Hi everyone:

So, we have to rewind a little bit to Sunday evening and the weekend in general, I guess. As you already know, mom and I cooked some amazing Bittman beef and bean chili on Friday night – it was quite spectacular and I had a small bowl of it for a late lunch on Saturday. It might have been even better on it’s second day, and that is as long as it lasted – it was gone by Saturday evening when my mom finished it up for dinner. (Short lived chili, what can I say?)

On the agenda for Sunday was a dinner. I thought it might have been a little ambitious, but it was a great menu. A simple roasted chicken with rosemary, thyme, olive oil and salt and pepper (light on the salt, of course!). I sort of went to town with the fresh herbs. I love chopping, as you know and I always find rosemary and thyme a great challenge!

I also trussed the bird all by myself (well, who else was going to help me?)…

I started cooking the chicken at a really high temperature, without any of the olive oil or herbs. Just some kosher salt and pepper… After about ten minutes at the high temperature (I started breast side down, which apparently helps with protecting the bird from the initial heat and might make for a moister chicken as an end result) I added some of the herb and olive oil mixture to the bird. After 15 minutes I brought the temperature down to 360 and continued to cook and baste the bird for a while. I honestly couldn’t tell you how long I cooked it for – but maybe about an hour… maybe a little more. Thankfully I had a digital meat thermometer which told me when the chicken was cooked (I was a little past the recommended 165 degrees for poultry – but I would much rather have a chicken a littler warmer than it needs to be instead of a little under cooked – the idea is so scary to me!)

In addition to the chicken, I prepared two side dishes which were also quite good. The first was a roasted red bliss potato with garlic, rosemary, olive oil and a little salt and pepper. The preparation:

The second dish was Ina’s roasted parmesan broccoli. This is the most amazing dish and I highly recommend trying out the recipe here. This was probably my favorite part of the evening. I cleaned and prepped the broccoli:

I put the broccoli on a lined baking sheet and then sliced about four cloves of garlic into very thin slices. Then I added olive oil, pepper and started roasting the broccoli. Once it was finished roasting (in about 20 minutes) I tossed the broccoli together with the lemon zest, lemon juice and parmesan cheese.

I spent most of the afternoon and part of the evening in the kitchen and the end product was well worth the preparation work! My plate looked like this on Sunday evening:

Nothing beats a good roast chicken and this chicken did not disappoint me. It also made for some seriously good leftovers on Monday evening. I hope you all had a really great week – and I’ll be checking in again with you shortly!