A Few from The Family Meal

I've made a few dishes from The Family Meal over the past few days. I wish I'd made more, but grouper and swiss chard from the farmers market looked too good to pass up over the weekend. They derailed the things I'd planned to cook from this book. Tell me, is there a more beautiful vegetable than swiss chard? I can't resist their rainbow stems. I don't even care what it tastes like. I must buy them. The farmer said that the stems can be sliced up and used like celery. Anybody ever try that? I've always ripped the leaves off and thrown the pretty stems away, because I didn't know how to use them. I digress...

First up: Roasted Chicken (pg 282). Technically, this was supposed to be "Roasted Chicken with Potato Straws," which sounded mighty impressive, until I read through the recipe and saw that it calls for a bag of store-bought, chip-aisle potato straws to be dumped alongside the chicken. Puh-lease. Potato straws: omitted.

Despite that irritation, this was a wonderful roast chicken recipe. The skin is rubbed with salt, oil, lemon zest, and a powder you're supposed to process of rosemary, bay, thyme, and peppercorns. It wasn't a big enough amount for my food processor to do the job, so I just chopped up those herbs and rubbed them on. For additional flavor (or maybe just for the aroma. I'm not sure. Either way, it's good), shove sliced lemon and whole cloves of garlic into the bird's cavity. One thing that made this recipe different than how I normally roast a chicken was that you roast it face down for 25 minutes, then flip it and finish it off breast-up. The meat was tender and moist, and I thank the flip for that. The pan sauce turned out a lot greasier than I think it was meant to, but it tasted good. I need one of those gravy separator gizmos.

Conclusion: Loved it. Nothing better than a good roast chicken. 

Instead of the lame potato sticks, I made Cauliflower with Bechamel (pg 260). I burned my roux on the first try, but it was easy enough to start over. I may have overcooked my sauce. It was thick, like a paste. In the book's picture, it pours. This didn't pour. Tasted good, though. I dolloped it onto the cauliflower, sprinkled it with parmesan, and broiled it until the top browned a bit. The hint of nutmeg in the sauce was nice with the salty parmesan cheese sprinkled on top. I was sure Charlie would like this, but he refused to try it. Maybe next time.

Conclusion: Liked it. I never make cauliflower, because it doesn't taste like anything (and anyone who says it's a good replacement for mashed potatoes is delusional). With this sauce, it's earned a spot in my regimen.

Lastly, I made Baked Apples (pg 106) one night, for an easy, hands-off dessert. Butter, sherry, honey, and cinnamon go into/on the cored apple, then it bakes for an hour.

 Dessert doesn't get much easier than that. With a barely-sweet whipped cream, drizzled with the pan juices, this was a perfect dessert. It was like insta-pie, in which you never miss the crust. This is one apple I could eat every day, and if I did, I wouldn't feel too terrible about it. Omit the cream, and I wouldn't feel bad about it at all. Why would you do that, though?

Conclusion: Loved it.