A New Kitchen and Roast Chicken

The other day when I went to pick Emmett up from school one of his teachers asked me if we were remodeling our kitchen.  I must have looked confused because she said “Emmett keeps telling me that you are building a new kitchen.” Of course he meant a TOY kitchen, the one that my parents bought his sister for her birthday. I had been assembling it over the course of a couple of evenings this week. She laughed when I told her what he was talking about and said that he was very, very excited about it.

For awhile I was not quite on board with a toy kitchen.  I wondered why the kids couldn’t just cook in the real kitchen, with me. But as they grow older and I see how much they enjoy pretend play, I realize that they can have fun doing both. And honestly, sometimes they don’t have the patience to enjoy doing all of the real kitchen tasks, including waiting 20 minutes for something to come out of the oven or stopping every time something is too hot or sharp for little hands to be trusted.  Sometimes they would rather just pretend. Having a toy kitchen, as it turns out, is great for getting them more involved in the real kitchen.  They can help me with a discrete job like kneading dough or mixing or stirring something and then pretend to do all of the other steps in their own kitchen.

So what are we “pretending” to cook today? Roast chicken, because I think that everyone should have a go-to roast chicken recipe. It’s so easy and relatively inexpensive to do. Plus, everyone seems to like a good roast chicken. Sometimes the simplest things are the best.  I actually made this two days in a row because we couldn’t get enough.

My cooking method is based on the America’s Test Kitchen technique which I have summarized below.

Perfect Roast Chicken

1 whole chicken about 3-3.5 lbs

1-2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, minced

1-2 teaspoons fresh thyme, minced

zest of one lemon, plus the lemon

1 tablespoon kosher salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

½ teaspoon smoked paprika

cinnamon, just a small pinch

½ teaspoon powdered garlic

1 tablespoon vegetable oil*

*I use vegetable oil over butter or olive oil because it has a higher smoke point. I'm not sure that it makes a difference, but I'm cooking the bird at a high temperature and don’t want to set off the smoke alarm.

1. Arrange your oven racks so that you can put the chicken roughly in the middle of the oven. Place a large cast iron pan in the oven and preheat the oven to 450F.  

2. Combine the herbs, lemon zest, salt and pepper, spices and oil and rub all over the chicken both on top and under the skin. Cut lemon in half and place in the cavity. Tie the legs together with kitchen twine. I don’t even worry about the wings.

3. Once the oven has come to temperature, take out your cast iron pan (carefully, it’s hot) and place your chicken in the center.

4. Put the pan back in the oven for 30 minutes.

5. After 30 minutes, turn the oven off. That’s right. O-F-F.  

6. Leave your chicken in for another 25-30 minutes or until the thickest part of the thigh reaches 160F and the juices run clear.

A bunch of good stuff about to be slathered on the bird. 

Oh no! I ripped the skin - slathered it too vigorously I guess. I'm a vigorous slatherer. Believe it or not, everything was still ok. Once it was cooked, I carved this baby up and no one even knew about the skin mishap. Until now. 

Sometimes I make a simple pan sauce on the stove with the brown bits left in the skillet.  I just add a little water or chicken broth to the pan, turn up the heat, scrape up the brown bits that are stuck on the bottom of the pan, season it and well, sauce. 

The last time I made this, I made some mushroom risotto to go with it and found that if I start cooking the risotto around the time I turn the oven off, everything is done at the same time. So, the chicken takes approximately 1 hour: I used the first 30 minutes to prep the ingredients for the risotto, make a salad and clean up; and the second 30 to cook the risotto.  Voila, semi-fancy Sunday dinner in an hour. I would totally make it for company.  

After we picked all the meat from the bird, I put everything that was left in my slow cooker with some water and roughly chopped vegetables for about 12 hours to make stock. I used that to make chicken soup that I blended into a puree for Eve. Nothing went to waste and she loved it!

We must have all been hungry because I didn't take a single "cooked chicken" photo.  I resumed photographing the next day while making baby food for Eve. 

Pureed version of the chicken soup pictured above. 

It's going to be a busy year in this kitchen. Oh yeah, in case you were worried, Isla never opens the oven without her oven mitts on. 

Irish Country Cooking: Recipes from the Irish Countrywoman’s Association

I’m loving this cookbook.  It’s a collection of recipes from members of the Irish Countrywomen’s Association. The photos are beautiful and the recipes are both interesting and approachable. Each recipe includes a little blurb about the recipe and how it came to be.  My favorite part is the one sentence description of each contributor.  Stuff like “Golf-mad grandmother of 12” or “Volunteer and busy mum of three”.  My personal favorite is “Hill-walking granny and expert patchworker”.  The recipe I used today was from Margaret O’Reilly of County Cork, “Prize-winning maker of Carrickmacross lace”.

Now that it’s October and the weather seems to have turned, it really feels like Fall. Maybe that’s why I bought a huge bag of apples the other day. Apples. Just what you need when you want to make a simple, comforting, fall dessert.  I needed to make something easy, preferably something you could throw together while holding a baby. Rolling out pie dough was out.  An apple crumble was in order.

I chose the one in this book because it was different from any apple crumble recipe I’ve made before. The apple crumble recipes I’ve tried in the past all call for a streusel topping made with flour, sugar, warm spices and cold butter that you sprinkle on top of apples that have been tossed with sugar and lemon juice, sort of like a crustless streusel-topped pie. This was totally different. Toasted breadcrumbs, ground almonds, lemon zest, brown sugar and golden syrup with no warm spices, or any spices, to be found. Plus, the topping was cooked on the stovetop prior to baking and everything was layered in the pan - apples, topping, apples, topping - lasagna style. The recipe also called for blackberries, which I didn’t have. Still, the result was delicious. Simple. Clean. Extra “appley” without those spices for vying with the fruit for attention. The lemon zest complemented the sweetness of the apples without taking over. It also felt sweet and indulgent without being heavy.  No guilt in eating this on top of yogurt or oats for breakfast.

A few years ago I bought this apple corer, peeler, slicer, which is one of the few uni-taskers allowed in my kitchen. I’m so glad I have it.  This was Emmett’s first time using it and he thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Isla was able to use it too (little miss “anything you can do I can do better” - she’s a competitive little bugger).  They made quick work of 4 apples.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t measure, again. So the amounts below are just estimates. I’m just not big on measuring unless I absolutely have to. But I’ve outlined the ingredients and basic process below.

This golden syrup is available at the boutique and has so many uses. 

Apple Crumble

Recipe adapted from Irish Country Cooking

2-3 tablespoons Butter

1 cup Breadcrumbs

2 tablespoons Brown sugar

2 oz Golden Syrup

Zest and juice of one lemon

pinch of salt

2oz Ground almonds

2 oz Sliced almonds

4 apples, cored, peeled and sliced

Preheat oven to 350F.  

Spray a pie pan or other baking dish with cooking spray or coat with butter.  

Melt butter in a large skillet and toast breadcrumbs for about 5 minutes, until they are light brown and smell toasted.

Place golden syrup, lemon juice and zest, salt and sugar in a small saucepan and heat over low heat.

Once breadcrumbs are toasted, add them to sugar mixture, then add ground almonds and sliced almonds and stir.

Layer 2 apples in the pan and top with one half of the topping mixture.

Layer the remaining apples on top and top with the remaining sugar-breadcrumb mixture.

Place in oven. After 20 minutes, check the crumble and place foil loosely over the top if it is browning too fast (this is important, I almost didn’t check mine in time and it was very brown by the time I covered it).  

Cook for another 20-25 minutes or until apples are soft and bubbling. Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly. Serve with ice cream, whipped cream or custard.  

Melt butter for toasting breadcrumbs, Irish butter if you have it. 

Breadcrumbs and nuts are combined with warm sugar, syrup, lemon juice mixture.

Layer apples and topping in the pan. 

Ready to bake.

I ate this as an afternoon snack - plain with some coffee.  The next evening we had it after dinner with custard and tea. 

Overnight Oats

We’ve got an infant at home.  Baby Eve. We are all in love with her and she returns the sentiment by being a sweet baby, a good eater and even a decent sleeper for her age.  But like any 7 week old, she sleeps all the time and seemingly never. So I am up, sometimes, at 1:30 am, 2:30 am, 4:30 am and again at 5:45 am when the big kids decide to come downstairs with breakfast requests inexplicably early.  Of course. Last night was one of those nights. I found myself awake at all of the above mentioned hours as well as at 3:30 am (while Eve was sleeping! Why????) when I found myself craving cold oatmeal more than sleep (crazy) and wishing I had overnight oats in the fridge. More puns. Overnight Oats. An actual name that feels more like a taunt.  Not much I can do about its name, or the lack of sleep, but I can refuse to let my 3:30 am craving go unsatisfied again. So today I prepared three days/nights worth of overnight oats.  

There's our girl. Sleeping like a baby.

I won’t pretend there is a recipe for this. I happened to organize my kitchen cupboards yesterday, thank you maternity leave, and IKEA, so I actually knew what was in there and what needed to be used. I got out three mason jars and set to work.

For these, I threw together the following in unknown quantities:

Steel cut oats - for chewiness

Quick cooking oats  - for softness

Unsweetened grated coconut - for texture and sweetness

Chia seeds - for “superfood-ness”

Hazelnuts - for fat and protein

Pepitas - see above

Spices - Cinnamon, Cardamom, Allspice, Nutmeg

Kosher salt, a pinch

Maple syrup, to taste

Milk, enough to cover and absorb all the oaty goodness

Two kinds of oats and coconut. 

Chia seeds. I'm feeling super already.

Layers of good stuff. 

And last, the milk. All done. 

Once everything was in the jars, I stirred them up and put them back in the fridge, for a day or three.

My assistant was in charge of making sure the ingredients were thoroughly mixed together. 

In the morning(s) I stirred in some plain yogurt and fresh fruit and enjoyed my oats cold, summer style.  I wonder what my father-in-law would think?