For the first time in many, many moons I have a Monday night off. It's Steelers/Bengals, beautiful weather this week, and grad school isn't pressing down on my style, so I knew that I had better take advantage of this rare alignment of fortunes. The Bride declared that we need to start eating better before the holidays take over, so I picked out the Three Lemon Chicken on page 233.
The first step was to create the paste that would be rubbed both inside and outside the chicken. I'd roasted garlic in a previous post, so I followed that procedure to achieve the same results.
The paste came together well, and when I snuck a taste, it was surprisingly bitter and pungent, but promised to deliver a lot of flavor to the chicken.
The paste needed to be rubbed inside the bird, just under the skin. I won't lie, this always creeps me out. The Bride likes to mess with me on Thanksgiving, knowing that I don't handle it well when she runs her hand under the turkey's skin and shows it to me.
Ew. Once the paste was rubbed both inside and outside the chicken, I then followed the recipe by stuffing rosemary sprigs and white wine inside the cavity of the bird.
Calling on my experience with trussing a whole chicken, I was able to tie up the bird significantly faster (and better) than the previous attempt.
The chicken went on the grill, and I went back to watching TV. When the time to pull the chicken off the grill grew closer, I prepared the side for the evening, the Tomato, Cucumber, & Onion Salad on page 367.
I got to try a new toy! For our Five Year Anniversary, The Bride gave me a mandolin!
Ooooh! Aaaaah! This thing is sweet! My first food item to play with was the cucumber, which was supposed to be cut into one-eighth inch slices. I set the mandolin to that measurement and started slicing.
Ridiculous! There is no way I could have done this with my chef's knife. I love the consistency and ease that the mandolin affords the preparation process. It's hard to believe that this pile of slices all came from one medium-sized cucumber. The tomatoes were next.
The onion went third and I then began plating the salad.
I mixed up the dressing and went to retrieve the chicken.
Gorgeous! I am starting to really dig grilling whole chickens. It's very easy and the taste is a significant upgrade from grilling individual pieces. While the chicken rested I chopped up the herbs to sprinkle on the salad, and informed The Bride that we were almost ready.
I plated our dinners and got ready to watch some Monday Night Football!
I really enjoyed the chicken recipe. For not having any sort of marinade or brine there was a tremendous amount of flavor in this recipe. It's quick and easy to prepare, and a great way to have a healthy meal that's tasty on a weekday night. The salad is refreshing and the herbs play a large role in the flavor profile of the dish. The Bride figured out that if you combined the chicken with the dressing for the salad that it would make a delicious chicken gyro. Noted. Otherwise, the onion needs to be cut back in the salad. An hour later, I'm still tasting them. The bitter paste that I was concerned about earlier completely mellowed and delivered as promised. I'm actually looking forward to leftovers tomorrow for lunch!
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