lizzielou.com

Not all cooking endeavors result in success….

Here are my instructions. Actually they are America’s Test Kitchen’s instructions, more or less, but people have asked me, so I’m sharing.

need: large iron skillet
-chicken, Miss Roaster or Miss Fryer (about 5 pounds)
-oil (grapeseed or olive or whatever)
-salt, pepper, seasoning (nothing sugary)
-lemons and sage leaves optional

do: heat oven, with skillet inside it, to 450F
-rinse and dry chicken
-bend the wings back and tie the ankles together
-oil and season (stuff with cut-up lemons and sage)
-put backside down in hot pan
-cook for 30 minutes
-open window and put on fan to blow “flavor cloud” away from smoke alarm
-after 30 mins, turn off oven and let chicken stay there for 30 more minutes
-don’t get burned when removing hot splattery heavy chicken from oven
-remove from pan to rest for a little
-put cats upstairs
-carve
-give wings to lolly

eventually:
-you will have to clean your oven, but you will have yummy chicken to eat in the meantime

additional note:
-definitely don’t wait too long to do that oven cleaning especially if you do this recipe several times or else you will have to open all the windows and disable the smoke detectors for 6 hours or more

Lemons. Brussel spouts. Eggs.

This afternoon Lolly asked me if I wouldn’t mind doing dinner. We wanted to try a new chicken recipe with lemons and sage and wanted to make some brussel sprouts again like we did last month (but better). Also, I had hard boiled some eggs earlier with the idea of deviling them, so those got added to the queue as well. All possessing elements of orbishness.

I’ve been doing a lot of cooking lately (more on that later) so this wasn’t the most challenging of challenges, and I think it all turned out okay. I documented the process in case something exciting happened —

— But nothing too much did. Goodness was achieved, and lots of left-overs.

I also asked Lolly to take some photos of me while I was cooking. Here’s her contribution . . .

Today I am attempting to do some cooking. I’ve been doing a little more of that this year. Particularly from one new cook book we got with NW fish recipes. Anyway, today is post-holiday cooking day. We didn’t get our collective acts-slash-shits together this year, nor were we particularly anticipating turkey and trimmings, so we waited to go shopping and to have our holiday meal today (and tomorrow and Sunday and perhaps for the foreseeable future). However, because Lolly has been a bit under the weather lately, I am playing the role of cook. Well, Chef, really is what I prefer. Or Boss. Or Holy Goddess Mother of the Get-the-Hell-Out-of-My-Kitchen. (I do find cooking to be a little stressful.)

Hold on, I have to go stir my soup.

Ok, so I am making a sampling of goodness from the NW fish cookbook and a Mario Batali cookbook. More specifically, I am making a mac and cheese with crab (from scratch), some spicy pumpkin soup, a broccoli dish, and a dried mushroom rubbed beef roasty thing. Wish me luck.

…y porque estoy un poco loco en la cabeza de la fresa.