Eeeeeeeeeyooooore

We didn't go to happy hour. Husband had a late meeting, so we just had a cocktail at home. It's for the best, of course. I made chicken with 40 cloves of garlic, a recipe I've read about like four hundred times and every time the writer says it's absolutely incredible. I found a crock pot version in one of my slow cooker cookbooks, and tried it. It was really really good. I will post pictures and stuff once I get the camera back from Husband, who has it to take pictures for work.
Yesterday wasn't exactly the mid-week holiday I wanted it to be--H. had to work for most of the afternoon after all, and we did laundry and cleaned for the rest of the day. It turns out that one day-holidays are a little bit disappointing. With long weekends, you get to say "it's Sunday but it's really like Saturday" when you get a Monday off--it turns on its head that dreaded "I thought it was Friday but it's really Thursday" phenomenon. Mid-week days off don't give you that thrill--we were so looking forward to yesterday, and then *poof* it was 7:00 last night and H. has a long day today...
Oh, and I'm shedding an egg, which makes me tired and irritable and relentlessly negative. The worst thing about it is my obliviousness--thankfully H. knows it's happening and points it out to me. That sounds like he's a terrible dude who chalks everything up to "monthly bills," but he's really not. I went off the Pill a while ago, and now I really get down and pouty; since I almost always fail to make the connection to hormones, my inexplicable jerkiness is that much more disturbing to me. So H. is actually doing a favor when he points it out. Not that I'm always fawningly grateful for it. But yesterday when he suggested that my quiet, doleful digs about him having to go to work might be attributable to my period, it really was a relief. I don't want to be this person, and if I don't realize why it's happening, I start to think maybe I'm just essentially unhappy, and this is how it's going to be from now on unless I can find some way to make a major change. The drama of that sentiment is 100% me, but the truth of it comes purely from the onslaught of hormones.
I'm coming to the end of it, though. And today is beautiful--the house is flooded with sunshiney light and the few leaves left on the trees are rustling like maracas in the lively wind. I will take Dog for a walk up the hill and I will finish that baby quilt top. It's going to be a weird size, I think...I have just a little bit of proportion to work out. But I have all day to do that! Yay coffee!

Roast chicken

I've become rather enamored of roasting chickens. It's so economical: the two of us reap at least three meals from one roasted chicken, and that doesn't even count the beautiful golden stock I make and freeze when all the meat's been devoured.
I've tried a few different recipes and a few different roasting vessles. I started with the real live Calphalon nonstick roasting pan with the professional-looking rack and ergonomical handles. It produced a beautiful bird. But our kitchen is very small, and that roasting pan is very big--too big, if we're being completely honest, for one 3- or 4-pound chicken (which, incidentally, can cost as little as $5. I know I should be getting my chicken from a farm but the reasons I don't are myriad and will have to be reserved for another time. For the moment, let's just say it's because I'm cheap.). And counter space is at a major premium in my kitchen, so the second time I roasted a chicken, I left the big beautiful roasting pan (which was a wedding gift, of course) in the basement and turned to the big (but slightly smaller than the roasting pan) beautiful enameled cast iron dutch oven which was also a wedding gift. I have two of them. Nah nah nah nah nah nah. I love them both. One is about 5 quarts and one is 8. The 8-quarter is oval and it almost fits over two burners on the stove. I used the big one for my second chicken and it turned out great. But it's also a little unwieldy and I was getting pretty cocky with the chicken roasting. So I turned to my big cast iron skillet--sans enamel. I believe I wrote a tipsy post about that experiment. It turned out great. The cast iron skillet is now my go-to roasting pan. It's a manageable size and cleanup is pretty easy as long as I have an abrasive scrubbing sponge on hand.
As far as recipes go: after trying a few different ones, including Julia Childs' master Frahnch recipe, I have to say the best one is Marcella Hazan's Roast Chicken with Lemons. It is ridiculously simple, and in comments sections on like every Roast Chicken discussion on the world wide web, you will find that someone has posted a rave review of this recipe. You poke about twenty holes in two lemons, with a fork or a toothpick. You stick said lemons up a raw, rinsed (do I need to say plucked?) chicken's butt. You rub the chicken's skin with salt and pepper. You place the chicken in a cast iron skillet (this is my variation, you understand). You roast it at like 350 or 400 degrees for about an hour. You turn it from its back to its front, and then vice versa, every 15 to 30 minutes. You do not baste it. When the juices run clear and the leg wiggles freely in its socket*, you remove the bird from the oven and let it rest for about 10 minutes. Then you carve it and serve it and it is delicious and juicy.That's the recipe. Marcella has you truss it and I ruined a perfectly good embroidery needle (because who has chicken-trussing needles lying around?) the first time I made this, trying to sew the chicken's butt closed. I have not since trussed a chicken.
I also made a variation of this recipe for quesadillas recently: I stuck two limes up the chicken's butt and used salt, pepper and cayenne to rub the chicken. It turned out great, too. The lemon doesn't really flavor the chicken too much, and neither did the lime. Marcella says this is a "self-basting" bird, and I suppose that's really the function of the citrus fruits--to baste more than to flavor.
*I am a tiny bit paranoid about my ability to determine the wiggling of a leg and the clarity of chicken juices. The breast should be at 160 or 170 degrees. The leg and thigh should be at 180 degrees. These are the FDA guidelines. Julia says that in France people like their chicken less well-done than we do in these United States. That makes me want to puke a little. The trouble is that a juicy chicken and an undercooked chicken are a little too similar. My chickens fluctuate a little as concerns their done-ness. I would say err on the side of dry, not because of salmonilla but more because, even though everyone thinks they want a juicy piece of chicken, it can be a little gross if the chicken's so juicy it's almost wet. But that's my personal taste, my personal advice. You really have to feel your way to being comfortable with chicken-roasting.
P.S. Sorry--the only photos I have are these, which I forgot to snap until the chicken had been carved a little bit.
P.P.S. The lemon chicken stuck once. I think it was in the enameled cast iron. There was no rhyme or reason. I scraped it off and flipped it and it still tasted great. I chalked it up to a fluke. That's what you should do, too. If you try this. If you read this, which you won't because...you know. I might be a tiny bit crazy.

Coq a Vin...

The chicken was purple. Like, in a blue way. The photo does not do it justice. It's probably pointless to post this picture, except I think it does illustrate how unappetizing the meat turned out.
It looked positively revolting when I removed it from my beloved enameled cast iron casserole. I returned the chicken to the pot and it was like a carnival dunk tank filled with butter and other viscous fats, and anything with that much butter (and other viscous fats) cannot stay truly purple. So when it hit the table, the "chicken cooked in wine" was brownish-purple, and luckily I'd already plied the guests with blue cheese (it was Maytag, and that's really how they spell it) turnovers and booze. Plus the scalloped potatoes were quite breathtaking in the cast iron skillet, topped as they were with patches of browned, bubbled Jarlesberg cheese. So everyone graciously (and tipsily, I think) overlooked the dyed poultry.
The asparagus was lovely (I didn't tie it like Julia said I should, but Husband was very conscientious with the salt-to-boiling-water ratio, so they were well-seasoned) if a little overcooked (I blame Julia for that, actually. She said it would take 12 minutes; I checked them after 9 and they were already a little soggy). Maybe it would have been better if I'd peeled them like she said I should. But Husband prevailed in that as well, scanning the destroyed teensy kitchen and pointedly remarking that he had never, ever eaten a peeled asparagus spear. Plus we had guests and at that moment Dog was their only available host; she tends to be overly demonstrative and olfactorily curious, especially when pastries are being eaten on her couch. So peeling like 30 asparagus spears was completely out of the question.
Oh my, I still shudder to think of the way our kitchen looked as we sat down to eat. There were so many soiled, damp kitchen towels! The little pot smeared with melted chocolate (oh, but the entire cake got eaten even after that audaciously rich coq a vin! I'm getting better with that chocolate cake); the slightly bigger pot that served as a double boiler; the huge pot we used to boil the asparagus--ew, green, asparagus-smelling water--; the various dinner plates, strainers, forks, salad plates, ramekins...Lions and tigers and bears, my ass. Oh my.

But it was worth it. We sat at our makeshift "dining room" table until after midnight (on a Wednesday!). We talked about politics, feminism, football, basketball and baseball, TV, real estate...In short, it was the quintessential dinner party. For some of you, that might sound frightfully quotidian, and someday I'll explain why it wasn't so for me. But Jeebus, I can't get into it now. Look: this is a very long and disappointingly-illustrated blog post. Husband is all up in my grill about brevity being the soul of wit (actually he tactfully suggested that I start a haiku blog), so I'm going now.

What's French for "Eureka!"?

Coq au vin! It's perfect, I think: multiple steps, which appeals to my longing to be put through Julia's paces; super-French-sounding; elegant and appropriate for an Occasion...
I'll still serve scalloped potatoes (a level of richness that Julia Child would not approve of, I think, but what if the chicken didn't turn out and all we had were her suggested parsley potatoes? That would be a failure, I'm sure) and asparagus, and a salad to start. Chocolate cake for dessert, and cheese puffs if I get ambitious with the hors d'oeuvres. (Full disclosure: I totally had to look up how to spell hors d'oeuvres. I'm a babe in the woods with this French s#@%.)

I'm nervous about the dinner party tonight. I've had Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" for like a year and a half and have only made three or four things from it. So I decided that tonight's menu would come exclusively from that book, thinking it would be a good way to get some practice. But now I think that will make for a rather boring dinner: roast chicken; scalloped potatoes; asparagus. Chocolate cake for dessert? How un-jazzy. ("Jazzy" being a word I picked up this weekend at my parents' house when perusing their 1968 "modern" cookbook, which had some of the grossest-looking recipe photos I've ever seen, and hi-larious titles like "Jazzy Meatballs.")
But the party is tonight! My other options for meat were not very promising: expensive cuts of beef that would probably embarrass everyone with their price tag; tongue; veal; pork chops.
This is where my inexperience as a dinner party hostess really shows itself: the menu. (Couldn't it show itself in something a little less showy, like the wine's too bold for the fish?) It's going to be unimaginative in the extreme unless I find some way in the next hour (the farmer's market opens at 10) to, well, jazz it up.
Julia is encyclopedic on the subject of mushrooms, so that is where I will begin.

On Timing

Happy Friday!

So far, my night has been spent on the phone with my maid of honor, J. I was multi-tasking! Roasting a chicken, smoking (bad girl. bad.) a cigarette, drinking wine, and not paying enough attention to the chicken-roasting recipe. It was Ms. Julia Childs', and while I am loathe to disrespect her ladyship by drinking and smoking and having psychologically significant conversations while loosely following her master recipe for a roasted chicken, it has been a nearly-perfect evening. And the chicken looks OK! Unfortunately, I underestimated the tiny potatoes I bought to serve with the chicken, and my timing is a complete failure. Luckily, my music-mad husband bought himself the commemorative edition of Paul's Boutique today, so he's been happily wallowing in Beastie Boys worship while I fucked around in our tiny kitchen. Dear (nonexistant) reader, I do hate to flaunt it, but holy shit is my life tits.*
Anyway, the phone call's over, the chicken's out of the oven (oh my, I cooked it in a cast iron skillet after months of pining for a roasting pan. Got the pan, used it once, grasped the basics of roasting meat and haven't looked back--tried everything else for roasting and so far nothing has really let me down. Granted, I haven't eaten more than a bite of chicken, but I have nearly a bottle's worth of red wine in me, inspiring much poultry-related confidence.) Oh--but the potatoes are still quite raw. And the asparagus: not even in the oven yet. If timing is everything, I have nothing. But I would have to take issue with anyone who made such a claim. 'Cause I've got a tits husband, an outrageously insightful best friend, a dog who deserves to be famous, and two whole days to enjoy myself before anybody has to go back to work.
Happy weekend! Make it matter...

*For some time, I've been trying to incorporate "tits" into my personal lexicon: does calling something tits not say it all? I feel like it celebrates everything, from Betty Page to fucking Judith Butler. Who among us does not love tits? Unfortunately, it is really not OK to use this turn of phrase in everyday life (my everyday life, anyway), so it is relegated to my unread blog. Sigh.