An Italian Homecoming

The Bride and I have returned from NYC, and it is time for some home cooking.  A week of eating at restaurants, exacerbated by some poor choices at those restaurants, has taken its toll on my girlish figure.  The rest of this week will mostly be about whatever The Bride wants to eat, as she leaves for China in a couple of days where her options will be rather limited.  But for tonight, the main course I chose was the Pollo Diablo on page 244.

 Nothing shocking about what happens next...I started the marinade.

I whisked.

I poured it into the gallon-sized Ziploc bag that already had the chicken in it.

I massaged the marinade around the chicken and bag to ensure it was evenly distributed.

Several hours (and a lasagna bolognese that The Bride asked me to make for lunch because she will be in China for 3 months) later, I pulled it from the bag, and was eager to use my new toy.  Recently, I tried using my kitchen shears to remove the backbone from a chicken.  It was ugly looking when I was done; a real hack job.  On our most recent trip to IKEA, I managed to convince The Bride to allow me to purchase some poultry shears for about eight bucks.

MUCH better!  A purchase that was totally worth it!  

The bird went on the grill, and I set about making our side.  As the chicken had an Italian flair to it, I wanted the side to have a similar theme.  I quickly found the Corn on the Cob Italian-Style on page 334 in the sides chapter. 

This recipe uses a compound butter that gets rubbed on the corn before the grilling session, similar to what I did recently in making my corn salsa.  

Here is the butter, ready to be rubbed on the cobs!

It's not even cooked yet, and looks delicious!

Again, I want to stress that the outer layers of the corn will burn, but the inside will be oh-so-delicious-and-perfect.

Carve it, peel it, dress it, and plate it!

The chicken was a nice change of pace from what I had been eating this week; it had to have been much healthier than most of what I consumed this last week.  As a bonus, it was juicy, well-marinated, flavorful, crispy on the outside, and had just a hint of heat from bite to bite.  Next time I would even use more red pepper flakes to make it extra spicy.  The corn was also perfectly cooked, but I couldn't get the Parmesan cheese to stick to the cobs at all.  I think that next time I will incorporate the cheese into the compound butter and have it cook along with the cob on the grill.

Oh, and I now have to put this out on Twitter as well...hopefully I will make a good habit of that.