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Celebrate Fall - Roast a chicken By Kady Guyton
Autumn is possibly my favorite season: the colors are beautiful, I can sleep under heavy covers and actually think about knitting something without breaking out in hives. It's also the perfect season for some of my favorite foods. I am eagerly looking forward to the mandarin harvest and I saw the season's first pomegranates at the farmer's market this weekend. I can also finally direct my thoughts toward turning on my oven. Meat roasted over heat has been a favorite of carnivores ever since we discovered fire. In the summer we grill, in the cooler months, we turn the oven to 350 and make the whole house smell good. To kick off autumn this year, I'm making one of my all-time favorite: Roasted chickens with root vegetables. It has been said that the mark of a good cook can be determined by how well they can roast a chicken. I can find several flaws in this argument: Namely, here are a million and one different ways to prepare a roast chicken, the only similarity is that the chicken ends up in the oven eventually. So personal taste very much rules the day. Also, I spent over a year in culinary school and never once roasted a chicken. I learned to prepare chicken in many different ways, along with a lot of other proteins, but the classic roast chicken was not included on the menu. I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it was deemed too boring, or perhaps the instructors felt that roasting a perfect chicken was obvious. Thankfully, I learned this dish long before I went to school and it has become my favorite, hands-off way to make dinner. A whole chicken is a great place to get creative with flavors. A lemon with the ends trimmed off and several stalks of fresh rosemary in the cavity go a long way towards dressing up this dish. For something more savory, try half a white onion and some fresh thyme instead. I have also made pastes out of roasted garlic, olive oil and herbs and rubbed them onto the chicken. One trick I did learn at school was to work flavors under the skin. This requires getting more familiar with your chicken than you might like, but if time allows, do it. The resulting meat is moist and extremely flavorful. Another technique I use often is to make two small slits in the skin over the leg joints. Put a teaspoon or so of butter in the slits, then work it between the breast meat and the skin. The final result is crispy chicken skin and moist breast meat. Before serving the chicken, it's important to add a final touch of flavor. This can come in the form of a sprinkle of salt, a little extra butter, or my favorite - a dash of very good olive oil. In the interest of eating local, all the vegetables are from local farms and were purchased at the Nevada City Saturday Grower's Market. The olive oil came from Terra d'Oro, a local olive oil producer in Oregon House. The oil is very flavorful and has been winning medals in Europe. It also tastes great with roasted vegetables. Autumn Roasted Chicken 1. Preheat oven to 375 2. Remove chicken from wrap, rinse and pat dry. 3. Chop vegetables into two-inch chunks, toss with olive oil, salt and pepper and layer in the bottom of a 9x13 pan. 4. Cut a small slit in the chicken skin over each leg joint and work in half the butter so it's over the breast meat, but under the skin. 5. Salt and pepper the chicken. 6. Put rosemary and onion inside the chicken cavity. 7. Roast for 90 minutes or until juices run clear. |
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