I have had my first real Julie and Julia moment. I cooked a traditional French meal - and I cut up an entire raw chicken. (Not as cool as boning a duck but still.) For Easter we planned to have a nice meal at home with Russ's sister and thanks to an amzing sale at Winco I bought two whole chickens for $7.00. (Sale is going on through the 11th of this month.) So I thought I would try my hand at the New Best Recipes - Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic. My brother had made this for his family and said it was pretty easy and very very good. It is traditional French comfort food so I thought hey why not?
I will tell you why not. What my brother failed to mention and I failed to notice, is when the recipe says 1 whole chicken it requires that before baking you cut up that chicken into drum sticks, thighs, and four breast pieces. This a messy and disgusting process for someone who has been gratefully sheltered in a boneless skinless world. However as I disguarded the chicken carcus into mutiple garbage bags I had a great sense of accomplishment on overcoming a massive cooking hurdle.
There are a lot of recipes available online if you dare venture into French cooking and 40 garlic cloves. Mine roasted the garlic with onions seperately first, while brining the chicken pieces. Afterward you brown the chicken and add it to a sauce of broth, wine, rosemerry, thyme and bay leaves. (Did you know you can only buy cooking wine in Utah at the liquor store? LAME. Yeah. So we used apple juice as I didn't have time to make one extra trip out.) This you then put in the oven - then broil to crisp the skins. The chicken is served with the roasted garlic and onions and a gravey is made of of the sauce. Now to be honest this was an incredible meal, but not as amazing as I had expected with all of the hype I had read and seen about this dish. I would say it is a really good chicken dish. If you like/serve chicken a lot I would say try it otherwise don't stress it.
The other new dish I tried was a new mashed potato recipe. They were honestly the BEST mashed potatoes I have ever had. Now I know this isn't the healthiest recipe -but we don't eat mashed potatoes a lot so it is fine to make them a little yummier - Right?
2 lbs potatoes
1 cup half and half
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 tsp salt
Boil potatoes. Mash or mix in all of the ingredients into the potatoes. Enjoy!!!
2 comments:
Half and Half . . . oh I do worse than that . . . I put full on heavy cream into my mashed potatoes. If you don't mind a slight heart attack I do boiled potates (typically red new potatoes), heavy cream, butter and lots and lots of cheese and some garlic salt. Yummy! :)
I love making a crockpot rotisserie chicken recipe I have that calls for whole chickens. But I take off all the skin and fat. I don't have to cut the chicken up, but skinning it is very disgusting and about makes me want to throw up. Good thing it ends up delicious. So I know your pain. :)
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