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. 

Split Pea Soup

"Bad hair day (every day)? Stained kitchen towel draped around my entire top half? Whatever. Nothing can get me down." - that's our Isla.  Keepin' it real. 

I’ve documented how much these kids love soup. Also, the utility of leftover Irish bacon. The ever-frugal provider in me loves that I can make a meal that everyone will eat (and ask for seconds of) that is essentially made up of scraps from the fridge and leftovers. The only thing that could make this a better Sunday lunch? S.N.O.W. Tons of it. Oh, and brownies, from our new neighbors - to counteract all of the calories burned making snow angels and shoveling the drive.  Days like this make me feel less sorry for myself that we have to put up with the “bad” weather so many months out of the year. Kids teach you a lot. Mine have taught me to see things differently, to appreciate the wonder and fun in snow, the joy in anticipation of Christmas. I’m still not crazy about digging the car out or tackling most of the items on my December to-do list.  But, instead of just feeling overburdened by the responsibility of buying gifts and fighting the cold, for the past few years, I’m also remembering to enjoy it all a little more.

I really enjoy making this soup and how everyone lingers around the kitchen waiting for it to be ready to eat. Even the kids who, like most their age like something one minute and detest it the next, are guaranteed to eat a big bowl of split pea soup. Why wouldn’t they? It’s like comfort in a bowl.  Perfect for a snow day.

Split Pea Soup

About 8oz of leftover Irish Bacon (cooked)

1 large carrot, cut into small pieces

2 stalks of celery, chopped

1 medium onion, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 bay leaf

About 3 sprigs of thyme

6 cups chicken stock or broth

1 ½ cups dried green split peas

½ tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Place butter and olive oil in a large heavy bottomed pot over medium heat until butter is melted and starts to bubble.

Add carrots, onion and celery and cook until onion starts to become translucent, about 6 minutes, turn down the heat if vegetables start to brown.

Add garlic, bay leaf, thyme and a little bit of salt and cook about two minutes more.

Add bacon and split peas and stir.

Add chicken stock or broth, bring to a boil, then lower the heat and let simmer for 1 hour to 90 minutes or until peas soften enough to thicken the soup. Serve with fresh parsley, bread or rice.

Irish Comfort Food: Coddle

I first learned about Coddle from a movie. Somehow, no matter how hard I try, I can't remember which movie, all I remember is that the main character was served coddle when he went home to visit his family in Ireland. In the movie, they make it look like the most unappetizing thing in the world. I remember feeling sorry for the main character as he choked it down (and clearly, nothing else about the movie - it's always about food with me). Despite this unfavorable depiction, coddle piqued my interest. When I googled it, I found that it’s an Irish dish made to use up leftovers and therefore, without a specific recipe. Leftovers? No recipe? Yes please. Rummaging around my kitchen I discovered a small piece of bacon leftover from one my father-in-law brought over earlier in the week, some sausages leftover from an Irish breakfast, a few yellow potatoes, some lingering root veggies in the fridge and some homemade chicken stock that I was defrosting for Eve, whose babysitter swears by it and insists I bring her some to feed the baby each week. So everything (and more) required for a good coddle.

The name comes from the verb “coddle” which means to cook food in water below boiling, like coddled eggs. Historically, the dish was often made on Thursdays to use up leftover sausages and bacon because Catholics were not supposed to eat meat on Fridays. Traditional Irish or Dublin Coddle does not contain carrots, garlic or cabbage and is made with water instead of stock. After reading a few different recipes I came up with the version below, which allowed me to use up a bunch of our leftovers. I’m not in a position to make any claims as to its authenticity (since I’ve never had coddle before), but I can tell you that it was comfort food at its best.

Once the coddle was done, I left it covered on the stove top while I put a loaf of brown bread, made from this mix in the oven.  About 35 minutes later, we enjoyed some coddle with warm bread and butter. Perfect for a chilly fall day and even more so, I can imagine, for a snowy winter one.

Emmett was in charge of making the Brown Bread.  The mix is awesome. All you need to do is add milk to this plastic zip-top bag, seal the bag and mix it in with your hands. 

Once the milk is mixed in with the dry ingredients you just squeeze the dough into the little pan that it comes with and bake at 375F for about 35 minutes. 

We put an "E" for Emmett on top of our bread. Baker's signature. 

Dublin Coddle

Serves 6

1lb yellow potatoes, chopped into small pieces

1 lb Irish sausages (Winston’s, I always have them in the freezer)

6-8oz Irish bacon, courtesy of my father-in-law, chopped into small pieces

1 large onion, chopped

4 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced

2 carrots

½ small head of cabbage

3-4 cups chicken stock

Chopped parsley to serve

Pre-heat oven to 300F.  Prep vegetables and bacon.  Place a large dutch oven on the stovetop and heat to medium high. Add sausages and cook until browned on all sides (they don't need to be cooked through as they will cook much longer in the oven).

Remove and set aside. Add onion, garlic and bacon and cook until bacon begins to brown. Set aside with sausages.  

Turn heat up to high and add ⅓ cup chicken stock, scraping up brown bits from the bottom of the pan.

Once stock is reduced and there is very little liquid remaining in the pan, turn the heat off and spread the potatoes in a layer on the bottom of the pan. Season with salt and pepper.

Add carrots and cabbage in another layer, followed by the onion, bacon and sausages on top.

Pour remaining chicken stock over the ingredients in the pan and place in the oven for two hours.

Check the liquid level in one hour and add more if the coddle seems dry.  For reference, after the first hour, the liquid in mine reached the level of the cabbage and carrots but not the sausages and bacon. This was a good amount.  After 2 hours the liquid was at the same level as the sausages and bacon (the meat was not submerged but there was plenty of liquid). I thought this was the perfect amount.

After two hours, check to make sure potatoes and carrots are cooked through, garnish with chopped parsley and serve.

Browning the onions and bacon.

After the stock has cooked down, layer the potatoes in the pot. 

Layer cabbage and carrots on top of potatoes and then sausages, bacon, onion and garlic.

Eat, little person putting together a puzzle in the background optional.