Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Dinner tonight - Jennifer's Roast Chicken

Today I had a wonderful dinner, courtesy of Jennifer from "Roast Chicken Reasoning" blog for the main course and Niki (Esurientes - The Comfort Zone) for dessert. Unfortunately I did not take a picture of the whole meal as I intended, so tomorrow I'll write about Niki's Orange Jelly. It certainly deserves a full entry.


Jennifer's recipe for the herb/salt rub caught my attention. I had made roast chicken before, a little salt, a little freshly ground pepper, some dabs of butter, some wine for basting and that was it. Althought I use herbs often in my cooking, I have never used them in roast chicken. The concept of a rub was not something I was familiar with. So I decided to give it a try and let me tell you...it is out of this world.


I prepared the rub as per Jennifer's instructions but I did increase the garlic content. For a bona-fide Portuguese, 12 cloves of garlic for 1 pound of salt just ain't enough. I used 20 cloves instead. The kitchen smelled divine and below you can see how the rub looked.

I roughly followed Jennifer's instructions for preparing and roasting the chicken. In the end, the only thing I did before taking the picture of the roasted bird was to brush it with some of the oil pooled in the roasting pan. It was all that was needed to give it a little shine.

I was in a rush when I got home and did not wait for the chicken to warm to room temperature and I had to give an extra 10 minutes to the cooking time. Letting the chicken rest for 15 minutes was also a novel concept for me, but it was worth the wait.

I certainly learned how to roast a chicken and, after tasting this bird, I cannot go to my old way of preparing roast chicken. It will just not do.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ana! that chicken looks great! The salt rub is something else - good for you for giving it a go.
But hey, That Fava Bean stew looks soooo goooood. I may have to give it a go myself. Chorizo and Fava are another perfect combination in my opinion.

Anonymous said...

Simple and delicious!