Skip to main content

Chicken Dinner

I was in the mood for dinner at home. I wanted to sit in front of a plate and enjoy a meal. A chicken dinner seemed like the obvious choice.

I brined the chicken overnight in pickling salts.

I then stuffed some rosemary under the skin and in the cavity. Some ended up on the skin as well, which of course doesn't do much more than burn when I roast the bird. Then into the roasting pan it went. In an ideal world, I would have rested the bird on a bed of root vegetables, but I had only a few which I wanted to save for later.

Meanwhile, I prepped a batch of corn pudding, making use of a frozen loaf of cornbread I had made a week before. The recipe simply follows a bread pudding but substitutes cornbread and corn for bread and raisins. I added the corn pudding to the oven to cook alongside the chicken.

I pulled both the chicken and corn pudding out of the oven at the same time. I left the chicken to cool for a few minutes.

I finally plated the meal: chicken, corn pudding, and some mixed vegetables from the freezer. The plate made for a comforting, pleasant meal.

I didn't want to waste the leftovers. I froze the remaining chicken meat for later meals. I used the carcass, along with what root vegetables I had in the refrigerator, to make some stock that I could use in all sorts of unplanned ways.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Eating Around Georgia Tech: Ecco

Our Texas Instruments colleague Cathy Wicks was gracious enough to host several of us at Ecco tonight. This is one of those restaurants that has been on my list for a long time. Even though it is within easy walking distance of Georgia Tech, I hadn't made it there until tonight. The menu is a combination of Italian, Spanish, and French that make use of some local Georgia ingredients. The combination of those three countries is sometimes a little forced, although the georgia ingredients (fruit, cheese) were all great and perfectly appropriate. We started out with a meat and cheese board. This actually reverses the French tradition, where cheese usually follows the main course. Everything was excellent. The Georgia cheese was a big hit, as was the French cow/goat cheese. I thought the sauscisson was very subtle and very good. The waitress said that the roast pork pasta was their signature dish, so I had to try it. It had traditional broad pasta (fresh, of course)

Pressure Cooker Candied Ginger

I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b

DCA: Cava Mezze Grill

Cava is a DC area chain with light Mediterranean food. Saibal encouraged me to try lunch at their airport location and I was very happy with the experience. I ordered falafel on SuperSalad with assorted other toppings. The falafel was tasty. The SuperSalad was light, flavorful, and very easy to eat. Overall, a healthy and enjoyable lunch, something you can't always say about airport eating.