Foundations Series: Roasting Part II

You probably won't be surprised to learn that I really love Ina Garten.  My love for her is so deep that the students I worked with over the summer included "You don't know who Ina Garten is?!?!?!?" on a list of funny Michael quotes from the summer.  Here's a quick primer on why I feel so strongly about the Barefoot Contessa.  If you're also a fan you know that Ina makes chicken for her husband Jeffrey when he comes home to the Hamptons from the city each Friday and is truly the Queen of the Roast Chicken.  This recipe is based off a few of her own recipes, primarily her "perfect roast chicken."  Which is, of course, perfect as it is, but is improved by her "kicking it up a notch" trick of adding compound butter underneath the skin.

We should acknowledge from the start that dealing with a whole, raw chicken can be intimidating.  Ina's refrain of "How easy is that?" might not be the most encouraging when you're staring down the back (front?) end of a chicken.  It's messy, and a little icky, but ultimately a roast chicken is a foundational kitchen skill and can be mastered with practice.  Until you master the recipe, chicken can be really forgiving.  In a finals week haze I accidentally roasted this chicken upside down.  It was still delicious and wonderful, and yours will be too!  This recipe is also great for your student affairs schedule; it is a little more time consuming than one of my quick dinners, but the yield from a whole chicken can feed you for the rest of the week.  Repurpose it by making chicken enchiladas, chicken salad, soups, and pastas with the leftover meat.

Let's start with the prep work.  A compound butter is just butter that has been flavored with herbs, fruit, or aromatics.  For this chicken we will mix salt, pepper, rosemary, sage, and thyme with half a stick of room temperature butter.  I like to use a fork to throughly combine the butter and herbs.  Place the butter to the side while you prepare the rest of the chicken.  If you don't have a roasting pan with a rack simply make a spiral with some tin foil and place it at the bottom of a baking dish.  You can also use diced root vegetables (potatoes, carrots, turnips, fennel, etc.) to elevate the chicken.

Remove the giblets from the cavity and save them for gravy.  Pat the chicken dry inside and out to ensure a delicious crispy skin.  Season the inside of the cavity with salt and pepper and stuff it with two halves of a lemon, a quartered yellow onion, eight whole cloves of garlic, and a bunch of thyme and rosemary.  Make sure you do not completely fill the cavity with the aromatics, they should rest inside but not crowd the cavity which would throw off the cooking time.  Next pull the skin on the breast up, and massage the breasts with the compound butter so it is evenly distributed underneath the skin.  Any extra butter can be rubbed on top of the skin.  Place the chicken in a 425 degree oven and roast for 1 and a half hours, or until the juices run clear.

Remove from the oven and let rest for 20-30 minutes.  This resting period is crucial to ensure a juicy bird.  Use this time to make gravy and to sauté some green beans and garlic until they are just cooked and remain crisp.  Avoid the temptation to bring the bird to the table whole - it may be a nice presentation, but carving table side is unwieldy.  I'll defer to the wonderful step by step photography in this Serious Eats article  for carving advice.  This carving method is the best way to ensure everyone gets a piece of what they want.

Roast Chicken

Adapted from Ina Garten

Ingredients

• 1 5-6 pound whole chicken
• 1 yellow onion
• 1 lemon
• 8 cloves of garlic
• 1 bunch of thyme
• 4 tbsp. butter
• 2 sage leaves, chopped
• 1/2 tbsp. chopped fresh thyme
• 1/2 tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary

Instructions

1. Use a fork to combine chopped herbs, salt, and pepper with room temperature butter and set aside.
2. Halve lemon, chop onion into quarters, and peel garlic.
3. Remove chicken from packaging and pat dry.  Stuff cavity with lemons, onion, and garlic, and additional bunch of thyme.
4. Use your fingers to open space between the skin and breast, massage butter mixture into the space between the skin and breast, rub any leftover butter on the outside of the skin.
5. Roast at 425 degrees for 1.5 hours, or until juices run clear.
6. Allow to rest for 20-30 minutes before carving.

#SApro Tips: Weekly Menu Planning

"I wish I could cook like you do, but I just don't plan well."

"My biggest challenge is deciding what I want to eat in advance."

"Teach me how to not eat like a toddler!"

These are some phrases I hear a lot, and it seemed to be time to share some tips and tricks on how to make menu planning and your food life a success.  We'll go through the process of menu planning and then use my actual menu from the past week as an example to show how to implement the system and make a grocery list.  Big thanks to my professor, friends and colleagues who contributed to the ideas for this post: Dr. Chris Linder, Tim Mousseau, and  Chandler Thompson (check out their blogs too)!  I hope that you find planning in advance will help you have less stress, reduce food waste, and save money.

The Process

Make it a habit:  I think the most important way to make weekly menu planning a reality is to incorporate it into your weekly ritual.  For me that means I sit down with a cup of tea and Pinterest (you can follow me on Pinterest here) every Sunday morning to create my list.  Some weeks I'll do this on Saturday if my Sunday plans prohibit me from going shopping, but it's almost always a Sunday endeavor.  Pick whatever day works best for you and stick with it.

Figure out your formula: There's no prefect formula and this will be different for everyone depending on your appetite and the size of your household unit.  I'll share what works for me and offer some amendments for you to try to have enough food for your needs.  Most people who know me know that I'm all about moderation; I generally eat pretty healthy and I'm also not too concerned with things like calories and carbs.  Especially carbs, this Italian guy loves carbs.  My rule of thumb is to have at least one vegetable with every meal, including breakfast.  With that in mind, I cook four meals a week which is enough for dinner and leftover to bring to work for lunch.  I always have pasta once a week (a self-imposed restriction because I could eat pasta every day) and one meat-free meal.  Since I don't buy anything additional for lunch this could be an easy way to make the same four meal system work in your multi-person home.  Play around with the proportions until you find what works for you.

Check your calendar:  This step is especially important for my student affairs colleagues.  With all of our late nights, programs, and after-hours meetings we need to be cognizant of what our time limitations are.  I know that on Tuesdays and Thursdays I don't get home until around 7 because of meetings for the organization that I advise so those evening have to be quick and easy dinners that don't require a lot of prep.  On Wednesday nights I have an evening class that doesn't end until 8pm, so Wednesdays are always a night for leftovers.  For the extra-busy weeks, like Welcome Week, where I have an event every evening I switch up the plan and cook a couple of big things on Sunday that will last all week. For those weeks I'll do something like a big batch of chicken enchiladas and a sausage and superfood hash.

Utilize leftovers: Now that you're ready to start making a menu and list, take stock of things that are left over from last week.  I always seem to have leftover tortillas and fresh herbs.  This week I'll use the leftover tortillas to make egg and arugula quesadillas for breakfast, the leftover rosemary for the panko crusted chicken and roasted sweet potatoes, and the leftover chives for kotlety.  If you use Pinterest you can search by ingredient if you need ideas for what to do with something leftover.  You can also search "just my pins" as a way to cull the results down to things you had already shown interest in.

Look for overlapping ingredients: Similar to repurposing leftover ingredients, looking for ingredients that overlap throughout recipes is a good way to cut costs and reduce waste.  I make a point to do this whenever I'm buying bagged greens like arugula, spinach, or kale because any leftovers are unlikely to remain fresh into a second week of cooking.  This week arugula is becoming a big overlap player as a filling for my breakfast quesadillas, a bed for my panko crusted chicken, and a side salad for my kotlety.  The panko breadcrumbs will do double duty as a coating for the chicken and a filler in the kotlety.  Lemon zest will be used in the chicken coating and the juice from that lemon will be used to make the salad dressing.

Pick a splurge item: Do something good for your emotional health each week and pick a splurge item.  This could be something luxe like prosciutto, a fancy cheese, or an expensive cut of meat or something downright comforting like a frozen pizza or boxed macaroni and cheese.  Either way I think it's important to incorporate some little food items that make you happy as long as you do so in moderation.  This week I got an awesome frozen pizza from Trader Joe's, the Tarte d'Champigon (not as fancy as it sounds), and had absolutely no regrets about it. Self care, y'all!

The Menu

• Breakfast all week: Arugula and Egg Quesadilla 
• Sunday: Lemon Rosemary Chicken (from The Country Chic Cottage) and Roasted Sweet Potatoes

• Monday: Kotlety (from Natasha's Kitchen), Orzo, and Arugula Salad

• Tuesday: Chicken and Asparagus Stir Fry (from Skinny Taste)

• Wednesday: Leftovers
• Thursday: Pasta with Roasted Cauliflower, Broccoli, and Chickpeas (from Buzzfeed)

The List(s)

Each week I go to both Kroger and Trader Joe's.  I love Trader Joe's and find that some produce items like mushrooms and bagged greens are much cheaper there (organic spinach for $1.99, what?!).  Other TJ's items are simply much better quality.  I get everything else from Kroger.  The two stores are across the the street from each other so going to both is not much of a hassle, but all of these items would be available at your grocery store.  Please note that these lists are not exhaustive of everything you would need to make all of the dishes for this week.  The lists do not include things like rice, pasta, oil, spices, and seasonings that I always have in the house so take stock before you go shopping!

• Trader Joe's
• 1 head fresh broccoli
• 1 head fresh cauliflower
• 1 lemon
• 1 bag arugula
• 1 package white button mushrooms
• 4 apples (for snacks)
• 3 sweet potatoes
• panko breadcrumbs
• frozen pizza
• smoked gouda cheese (for snacks)
• Kroger
• 1 lb. chicken cutlets
• 1 lb. chicken tenders
• 1 lb. ground turkey
• 1 bunch asparagus
• 1 inch fresh ginger
• 1 lb. pasta
• 1 can chickpeas
• 1/2 dozen eggs
• 1 bag shredded Mexican cheese blend

I hope this guide helps you to plan your weekly meals and run a more efficient kitchen.  Let me know if you have any questions or other tips and tricks in the comments!

Multipurpose Tex-Mex Marinade

This marinade is the foundation for many of my favorite dishes.  I love to use it for for grilled chicken, which is great on its own or as the filling for delicious enchiladas.  I've also used this marinade for  wonderful, roasted pork tenderloin.  It's also great on grilled shrimp, and while I haven't tried it on steak I'm sure it would be a delicious application.  The versatility doesn't stop there - the dry ingredient list can also be used as the basis for your own homemade taco seasoning!

For the marinade chop up two or three chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (depending on how spicy you like it, I usually use three).  Add the lime juice, crushed garlic (Do you have a garlic press? You really need a garlic press, for this and for life.), dry seasoning, fresh cilantro, and olive oil, and mix to combine.  It will have the consistency of a loose paste.  Add your meat, making sure it is covered in the sauce place covered in the refrigerator.  I'm using a mixture of chicken breasts and thighs here because I like the combination of light and dark meat in enchiladas.  Refrigeration times vary depending on the meat (take a look in the instructions for specific times).

If you want to convert the dry ingredients into taco seasoning, add 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, 1/2 teaspoon of onion powder, 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder to the salt, chili power, cumin, and paprika. Add this dry mixture to cooked ground beef or turkey with a 1/4 cup of water, and let simmer until the sauce has thickened. If you don't plan to use it immediately, store the taco seasoning in an airtight container.

Multipurpose Tex-Mex Marinade

Ingredients

• 2-3 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
• 1 lime
• 3 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. chili powder
• 1 tsp. cumin
• 1/2 tsp. paprika
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp. fresh cilantro
• 3 tbsp. olive oil

Instructions

1. Roughly chop 3-4 chipotle peppers and add them to a large mixing bowl
2. Add the lime juice, crushed garlic, dried seasoning, fresh herbs, and olive oil.
3. Stir to combine
4. Add meat, cover and refrigerate.  (Marinade chicken for no more than 6 hours, seafood for no more than 2 hours, pork and steak for no more than 12 hours)

Quick Dinner: Brown Butter Sage Chicken, Cous Cous, and Turnip Greens

I work with the student programming board right now; if you've ever worked in programming you'll know that it's a lot of fun and involves a lot of time outside of the traditional workday.  This means time is precious and sometimes you need to get dinner on the table quickly.  If you're looking for something really quick after getting home from a late meeting or event this meal is for you.  I was able to get all of this on the table a mere twenty minutes after I took everything out of the refrigerator.  

Cous cous and dark leafy greens are two of my favorite ingredients for quick cooking.  Cous cous is added to boiling chicken broth (or water, or beef broth, or veggie broth - you do you) and is taken off the heat and covered for five minutes.  It's also the perfect bed for the juicy chicken and brown butter.  I like to use this whole wheat cous cous from Trader Joe's:

Dark leafy greens quickly wilt when sautéed with olive oil and garlic.  I used turnip greens here, but spinach, kale, arugala, or even baby bok choy would also work.  Simply coat a pan with olive oil and let the crushed garlic begin to cook on medium heat.  Before the garlic begins to turn golden add the chopped greens, salt, and pepper, and allow the greens to wilt, stirring occasionally.

With your sides complete you can move on to the main dish, brown butter and sage chicken.  This chicken has a big flavor coming from a deceptively simple list of ingredients: chicken, butter, and sage.  Melt two tablespoons of butter over medium-high in a non-stick skillet and allow it to become brown, and fragrant.  Meanwhile cut chicken breasts into 1 inch cubes - cutting the chicken into small and uniformly sized pieces will ensure it cooks quickly and evenly.  Season the chicken with salt and pepper before adding to the pan in one, even layer.  Add the chiffonade of sage on top of the chicken and let it cook undisturbed for 3.5-4 minutes.  Letting the chicken cook without stirring it is really important to create a beautifully crispy exterior and to let all of the wonderful brown butter flavor the meat.

After 3.5-4 minutes give the chicken and sage a stir so it can finish cooking. Spoon the chicken and remaining brown butter sauce over your cous cous and serve with your greens.  I hope you enjoy this quick recipe on a night when you need something good to eat fast!

Brown Butter Sage Chicken

(Adapted from Kevin & Amanda)

Ingredients 

• 1 pound chicken breasts
• 5-10 sage leaves
• 2 tablespoons of butter

Instructions

1. Melt butter in a non-stick saucepan over medium-high heat, and allow to turn brown and fragrant
2. Cut chicken into 1 inch cubes and season with salt and pepper
3. Stack sage leaves on top of each other and roll like a cigar. Cut the cigar into strips to create a chiffonade 
4. Add chicken to browned butter in a single layer and put the sage leaves on top of the chicken
5. Allow chicken to cook for 3.5-4 minutes undisturbed.
6. After 3.5-4 minutes stir chicken and sage and allow chicken to finish cooking, about 2 minutes.