Don't be Such a Chicken

The other day I ran out of Diet Coke, it was terrible! So on my way to water aerobics I stopped by the store to pick some up. In my caffeine-deprived, early morning fog, wearing ratty workout clothes over my swimsuit, I was approached by every single member of the store's management to say hi and chat--it was surreal. Anyway, as I searched blindly for the soda, I stumbled across a cooler full of whole chickens, for 99cents a pound. This has nothing to do with soda or swimming, but it seemed like a good deal, so I bought one. I've never cooked a whole chicken, nor even been around someone else cooking one--if you don't count the rotisserie at the grocery store. I did find the soda and get to aerobics, and now I'm trying to figure out this whole chicken thing!

Many of my cookbooks have recipes for roasted chicken, so many recipes it is overwhelming. Also they aren't that similar--different cooking times and temperatures, different preparations, and as many flavor profiles as one could expect. So of course, with too many to choose from I'm getting a little from one and a little from another. Mostly I'm following a recipe I found in a new cookbook I was putting away at the library, and found again online. It is a Coriander and Orange Chicken from Michael Symon. I watch him on the Chew and other food network shows, and so I can practically hear him read the directions. I may not be following them so well, but the flavors and technique are inspired by this.

Marinate Ingredients:
2 tbs Coriander Seeds2
 Garlic clove
1 chipotle in adobo
1 Orange (zest and juice)
1 tsp Olive Oil
1 tbs Honey
1 whole Chicken
1 bay leaf
Salt and Pepper

So the day before I planned on cooking this, I got out the chicken and got marinating. I love the idea of adding flavor, but I worry about the fact I can't taste it until after it has finished cooking. I zested the orange, grated the garlic, juiced the orange, minced the chipolte, and added the oil in with a good helping of salt and a fair amount of ground pepper. I put the coriander and the bay leaf in a frying pan and put it on medium heat, tossing frequently so they don't burn. When they were nice and fragrant, I added them to the rest of the marinade.

That done, I braced myself to tackle the chicken. It was not so bad--it only had a chicken neck inside, instead of all the gizzards I was expecting. I loosened some of the skin to get the seeds, garlic and zest up against the flesh. Then rubbed the whole bird, front, back, and inside with the liquid and placed the whole thing in a plastic bag where I can easily turn and rub the marinade into the bird. The whole thing went into the fridge, to be turned frequently, so the flavor can really get worked in.

Remaining Ingredients

4 medium Carrots
4 medium Parsnips
Small head of Cauliflower
2 yellow onions
Orange
garlic
leftover marinade
marinated chicken 
oil spray





So I peeled and chopped the carrots, parsnips, onions, and garlic into pretty big chunks and tossed them with leftover marinade and put them in the bottom of my dutch oven. I put the chicken on top and put it in an oven heated to 425.

Done on Top

Not done on bottom

The recipe says for 45 minutes, but after half of that time the top was very dark. I turned the temp down to 375 and let it cook for an hour. It wasn't ready so I let it cook for another half hour and the thermometer said 165, on the breast so I took it out to rest. Well it wasn't done, so it went back in for another hour. After that it still wasn't done, but I was ready to eat the dog, so I cut off a slice and microwaved it with the veggies until it was good and done.


The Verdict:
This was a disappointment in that the chicken never cooked through-- though I was able to use all the chicken by taking it off the bird and cooking again. The actual meat was quite flavorful, though it was a little over cooked by the time I ate the last in a taco with a whole bunch of veggies. The veggies that cooked under the bird were lovely and tender and so flavorful with all that fat and marinade! The best thing on the whole dish was the veggies, and I've finally had a parsnip that was really worth eating. I will tackle the whole chicken again, and I will overcome! My plan next is to cook a whole chicken in a crock pot--it wont get crispy skin, but it should cook through!

Snowball Surprise: a recipe from the web

Baby its cold outside! And also inside--at least at my work lately. Temperatures outside have dipped to single digits overnight, with a balmy high of 20 degrees. So, naturally, our heater turned off. Apparently it shuts off when it is too cold so the freezer coils don't freeze. It still doesn't make sense to me, and I'll believe it isn't going to happen again when I walk in a heated building and don't have to spend the morning on the phone freezing demanding to know where the HVAC crew is. People are starting to assume every time I call it is about the heat--are you warm is going to replace hello soon! Anyway, it has been a cold and stressful week, where the short staffing and freezing temperatures just are no fun for anyone. So since I seem powerless over the heat, I thought I'd make cookies. And while I know I have a shelf full of cookbooks, with many, many recipes to try, hundreds of them for cookies, I saw this recipe on a blog and just had to make them!

Midcentury Menu, home of all things vintage and one of my favorite cooking blogs, posted a list of their top ten holiday cookies, and the Chocolate Filled Snowballs seemed perfect for how cold and snowy we all are at work. Interestingly, these are perhaps the most unhealthy cookies I could have made. I made a brave attempt to make them somewhat healthier, but even light butter is mostly fat. And funny story, I just realized in typing this up that I used much more butter than I was supposed to, which when you use light butter kind of defeats the purpose. Well, it probably didn't kill anyone.

• ½ lb soft butter (I put in a pound, I don't know how I misread that, or how it even came together with so much butter in it.)
• ½ cup sugar (1/4 cup stevia baking blend)
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
  
  
• 1 cup finely chopped walnuts
• 1 5 ounce pkg chocolate kisses (I used some caramel filled and some dark chocolate)
• Confectioner’s sugar

So I'm looking at these pictures and feeling like an idiot for not realizing that I had too much butter. Well, I never claimed to be a good cook--learning to cook is sort of my plan, and clearly following directions is a major problem I have! They were pretty good with all the butter, so I'd definitely make them again with the right amount of butter. So loads of butter, sugar, vanilla mixed together, then I got the walnuts out to chop. I bought them pre chopped, but they came in big chunks, and the recipe said finely chopped. Since I don't have a food processor and my knife skills are lacking I used the grinding blade on my blender.

I should have put them in the cup in small amounts, because it chopped some into more of a paste and others were still in chunks. But not bad, and faster than me cutting off my finger trying to chop them all by hand.

I added the nuts and the sifted flour to the very buttery mix of wet ingredients, and chilled it all for 45 minutes or so while I made dinner. The funny thing was that I wasn't sure I added the right amount of flour, but because the dough looked like cookie dough I figured I had--so maybe I added too much flour too!

After baking

Before cooking

After the dough chilled, I wrapped it around various types of Hershey's kisses and baked them at 375 for about 13 minutes. They still looked uncooked, but getting browned on the bottoms so I took them out. After cooling a little I tossed them in powdered sugar.

The Verdict: Even though I'm an idiot and made these wrong, they still tasted buttery and delicious. Just even more like an artery was closing off because of the richness. The caramel kisses didn't work the way I wanted, because the caramel leaked out and kind of made a mess. But I think other types of kisses would work, this time of year there are tons of different flavors. I am going to have to make these again so I can get it right next time. My apologies to the fine folks at Midcentury Menu for slaughtering their recipe, and to my coworkers for hardening their arteries. I wanted to post this still so I can look back and see how I've grown. My blog is about learning after all!