Jamie Oliver's Chicken in Milk

What's all the fuss about Jamie Oliver's Chicken in Milk? Not much, if you ask me. It's a pretty unfamiliar cooking method for the masses. The recipe calls for browning the chicken in a pot and doing the remainder of the cooking in the oven with milk and lemon. Yes, it curdles, but that's the beauty of this recipe. The combination of the dairy and acid (much like buttermilk) tenderizes the chicken and makes a supposedly spectacular sauce. Some went as far as to call the sauce "liquid lemon gold."

During:


After:


Sure, the chicken was fall off the bone tender, but we weren't wowed by the flavor. Both my husband and I still prefer a conventional roasted chicken.

The Big Mess of the Zuni Cafe Chicken

I've been roasting chickens since I had my oven recalibrated. After hearing a lot about Zuni Cafe's roasted chicken, I decided to give it a try. The recipe uses a very different method than the other roasted chicken recipes I've made or seen - it calls for salting the chicken and letting it sit in the fridge for at least a day. At first, I was worried that the salt would draw out all the moisture from the chicken, but it didn't! It acted more like a dry brine. The chicken breasts came out very moist, the best I've had. Unfortunately, that came at a price...



...as you can see from the splatters all over my oven door, my (relatively new and what was spotless) oven did not like the recipe, which called for roasting the chicken at a high 475 degree. The grease from the chicken splattered in every direction as it dripped into the roasting pan.


Well, that is the last time I will ever roast a chicken at such high heat. Thank goodness we have a self cleaning oven (hubby's one requirement when we were oven shopping) and windows in the kitchen for ventilation (my requirement when house hunting).

My Prayers were (Almost) Answered

My husband and I have been limited by the local supermarket choices here in our town in CT. We've been spoiled in NYC and Boston, where there were more supermarket choices. Currently, there's only Stop & Shop and Shop Rite in our neighborhood. To get quality fresh fish, which we used to make for dinner at least once a week, we would have to drive at least 20 minutes to other nearby towns.

There's Stew's, whose fish selection is great but is a tad better than the usual local supermarkets in terms of quality. There's Whole Foods in Greenwich, but it was the smallest Whole Foods I've ever been in. Plus, I didn't enjoy shopping with women sporting fur coats in the winter. Then, a couple of weeks ago, Whole Foods unveiled its new and large Darien location, a somewhat shorter drive.

I was so very happy to see their fish selection. We left with some fish for dinner that night, quinoa and our favorite nuts medley. Oh, let me tell you about their nuts medley. It's got everything under the sun except for peanuts, sorta ironic huh.


Among the nuts are pistachios, corn nuts, almonds, chickpeas and fava beans. My favorite? The crunchy almonds, fava beans...


...and corn nuts (large and small). The larger one is quicos from Spain.


My least favorite is chickpeas, because of their chalky texture, although I do like the fried chickpeas at Prune.

All in all, our supermarket situation is looking a bit better, and will be even better when Fairway opens in our town this fall (supposedly). To top it off, Whole Foods is looking for a location in our neighborhood! I can't wait!

RIP, My Sweet Basil

My basil has sadly left us after being with us for less than six months. I repotted the basil after it outgrew its planter, and it had been on a growth spurt ever since. More than a month after, I noticed that the bottom leaves were yellowing. I thought perhaps they weren't getting as much sun as the top leaves.

The basil grew so tall that I had to wrap a rope around it to support the plant. It had started to flower, so I clipped them off, as I learned that it could affect the basil's flavor.


Then I noticed something that looked like root rot and some gray & silver colored spots on the leaves. Its symptoms are some what similar to that of fusarium wilt, which is prevalent in basils after they reach six to twelve inches tall.


I consulted my sister, the avid gardener (aka my plant doctor), who suggested that I cut off the infected leaves. It couldn't be saved. The disease quickly reached the top of the plant afterwards. Prior to its end, the leaves were covered with large brown spots. It happened quite fast.


I miss my basil...it spoiled me, really. I made my roasted tomato pasta recently, and felt it was missing the extra flavor from fresh basil. Well, at least it served its purpose while it was with us in the past few months.

Stew's Fresh Produce?

My husband and I have been doing a good part of our grocery shopping at Stew Leonard's since we moved to CT, mostly because of their incredible prices on milk, their fresh beef and their fresh cider donut holes. So imagine my disappointment when I cut into their Golden Delicious apples the day after I brought them home:


The fuzzies weren't in one apple, but two! What are the chances of that?

I'm Alive!

I know, I've been m.i.a. for a month now. I've been buried under a mountain of books. In fact, this is what I've been dealing with that required me to give up Martha for quite a few months.


It was not my intention to stop blogging...I had actually pre-blogged some material, but somehow just couldn't keep up. My sister has been asking about my return, so I'm back! Stay tuned!

Pork Loin Roast

I'm not a huge carnivore, but my husband is. Given that I've started to dabble in pork, I thought that a pork loin roast would make a nice dinner...I could pick on my favorite burnt/crispy edges.

So I did some searching on Martha Stewart's archives and got my hands on an easy recipe that uses pantry items like fennel and garlic. We got a bone-in pork loin that didn't quite look like a typical loin...it had an extra layer of meat that I left on.



The bone-in pork loin roast came out juicy and flavorful. The hardest part was frenching the bones. I'd say that getting the meat off the bones took about 45 minutes because I'm very particular, but it was all worth it.