Falling in Love with Cooking - Tip #2

-A Great, Sharp Knife-

 This revolutionized my cooking.  I have a beautiful, expensive knife set.   I use ONE knife at all times.   A great chef knife, or Santoku knife.  That is all you need.  If you spent less that $100 on a knife, it is probably not a great knife.  They are usually around $99.00 or more in a store (I purchased mine at Bed Bath and Beyond)  and you will use it forever.  It is worth every penny, and truly makes cooking more fun. You can find them a little cheaper on Amazon.  See links below.

My family teases me, because when I vacation at a beach house or cabin, you will always find my Santoku knife, wrapped in a dish cloth in one of my grocery bags.  I literally cannot go somewhere else and cook without it.  And guess who comes and borrows my knife for the whole vacation...my family members!    It ruined one of my vacations once because I was stuck with the cabin’s cheap serrated knife for the whole week!  I have never made that mistake again....I’m really not kidding, that is the pathetic part!

I am obsessed with cooking with a sharp, good knife.  And if you spend the money on a great knife, spend another $25 or more on a great knife sharpener.  A great knife is useless if it is dull.  It is just as frustrating.   If you think a knife doesn’t matter, and it wouldn’t make a difference to you, then I will tell you now....you have been using a cheap terrible knife.  Because once you prep food with a great knife, you can’t go back.   My Santoku knife I have had for 6 years, and use it for everything!

Santoku knife on Amazon - Buy Here

Santoku knife with sharpener- Buy Here

Roast Chicken

   

     My absolute weekly “go-to” for dinner is a roast chicken with roasted vegetables.   I roast a chicken almost every single week. We love it, and for some reason, the taste just never gets old.   It is a great way to get a lot of vegetables in at dinnertime, and I can use the leftover bones to make and freeze homemade chicken stock.  It makes your entire house smell amazing, and anyone who walks through the door while it is roasting will immediately think you must be a cook sent straight from Heaven. Another plus:  I have found that buying a whole chicken is a few dollars cheaper than buying a chicken that has been cut up. You are being charged for the fact that the butcher cut it, so just buy it whole and save a few bucks and get you something nice for yourself....like a cup of coffee.  It is a simple yet elegant meal and always turns out looking beautiful and way more exotic than the time that was put into preparing it.

A few of my tips.  (Recipe will follow)

-One whole chicken (I always buy hormone free, no antibiotics, vegetarian fed, and sometimes, I will spend a few extra dollars (and not get that cup of coffee) and buy organic.

 -Any vegetable you like-this is the great part!   Just open your fridge and pantry and throw on the roasting pan whatever you like/have on hand.
These are the veggies I love to roast with a chicken: onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, broccoli, asparagus, and carrots, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts. Lately, I have been adding fennel.  Fennel is my new love!!!!  I always try to have something green on the platter, so if I have asparagus, I roast that, if I have broccoli or brussel sprouts, I roast those. Just have something green, for health and beauty!

 My sister makes fun of me, because I love, love, love mashed potatoes!  So, I do, on occasion, mash the potatoes instead and then make some gravy from the chicken juices.   I do not do this every week, because as we all know, white potatoes basically have no nutrition.   As my mother would say, “it is like eating white paper.”  However, they taste fabulous.  I think I love them because my mom never made them once, my entire childhood.  Seriously, not once.  So, I love and adore them, and literally have to resist not making them every week.  My mother and I fight every single year over the holiday menu, because I insist on making mashed potatoes.  She says, we only need one potato, and it will be the sweet potato casserole.  I reply, “I am an adult, and I will make mashed potatoes if I want mashed potatoes.”  I am not joking, we fight about it every single holiday season.  Ok, enough about mashed potatoes.  See?!  I could go on and on about them!!!  It's embarrassing.

So.....I try to roast sweet potatoes more often than using white potatoes.  Again, it is just a healthier choice.  We eat to live, not live to eat!  You can prepare Roast Chicken several different ways.  Let your creative chicken juices flow!!!  Wait, is that gross?   All you have to figure out is the best way you like it.   I tend to make Herbed Roast Chicken the most.   I love it, it is always perfect.  As soon as I pull it out of the oven, I immediately tear off the wings and eat them...I can’t resist!  Luke always cuts the chicken up for us, and makes fun of me because he never finds the chicken without its two wings already missing.
    Here are a few of my varieties of roast chicken:
         -Salt and pepper-it is wonderful and the flavor speaks for itself -

         -Herbed Chicken (Salt, pepper, and dried herbs) -usually Herbs of Provence- generously cover it with the herbs.

         -Lemon Chicken-(Salt, pepper, garlic, and lemon)- I stuff the inside with lemon slices and garlic. Cover the outside with salt, pepper, and dried basil.

          -Cinnamon and Clove Chicken-  In the Fall, I love to prepare the chicken with salt, pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. It is so amazing. I serve it with homemade applesauce. It tastes like Fall! It is so dreamy!

 Basic Recipe for Roasted Herb Chicken:

 1 whole Roasting chicken-(the one below is 4.5 lbs.)
 2 onions -cut into big chunks (the bigger you make your veggies, the prettier the presentation)
2 sweet potatoes (or white potatoes)-peeled- I leave some skin on-again, just because I think it looks prettier.
 2 white potatoes
1-2 crowns of broccoli (or some other green veggie) (below I used brussel sprouts)
5-6 carrots-peeled and cut into large pieces
1 fennel bulb- large dices

 -preheat oven to 425 degrees -place the chicken on your roasting rack (if gizzards are still in the chicken, just remove them)  -Drizzle olive oil all over the chicken, and then massage oil into the skin of chicken, completely cover- WASH HANDS with soap and water -Generously salt and pepper the inside of the chicken as well as the outside. -Cover with dried herbs inside and out. -Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes. (I would begin checking the chicken at 1 hour, you don’t want to overcook, and remember, it will continue to cook slightly after you have taken it out of the oven) Cook until the juices run clear when you slice between the breast and the leg. (a friend taught me to wiggle the legs and if they are loose, the chicken is ready, if they are still very tight and don’t move freely, it needs to roast a little longer)  In the picture above, I used fresh herbs from my garden and stuffed the cavity full of basil, oregano, and rosemary.

Enjoy!

Falling In Love with Cooking - Tip #1

-A Clean Kitchen.

     Here is what I believe to be a major tip to enjoying cooking in your kitchen space.
   
     You are an artist, and an artist would never start with a messy canvas.  They start with a clear, white, and calm canvas.  Do not begin with chaos surrounding you.  It will just make you feel immediately defeated.  Try to clean as you go.  Years ago, Luke and I made it a habit to have the entire kitchen almost completely cleaned before we sit down for dinner.  That way, after dinner, we just basically have the plates, silverware, and glasses to put in the dishwasher, and the counters to spray and clean.
     
Side note-tip to feeling like a successful mom:  Go to bed with your house picked up each night.
You wake up and feel on top of your game rather than the poor, sad loser at the back of the race.  You go to bed with a peaceful house, and wake up with a peaceful house.
   
     Back to the clean kitchen: growing up, my dad, who is the most amazing and gifted administrator (however, the most irritating administrator when you are being constantly “administrated” or what I like to just call “bossed” by your dad) ran a very tight ship in our home alongside with my mother.   Now that I think of it....both my parents are bossy, extremely bossy!   But, we grew up in a beautiful, organized, clean, peaceful, and pleasant home where everyone wanted to come over and gather around our dinner table at all times!   Back to my dad-I heard at least 2,000 times growing up, “girls, clean as you go, clean as you go, it makes it so much easier.”  And you know what? He is right, it makes it so much easier!  And when entertaining, it is nice if you clean as you go, because when you guests arrive, they are not overwhelmed by a messy kitchen and secretly thinking in their minds, “Dear Lord, I hope this kitchen is sanitary now that I am about to eat the food that was prepared in it.”   And again, it brings them a feeling of peace as they prepare to dine at your house.
      You will notice, I will speak a lot about “peace”.   It is important to me.   A peaceful home is one of my greatest desires.  And as almost every mom can agree, it takes work to obtain peace, but it is a great desire for all of us in our crazy, errand running, diaper changing, baby feeding, toddler chasing, guitar playing, amp repairing, pedal board fixing, speaker cabinet drilling, travel gear case hammering,  craigslist trading- ok, wait, I just got lost in my “married to a musician world”- never ending daily lives.