Great Go-To Roasted Chicken Recipe

One of the most comforting foods during cold weather like this is a great roasted chicken. Flexible and easy to prepare, a braised chicken will make your house smell fantastic and will likely yield enough meat and vegetables for 2 full meals. There is one cooking in my oven right now and I just had to share the recipe, which is based on the Poulet Provencal recipe from the March 2008 issue of Gourmet magazine. The combination of tomatoes and olives lends a lovely richness to the dish, but for even more body, you can take my suggestion and throw in a few potatoes. As you can see, and as you will note in future posts, most of the recipe lists ingredients without measurements. That's just how I roll!

Poulet Russo (based on Gourmet magazine's Poulet Provencal)

- Take one regular sized roaster chicken (I like Bell & Evans), rinse and pat dry
- Rub with a mixture of herbs de provence, crushed garlic and olive oil
- Place in a large dutch oven

Mix togehter:
- 5 tomatoes (this time of year I use tomatoes on the vine), quartered
- 1/2 large yellow onion, cut into wedges (you can add more if you like onions)
- several small potatoes (I like organic buttercream potatoes) cut into quarters
- a handful or two of pitted kalamata olives
- sliced garlic to taste
- more herbs de provence (I like LOTS)
- olive oil, salt and pepper

Arrange vegetable mixture around the chicken. Roast at 425 until the chicken is done (I keep the lid on the dutch oven). The chicken I used took exactly one hour and 15 minutes to cook. It turned out really juicy and the vegetables were done perfectly.

Remove the chicken and the vegetables from the dutch oven, leaving the juice in the pan. Skim off the fat or use a fat separator, then simmer the juice for a few minutes until it reduces. Remove from heat and whisk in a tablespoon of butter. If you want to go really crazy and make me fall in love with you, use white truffle butter. Either way, you're done!

The nice thing about this recipe is that it can serve as the basis for any combination of herbs and vegetables. Carrots, parsnips, potatoes and fresh thyme and sage would probably be good. Maybe throw in some fresh green beans near the end.

Do you have a veg/herb combo to suggest? Speak up!

New Shrimp Recipe

While I love to cook, and adore seafood, I rarely prepare fish or shellfish at home. Last night, however, I experimented with some beautiful shrimp from Shoreline Seafood and came up with quite a nice little dish. It's not complicated or time consuming but it is absolutely delicious. Here's the method:

- Peel and devein 1 pound of shrimp (I like the very large ones).
- Sautee 1 finely diced shallot and 2 cloves of minced garlic in about 2 tablespoons butter
- Toss in red pepper flakes to taste
- When the shallots are nice and soft, pour about a cup of white wine in the pan and let that cook for a minute
- Throw in the shrimp and put a lid on the pan to let them steam
- When the shrimp are cooked, pull them out of the pan and cover to keep warm
- Turn the heat up and add half a cup of chicken broth to the pan if the wine has cooked down too much. You want to have enough sauce to pour on the shrimp.
- Cook that down a bit, turn off the heat, and whisk in about a tablespoon of unsalted butter to thicken the sauce
- When the butter is incorporated and the sauce is creamy, jack the heat back up and throw the shrimp in to warm them. Squeeze a bit of fresh lemon over the shrimp and sauce when you plate the dish.
- We served the shrimp with saffron risotto, and of course, some bread to sop up the sauce.

If you don't want to take the time to make risotto, these shrimp would be delicious with angel hair pasta tossed with the sauce and a bit of the pasta water to help everything stick together. Fresh herbs, such as rosemary, parsley or basil also would be good.

I'm looking forward to tinkering with this dish. Any suggestions?