Lavender Lemon Roast Chicken

Shh! I'm writing this from work, I am on my lunch break though. With the storm, work, Valentine's Day, and a whole host of other things, I've neglected my blog. 

My Newport, OR adventure two weeks ago was exhausting. LOL. I had to leave work early on Thursday due to Snowmaggedon and didn't go in to work at all on Friday, cut my losses and fled to the coast during the 4 hour window where it wasn't dumping buckets of snow on the Portland Metro area. The roads weren't bad, but as someone who learned to drive in that sort of thing, driving behind other people who had no clue what they were doing was scary. Very scary. Like slamming on your brakes in icy conditions while going around a sharp curve, scary. I had to take that following Monday off as the weather reports were warning of significant freezing rain in Portland. I decided to just take it easy and relax as much as possible for one more day before trying to make my way back.

Sunday afternoon at the coast. Quite pleasant.

Saturday there was quite the storm raging at the coast. Torrential downpour and wind that made the rain come at your face. Perfect day for sitting inside and reading. Sunday was quite a different experience, the sun came out, the temperatures went up, one could almost think about taking one's coat off. Almost.

The hotel cat at the Sylvia Beach Hotel kept me company almost the entire time I was there.

My friend Shelley. Scratched at the door at 2am every morning I was there to be let in.

 
Driving back to Portland wasn't that bad, it was very slushy though and the rocks bouncing against the car were annoying and worrisome at different turns. It wasn't until I got back to my street that I ran into any issues.

Here is my car, stuck in the rut between the driveway and the street. You can't see it in this picture, but there is a suburban parked just to the left which had suffered some front end damage that morning (hubby told me it didn't look like that when he left for work that morning.) So you can understand why I was fairly desperate to get the car into the driveway. Took an hour & a half of digging and 2 pots of boiling water to move it 6 feet into the driveway.

It was snow and slush on top of a lovely sheet of ice... 

But anyway, on to the food...

Last Saturday we went to a wine tasting with truffles, it was awesome. Hip Chicks Do Wine, I highly recommend them. I will admit, I got a fair bit too "festive" and paid for it mightily the next day. It wasn't the tasting seen here that did me under, it was the last full glass of wine on a truffle lined stomach. Ouch.

On Sunday, I made a lavender lemon roast chicken with farro risotto. It was pretty amazing, if I do say so myself. Hubby even told me it was one of the best chickens I'd ever roasted. So that's a keeper! The recipe came from Rachel Khoo's cookbook, which unfortunately I am having trouble locating an online version of. It was honey, lavender, lemon juice & zest, and a bit of salt & pepper. Roasted. Eat. Go to roast chicken heaven. Hope they have madeleines in heaven.

Snowmageddon!!!!!

So for the last few days it's been quite cold for Portland, we're not used to below 30 degrees in the winter. Kind of wussy, I know, I used to live in Eastern Oregon... I've felt some cold n'stuff. So in honor of being freezing arse cold, I decided on Tuesday to make some sort of soup. I stumbled across the below:

http://food52.com/recipes/19721-tuscan-bread-soup-with-a-sage-oil-drizzle

This was quite simply amazing. I used fire roasted tomatoes, that was the only change, and it was comforting and warm and satisfying without being belly busting. Bread, tomatoes, garlic, basil, & sage.

Oh wait, I added onions and a tiny bit of cream too. ;-)

We've eaten off that for a couple of days now, it made a lot of soup.

Tonight for dinner, I wanted some greens. So I decided to make this recipe:

http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-slow-cooked-kale-recipes-from-the-kitchn-5603?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Kitchn+2614+-+Why+Slow-Cooked+Kale+Is+the+Way+to+Go&utm_content=Kitchn+2614+-+Why+Slow-Cooked+Kale+Is+the+Way+to+Go+CID_a236f1c519b629d6d312920d6c253b64&utm_source=email_newsletter&utm_term=Get%20my%20recipe%20for%20slow-cooked%20kale%20with%20smashed%20garlic%20and%20red%20onions

The only change I made was to add a bit of balsamic vinegar, other than that the crisp, garlicky, kind of acidic tanginess was what was necessary to contrast with:

http://www.peaceandloveinthekitchen.com/2010/03/dover-sole-sauteed-in-butter-sole-meuniere

Which, oh dear me, was heavenly... although, some people said it need to be more crisp on the outside, not naming names or anything. ;-)

This last picture isn't that awesome, but that's because I was getting hungry and tired. LOL.

Tomorrow, snow permitting, I'm off to the coast for a reading weekend retreat. Probably not much, if anything, in the way of new foods, but I'll be back to it on Monday.

The Superb Owl Rib Day

Hellooooo.... hope you all had an enjoyable Superb Owl yesterday, I heard some birds won it. ;-)

Let me just begin by saying, I probably should have kept my recipes to two yesterday. Wore myself out a bit, although that did mean that I slept pretty well last night. So that's good.

The house still smells of ribs... it was kind of nice way to come home, especially knowing that leftovers awaited me. I decided not to try out a new recipe today, since I did three yesterday. I'm going to use today to blog and to come up with a plan for the rest of the week.

Cooking ribs was a bit of an experience, it wasn't hard, I was just nervous the whole time that I was about to ruin a not cheap cut of meat. The glaze from the recipe was so good, I was stealing bits of it out of the pan. I will say that I probably overdid it on the rosemary (some in the rub, some in the glaze, and some just sitting in the pan with the cooking ribs), so I would cut out some of it next time. Oh yes, there will be a next time. I made the glaze in a pot on the stove, as some of the commentary on the recipe indicated that if I was doing just one rack, I probably wouldn't get enough drippings to do anything with and most likely scorch the pan. I was not interested in that, so I made it in a saucepan. I used way to much water to begin with and it took forever to reduce.

http://food52.com/recipes/14031-ian-knauer-s-sticky-balsamic-ribs

To go with the ribs, I thought what is more classic than coleslaw and biscuits. At least, that's what I think about when it comes to ribs. I'm sure everyone has their classic sides...except vegetarians...and vegans.

For the coleslaw, I wanted to do something different. I found it in this recipe for Roasted Cabbage Slaw with Hazelnuts and Lemon. I made a couple of alterations, but nothing major. I added in some pistachios. That's it. Love pistachios.

http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-roasted-cabbage-slaw-with-hazelnuts-lemon-recipes-from-the-kitchn-178256

The biscuits are a filled biscuit, the original recipe called for blue cheese but I just don't like it. So I used herbed goat cheese. I thinned out the cheese a little with milk and after baking, I think I should have thinned it out a little more. The cheese became a bit too feta-like inside the biscuits. The flavor was really good, but the texture was just a little off.



Herbed goat cheese, the beginning.



Squash puree, awaiting biscuit-y goodness.



One minor alteration I made to the recipe, was to add some vanilla to the melted butter before adding to the dough.



http://food52.com/recipes/26221-butternut-squash-and-berkshire-blue-cheese-biscuits


I didn't have enough cheese for all the dough, so after these above, I just cut out more rounds and baked them like regular biscuits.





As for tomorrow, I don't know yet know what I'll make, time for some research!

Pictures!

Here are some photos of the results I got from the aforementioned recipes.

I'm still getting used to my new camera, so a lot of the pictures I took of the prep work didn't turn out very well. I did get some good shots of the final, or almost final, dishes I made yesterday.

Here we have the black cod that I picked up when I was buying the pork ribs for the epic ribness later today.

I served it with a soy caramel sauce, which is as awesome as it sounds. Here's a link to the recipe I used:

http://www.myrecipes.com/m/recipe/peppercorn-crusted-pork-tenderloin-with-soy-caramel-sauce-10000001134034/


Here we have a lovely picture of some rosemary and garlic that are currently flavoring a rack of ribs in the fridge, along with their friends balsamic vinegar and cayenne pepper. 

The knife and wood bowl were a gift from my mother, she found it at a wood working convention. The handle of the knife is an elk antler, I believe.

And last, but absolutely no means least, dessert!

The original recipe called for pomelos, which I couldn't locate. So I subbed in 2 tangelos, 2 blood oranges, and a Meyer lemon. I added in the zest of one blood orange and the Meyer lemon. Had some for breakfast this morning, it was amazing and magical citrus deliciousness. :-)

New year, new me?

Ok, folks. I'm gonna give this a go again. As we are taking a fancy trip later in the spring, I thought that getting back into my recipe challenge might be a good thing for conserving funds and whatnot. So although I'm starting this off with a bit of bang, part of the challenge this time is to make sure that all ingredients get used to their full potential. So a lot more thought will go into the dishes and making sure that ingredients tie together, i.e. a roast chicken one night, chicken pot pie the next, etc.

First up today, a shopping trip to obtain necessary ingredients for http://food52.com/recipes/14031-ian-knauer-s-sticky-balsamic-ribs. These look amazing and I've never made ribs before. Hopefully I don't smoke us out of the house, some of the commentary left me a bit nervous about permanently burning balsamic glaze into one of my pans. Eek!

To go with the ribs, I think a coleslaw would be nice.

http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-roasted-cabbage-slaw-with-hazelnuts-lemon-recipes-from-the-kitchn-178256

Annnndddd maybe some biscuits ;-)

http://food52.com/recipes/26221-butternut-squash-and-berkshire-blue-cheese-biscuits

But without the blue cheese, I'm thinking an herbed goat cheese. Just not a fan of the blue cheese, I keep trying it but alas, no, not my friend.

I'm still working out what the main dish for today will be, but I think whatever it turns out to be, it must end with these: 

http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-pomelo-citrus-bars-140639

Pictures to follow.

And now, to the shopping....

Allons-y!

Moving on...

So, due to work schedules being somewhat hectic these days, I generally just don't feel like blogging when I get home. I have been making new recipes, though.

On Saturday, I tried to make an Asian style pulled pork. 5 spice blend, barbecue sauce, tamari, toasted sesame coleslaw... it was pretty good. Except I used the wrong cut of meat. Even after showing both options to the resident pulled pork expert, I still somehow ended up using the wrong one. So it wasn't so much pulled, as chopped. It was still pretty good, and we ate off that and the curry for the rest of the weekend.

On Monday, I made salmon burgers with tamari glaze... I picked them up at Trader Joe's and just added the glaze myself. Yes, I was being lazy. It had been a pretty long day at work, and I didn't even get to Trader Joe's until almost 6pm.

On Tuesday, we ate out. It was awesome, I had baked eggs, pork cheeks with milanese risotto, and this chocolate tart thing with caramel corn (which I couldn't eat, due to the braces) and a giant glass, or two ;-), of bordeaux.

Wednesday, I made roasted carrot soup and mujaddara with spiced yogurt. I don't normally go for lentils, but these were really good.

http://www.food52.com/blog/2938_dinner_tonight_lightness_spice

Not sure what I'm making tonight, but the leftover lentil creation from above was a pretty good lunch.

Here we go again...

So let's give this another go, shall we?

I kept meaning to blog over the last week and a half, but due to work schedules and a much needed break to the coast (Sylvia Beach Hotel, awesome place for quiet time), I haven't had time to update things. I've been challenging myself as much as possible since the beginning of the month, though.

So this first blog is just going to be a summary of what I've done the last 11 days or so, without too much detail. I'll post links to as many recipes as I can.

First up, chili. Never made it before and it's not one of my favorite dishes to eat. However, this was a white bean (cannellini) and chicken chili. I roasted a poblano pepper to add to the below recipe, but otherwise I stuck pretty close to the instructions. Except for the parsley. I hate parsley. It tastes like grass, not in a good way, and it gets stuck in my braces.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/white-bean-and-chicken-chili-recipe/index.html

I, unfortunately, forgot to take any fancy prep shots of most of the dishes detailed here in this post, but here is a  shot of the chili simmering away in the pot.

The next dish I made turned out awesome, if I do say so myself ;-) Bacon, cheese, and herb souffle. It was insanely yummy.

The only change I made was to add bacon, because as everyone knows, bacon makes everything better. Except vegans. And vegetarians.

http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/laura-calder/cheese-and-herb-souffle-recipe/index.html

After this, though I went to the coast where I ate such things as potato gnocchi, fish and chips, and a smoked salmon omlette. Here's a shot of my breakfast from the last morning there and some random pictures of my room. It was Tolkien/Lord of the Rings themed. Sweet!

Mordor in the bathroom.

After I got back from my trip, I decided to make ahi tuna steak with orange & carrot rice with almonds. Turned out pretty well according to the hubby. I'd never had ahi before.

The next dish was spanakopita, which I've had, but never tried to make before. Spinach pie in phyllo dough... it didn't last long, and what small amount was left, became my lunch the next day. I did put parsley in, but only because it would be cooked down and I wouldn't know it was in there...

I'll summarize faster now as this is getting kind of long due to the pictures... I made scallops and celeriac puree, which I wasn't that fond of. Jeremy loved it, but it made me kind of nauseous. I must qualify that with the fact that I wasn't feel very well in the first place.
The dish I made last night was my first attempt at curry. The resident expert in such matters, gave it a passing grade... maybe even a B+

Scallops & celriac puree

http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/laura-calder/beer-bird-with-celeriac-puree-recipe/index.html

Sweet potato and chicken curry

http://www.food52.com/blog/2914_warm_vegetable_curry