A bird in the oven

My friend Bruce (who hosted this weekends scary movie and sleep over extravaganza) gave me a few cook books to borrow that he thought I would like. One included "A bird in the oven and then some" by Mindy Fox - which gives 20 ways to roast a chicken, nice side recipes, and what to do with the chicken carcass so that the whole bird gets used to its best potential.

I adapted one of the recipes to fit the ingredients I had.
I used:

• 1 whole chicken (5 pounds)
• 1 lime
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 2 tablespoons unstalted butter, at room temperature
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1/2 tsp saffron
• 1 tsp freshly ground coriander
• 1 tsp coarse black pepper
• 1/2 tsp NuSalt
• 1 cup white wine (I kept it classy with Charles Shaw)

1. Preheat oven to 350* roasting setting
2. Clean the chicken, remove giblets/ neck and set aside (I just froze mine for another day.) Dry well.
3. Place Chicken in a oven safe pot/ dutch oven.
4. In a seperate pot/ cup boil 1 cup of water, add in raisins and let soak.
5. Zest lime over chicken, and squeeze lime juice over chicken.

6. combine all spices, butter, and soaked raisins in a bowl.



7. Using your (clean) hands rub the spices/raisin mixture all over the chicken, including under the skin.  

8. Put chicken in oven and roast about 15 minutes.
9. After 15 minutes, pour ~ 1 cup white wine over the chicken, continue roasting for about 1.5 hours or until internal temperature is 165*F.

As a side I roasted up some mixed vegetables/ fruit including:

• 1 potato
• 1 onion
• 1 red pepper
• 1 red apple
• 2 cloves garlic
• olive oil
• splash of white wine
• Black pepper

No fancy or exciting prep, just chopped, put in a baking dish and roasted along with the chicken.

I also had a lot of weird looking carrots from the garden so I chopped those up and roasted them as well with just some olive oil, salt and pepper. 

Here are some of my weird garden carrots (with a cheery tomato for size comparison)

Looks like legs that have to pee!

Had a few 'baby' carrots in there
 

 

In the end I wound up just throwing all of the vegetables into the pot with the chicken and it made quite a good one pot wonder of a meal.

Cuban Dish #2: Cuban Sea Bass (um… Tilapia)

I am still on the mission to force health eating upon people, along with becoming more ethnically diverse, so I decided to try my hand at another Cuban dish. This time, I simply found a dish that was relatively healthy to begin with rather than editing a less healthy dish.

The recipe was for Cuban Sea Bass. However, when I go to the grocery store, I was unable to find sea bass, so I decided to settle for tilapia.

Cuban Tilapia (or whatever other fish you decide to stick in it)

2 tb olive oil

2 white onions, sliced

1-2 cloves minced garlic

4 chopped tomatoes, seeded

1.5 cups dry white wine

1/2 cup slices olives

1/4 cup drained capers

crushed red pepper

~ 1 pound of fish

1 tb butter

1/4 cup fresh cilantro

1. heat olive oil in a pan/ wok and cook onions and garlic.
2. Add tomatoes, cook until soft.
3. Add wine, olives, capers, and red pepper. Allow sauce to simmer.
4. Add fish to sauce. Cook 10-15 minutes until fish is easily flaked.
5. Remove the fish from the sauce.
6. Add butter to sauce and turn up the heat. Add cilantro. Cover sauce, and allow to thicken.
7. Serve sauce over the fish.

I served my dish with fresh steamed green beans, black beans, and a brown rice/rice pilaf concoction.

It came out pretty good in my opinion. I am not a huge fan of olives, so if I did it again, I think I would omit them, but overall tasty.