My Paris Kitchen: Fattoush and Chicken Lady Chicken

I feel pretty accomplished. Not only have I managed to keep this alive for a month:

but I also cooked the two recipes from My Paris Kitchen that were on the docket for June.

Up first, albeit, late, was Fattoush, a delightful, crunchy salad that involves lots of herbs (mint and parsley, and I threw in basil, because I had it), radishes, cucumbers, scallions, sumac, and, most importantly, toasted pita bread. I took a cue from some of the French Fridays crew, skipped a step, and just used pita chips. I make no apology for that. I also added chicken. This was very tasty, and I appreciated that I could chop things throughout the day, as my hands were free, and pull it all together at dinnertime. Matt and I both enjoyed this, and it felt clean and virtuous to eat. Unfortunately, we were both starving again two hours later, and each had a hot dog. Woops. So much for nutritional virtue.

I also made Chicken Lady Chicken, which is meant to be a whole chicken, marinated for 1-2 days in an intriguing mixture of garlic, oil, lemon juice, wine, soy sauce, sriracha, mustard, and honey, browned on the stove, and then baked in the oven.

I had the butcher cut my chicken into pieces, because I knew I wasn't going to have time/the will to removing backbones and cracking breasts. I also only marinated the chicken for about five hours. I'm sure it would have been even better with a longer soak, but it was pretty delicious (and smelled amazing), regardless.

As with the fattoush, I appreciated how low maintenance this recipe was. It was pretty easy to complete, even with the bambino around, and the leftovers made a very tasty chicken salad for the next day's lunch.

Now, if only all the recipes in the book were as conducive to cooking with a newborn...