Maggie has been working hard lately. She’s an accountant at a large firm in downtown Las Vegas. Her department has been working under a deadline and it sounds like she’s been putting in 70 or 80-hour work weeks. So Maggie was invited to dinner on Monday since the deadline was met and now she can return to a more normal schedule. Yay, Maggie!
A new cookbook that recently came out, “Fresh Mexico” by Marcela Valladolid, has a Jalapeno Roast Chicken recipe that looked intriguing. In the book, it’s served on a bed of baby broccoli (broccolini), but I altered the basic recipe a bit so the broccoli got left behind.
My chicken came from Trader Joe’s and was the biggest roaster that they had for sale that day.
I tried to use things that were already in my refrigerator; like Romaine lettuce, Parmesan cheese and a Caesar salad dressing I made a couple of days ago. I also had 4 cups of a rich chicken broth made with leftover chicken bones and vegetables from a previous dinner.
Finally, I’ve been reading another great cookbook, “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day” by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë Francois. So, resting in the refrig was 4 pounds of bread dough that only had to be shaped, raised and baked to be ready for dinner.
I combined fresh oregano (herbs grow beautifully in Las Vegas), shallot, garlic, butter, olive oil and jalapeno plus salt and pepper.
This got smeared under and over the skin of the bird, back & front. I got a can of beer and poured half of it out and stuck it up the end of the chicken and balanced it on it’s end and then put the whole thing in a cast iron skillet.
With the chicken broth I made an Armenian pilaf with vermicelli pasta and rice browned in butter and then hot chicken broth poured over and the whole thing simmered for about 40 minutes.
Maggie needed a drink when she got to our house, so I used a recipe that I found on the web (since I had all the ingredients) and made her—-Country Thyme. It was really good. Sweet from the blueberries and Agave. Sour from the pink lemon. And a kick from the Skyy vodka.
The roast chicken was moist and tasty….but not jalapeno hot at all. Next time I’ll double the jalapenos! The couronne, or ring-shaped French loaf of bread was fantastic. Served with unsalted butter, 4 of us almost ate the whole thing.
A relaxing dinner on the back patio for Maggie and for us.
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