Roast Chicken with Sauteed Malabar Spinach and Sweet Potato

Roast Chicken

1 whole chicken, 4-1/2 pounds

1 cup of chardonnay

fresh herbs - sage, tarragon, parsley, oregano

Olive oil

salt (and pepper if you can have it)

Dried tarragon, parsley, basil, oregano

Rinse and pat dry chicken.  Take a butter knife (not sharp) and wedge it under the skin to pop the skin loose from the meat.  You will create a little pocket to put the herbs.  Take some of the fresh herbs and stuff them under the skin of the chicken.  Place some into the cavity.  Place chicken into a dutch oven with a lid.  Drizzle with olive oil and rub over all.  Sprinkle with salt and dried herbs.   Place lid on dutch oven.  Place into a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 1 hour.  Remove lid, check temperature, internal temperature of the chicken should reach 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Add wine and place lid back on and put back in oven.  Cook for 30 minutes.  Remove lid and cook for 15 more minutes.  Remove chicken and let rest.  Place pan on the stove and reduce, you can use the sauce over the chicken. 

Sauteed Malabar Spinach

Malabar spinach is my new favorite spinach.  I love the texture and taste of it.  Here is a link that tells about the spinach.  Malabar Spinach.  We get our spinach from a local farm who sells it at the Farmer's Market. 

2 bunches Malabar spinach, washed, stemmed removed and cut into pieces

2 cloves garlic, crushed

coconut oil

Heat coconut oil in a large skillet.  Add garlic and saute until fragrant.  Add spinach and cook until the leaves are tender.  Serve. 

Serve this meal with a cooked sweet potatoes.  

Roast Chicken and Vegetables

The chicken finally thawed which allowed me to cook it tonight for dinner.  Here is everything I did.

Roast Chicken
Whole Chicken, rinsed off, patted dry (This chicken came from a local farm IdleWild Farm which I purchased at my local farmers market)
1 lemon, cut in half
2 heads of garlic, cut in half
a large bunch of fresh thyme
Sea Salt
Pepper
Olive oil
Bottle of Chardonnay
Arrowroot
1 cup chicken broth (I make my own so all I had to do was pull it out of the freezer)
Place chicken in a roasting pan.  Place the lemon inside the cavity along with half of the garlic, and half of the thyme.  Tuck wings under the bird (looks like you are bending them the wrong way but it will keep the tips from drying out).  Place the rest of the garlic and thyme along side the chicken. Drizzle olive oil over top of chicken and sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Place chicken in a preheated 350 degree Fahrenheit oven.  Cook for 1 hour.  Add some wine and the chicken broth to the chicken, return to oven to continue to cook.  It will depend how long to cook the chicken for based on its weight.  You want the internal temperature to reach 165 degrees Fahrenheit.  I used the whole bottle of wine while the chicken was cooking.  Once in a while baste the chicken so that it will stay nice and juicy.  At some point I put the lid on my roasting pan.  Once chicken is done, remove chicken to a platter and cover with foil.  Place the roaster over the heat on the stove top to heat up.  With a slotted spoon remove the garlic and thyme.  In a small bowl add about 1 tablespoon of arrowroot with about 1 tablespoon of water (you want to create a thick paste).  With a whisk, whisk in the arrowroot mixture to the broth wine mixture.  Continue to whisk and let the mixture come to a boil.  It should be thick like a gravy.  Add salt and pepper as needed. Serve over sliced chicken.

Roasted Vegetables
1 zucchini
2 small yellow squash
Fresh rosemary sprigs
Olive oil
Slice the zucchini and squash in half, in half again and then slice in to chunks.  Place both into a ziploc bag along with fresh rosemary, add some olive oil (enough to coat the vegetables).  Dump out the contents of the bag onto a cookie sheet.  Place cookie sheet into a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven and cook for about 30 minutes until vegetables are tender.  Flip and stir often to insure even cooking.

Side Salad
Lettuce
Carrots
Tomato
Bell pepper
Cucumber
Leftover bacon from last night's dinner (crumbled)
All served with homemade french dressing.

I got to thinking about this meal as we were sitting down to eat.  Everything about this meal with the exception of the lettuce, carrots and lemon came from local sources.  The cucumbers, tomatoes, thyme, and rosemary came from our garden.  All the other ingredients came from the local farmers market.  I should note that the wine is from Virginia.

I want to apologize for these picture, they are not the best.  I was in a hurry to sit down and eat and was having an issue with my camera. 

Whole Roast Chicken

I hadn't cooked a whole chicken in a while and had a craving for one roasted.

I used a rub recipe from the Grassfed Gourmet cookbook.  I sliced fresh onions and lemons.  I added some onion and lemon slices to the bottom, so that the chicken could sit on them.  I added a few slices of the onion and lemon to the cavity of the chicken.  I also stuffed in some fresh parsley.  Drizzle the chicken with olive oil, and use rub all over.  Cook the chicken at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 1-1/2 hours (depending on the size).

Chicken Herb Rub
1 tablespoon coarse salt
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon dried thyme
2 tablespoons dried oregano

The leftover chicken will be used to make homemade chicken salad and the carcass will be used to make broth.

Roast Chicken

I decided to do roast chickens for dinner tonight.  I cooked 2 chickens together in my pan since they were small.  I have a 6 quart LeCreuset pan that I love to cook in.  I have to say that out of all the items I have in my kitchen this is by far my favorite thing.  It was big enough for me to place 2 chickens side by side to cook.

To the pan I added the 2 chickens.  Add a cut up onion, 3 sliced lemons, fresh herbs (thai basil, tarragon, marjoram, and sage - I am growing all of these in containers on my deck).  Place lid on top and bake in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 1 hour, remove lid, check temperature of chickens.  They should have an internal temperature to 165 degrees Fahrenheit.

The meal was served with leftover side dishes from Thanksgiving Dinner.  I had leftover sweet potatoes, green beans and carrots.  It was a great way to take some stuff out of the freezer as well as to not have to do a whole lot for dinner tonight.

All of the bones leftover from both chickens will be used to make chicken stock.

Roast Chicken

I want to start off by apologizing that I haven't posted in a while.  With many different holiday get togethers I haven't really spent much time in the kitchen.  I plan to make up for that this week as I begin making some holiday cookies.

Here is what I did with the chicken:

1 onion, sliced
2 lemons, sliced
2 tablespoons Herbs of Provence (an herb mix of thyme, basil, savory, fennel seeds, lavender flowers)
1 cup white wine (I used a sauvignon blanc by Cupcake Vineyards out of New Zealand)
1 stick of butter
Drizzle of olive oil

I took a 2 pound pastured chicken, rinsed it off and patted it dry.  Into a roaster pan I added some of the cut onions and a few slices of lemon.  Place some of the onion and lemon slices inside the cavity of the chicken.  Place chicken in roaster.  Add remainder of onion and lemons to the inside of the pan next to the chicken.  Slice the butter and put butter in the cavity and other areas in and around the chicken.  Add one cup of wine.  Over the top of the chicken drizzle a little olive oil and the herbs.  Place in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven and bake for about 2 hours.  You need to make sure that the internal temperature of the chicken reaches 160 degree Fahrenheit.  Once in a while baste the chicken with the juices.  Once cooked take the chicken out of the pan to rest, remove the onion and lemon from the pan and place on stove top to cook the juices in the pan.  What you want to do is reduce the amount by at least half by boiling.  Serve the sauce over the chicken.

Along with the chicken we also had brown rice and cooked spinach.

You need 1 cup of water (I used 1/2 cup of the wine (see above) and 1/2 cup of water) and 1/2 cup of rice.  Combine rice and water; bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat to simmer and cook for 50 minutes.  After 50 minutes remove from heat and let stand for 10 minutes.

This post is linked on Monday Mania by the Healthy Home Economist