri)
Rei and Terri
