Tarragon-lemon roasted chicken

I've got a thriving tarragon plant in the garden. It's become a bit of a mess, as tarragon tends to do. So, I thought I would switch up my usual roast chicken routine and add a bit of tarragon to the mix. If you've never had tarragon, it's an intense herb with a slight licorice-y flavor and a bit of a tingle on the tongue. But even if you don't like licorice, try it anyway, something magical happens when you combine it into a savory dish. Tarragon is the herb used to flavor bearnaise sauce, which is my all-time favorite sauce. I plan to try to harvest the rest of my tarragon in a few weeks, chop it up, and freeze in cubes. (Or I may just make an enormous batch of tarragon butter and freeze that. That's if I don't just eat it all at once, of course.)

Roasting a whole chicken is definitely a time-consuming task, but it's well worth it, and you'll be able to get at least two to four or more meals out of it (meal 1: eat chicken with roasted potatoes; meal 2: make chicken sandwiches; meal 3: pick most of the chicken off the bones and make chicken salad for sandwiches; meal 4: save the carcass in the freezer to make stock another time).

Here's how to do it.

Step 1: Pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees (Fahrenheit). Butter a deep baking dish. Rinse the chicken inside and out with cold water and pat it dry with paper towels.

 
Step 2: Remove leaves from about three sprigs of tarragon and chop them finely. Blend the chopped leaves into about half a cup of softened, salted butter.

Step 3: Salt and pepper the chicken liberally, on both sides and inside the cavity of the chicken.

Step 4: Wash a lemon well. Squeeze out the juice and set it aside. Stuff the remaining lemon halves inside the chicken.

Step 5: Use 2-3 tablespoons of tarragon butter (set the rest aside for another use) and smear it under the skin of the chicken. (To loosen the skin, gently push fingers underneath and detach it from the meat. By the way, this is also a great technique for flavoring your Thanksgiving turkey.)

Step 6: Place the chicken in the buttered baking dish and add about two cups of water to the bottom of the dish to keep the chicken from drying out. (Feel free to pat a little more butter on top of the chicken if you are so inclined.) Slide the pan into the oven and set your timer for 30 minutes.

Step 7: After 30 minutes, take the chicken out of the oven. Sprinkle half of the reserved lemon juice over the top of the chicken. Then turn the chicken over and sprinkle the remaining lemon juice over the other side. (My only advice for turning the chicken? Use two large spoons or spatulas and be careful. It's not an elegant operation.)

Step 8: From this point on, turn the chicken every 20 minutes or so. Make sure to spend 2-3 minutes spooning the liquid in the baking dish over both sides of the chicken. The chicken will be done in about 2 hours and 15 minutes (to check for doneness, use either a thermometer or stick a fork or knife into the thickest part of the thigh, if the juices run clear, the chicken is fully cooked).

Step 9: When the chicken is fully cooked, remove it from the oven and let it rest for at least 10 minutes before serving it. In the meantime, you can make gravy with the pan drippings if you so desire.

Simple pan gravy:

1. Pour the pan drippings into a separator cup and let the drippings divide into two layers. (The top layer will be the fat layer.) Spoon off about 3 Tbsps of the fat and add it to a pan. 
2. Add 3 Tbsps flour to the hot fat. Let the mixture cook for a couple of minutes. 
3. Whisking continuously, add the liquid part of the pan drippings (should be about 1 to 1.5 cups) to the fat-flour mixture in the pan. Let the gravy thicken over medium heat. If the gravy is too salty, add a little cream or half-and-half. 

Creamed corn: An easy, delicious side dish

I'm really not trying to post every day, but I made some creamed corn for dinner that was so delicious, I just have to share how incredibly easy it is to make from scratch. You should do it. Why get the stuff in a can when you can make your own with fresh corn from the farmer's market? So grab a few ears and try this. You won't regret it. (Sorry there's no pic of the dish itself, but it just disappeared too fast.)

And if you happen to have a roast chicken with some pan drippings, you know, just around, in your kitchen, drizzle some of the drippings on the creamed corn. You will swoon with happiness. And you'll ask whomever else is at the kitchen table with you if he or she is going to finish that, and you are going to swipe the rest of the corn. I just know it. DO IT! It's going to be great. 

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsps butter
• 1 large shallot, minced
• corn kernels from four ears of corn
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1/2 cup heavy cream (or half and half, if that's what you've got)
• salt and pepper
• a pinch of nutmeg (preferably freshly grated)
• 1/4 tsp smoked paprika

Instructions

1. Melt the butter in a pot over medium heat. 
2. Add the shallots to the butter. Cook them until they are soft and slightly browned. 
3. Add the corn kernels to the shallots and the butter. Stir and add the water and the sugar to the corn. Let it cook for about 7-10 minutes. (The corn should be cooked, but it's nice if it still has a little crunch.)
4. Add the cream and let it cook with the corn for 3-5 minutes, enough to thicken the cream. 
5. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and smoked paprika. Enjoy!    

So what am I doing with this blog anyway?

For weeks, perhaps months, I have been planning to start this blog about sourcing, making, and eating food, but I have procrastinated. I kept trying to decide what blog service to use and what to call it and what is it going to be about and do I have a point of view that's fresh.I hesitated, hemmed, hawed. A few nights ago, I was trying to sleep and writing my First Blog Post in my head, and I asked myself: What's taking so long? Why haven't you done this yet? The service and the name aren't that big a deal, are they? Then a tiny voice piped up from the back of the room (because I view my mind as a vast conference room with lots of people there to listen to what I have to say--no, I don't really, but I thought it was kind of fun to imagine anyway), so, where was I? Oh yeah, little voice, back of room, said "But what if it isn't any good?" Yeah, you nailed it, tiny voice: I was scared. I am scared. What if this isn't any good? What if no one wants to read what I have to say about food? And what is it exactly that I want to say about food? Food is good. Enjoyed with friends, it's wonderful. A lot of people are out there talking about food. What do I have to bring to the table?

Well, these are some reasons I want to write about food:

About a year ago in January, my husband Mike and I borrowed an audiobook version of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. When we were done with that, we went on to Omnivore's Dilemma, which more than any other book made us want to opt out of the industrial food chain and so we set out to do that. It wasn't easy, and it still isn't. We have changed our behaviors with regard to getting and making food, and we have changed the way that we think about food, but the practices of avoiding food shipped from halfway across the world (especially in winter), of making your own, of trying to eat mostly local and sustainably raised food are hard. But to us they are incredibly meaningful and so we keep at it. In fact, trying to eat the way that we want to eat is so meaningful to us that I hope to be able to share some of what we have learned and hopefully get others to opt out of industrial food too. Because I also think that the more people opt out of it, the easier getting local, sustainable, nonindustrial, and seasonable food will become as local food distribution becomes more efficient. So there's a selfish aspect to it: I want you to do what I do so that it gets easier for everyone.

Then, there is the love and passion aspect to it, and that encompasses so many different components that I easily get lost. There's the quality of the food that I get from people I directly support. There's the sense of belonging to a community, a place, where I have a stake in the soil, in the air and water, and in the people who live near me. One of the most potent ways I know to connect to the world is to eat. Food is a distillation of sun, soil, place, air. In his book,  NOMA: Time and Place in Nordic Cuisine and in his food, chef Rene Redzepi talks about this connection between what we eat and where we are as a way to create sense memories, and in a sense to create an ephemeral art. I cannot create the kind of art that Rene creates, but to take some of that spirit and infuse it into the quotidien is something I want to strive for. I think that the practice of thinking and writing about food can help me to make daily life an art form, which makes my life more meaningful and more beautiful and hopefully does the same for my family.

Finally (at least for this post--there are more reasons and I will develop them as we go along), I want to teach what I know about cooking by passing along my successes and sharing my failures. Hopefully in the process I can keep getting better and learning more.

So this blog will be a mish-mash of recipes and tips, of food politics, of raving about the good (and perhaps the bad), of sharing stuff I learn, of creating art. Hopefully it will entertain, inform, inspire--I mean, why else would anyone write?

And to get started with the recipes, here's my recipe for roast chicken (which I planned to have for dinner tonight, but a family thing suddenly came up):

1 whole chicken (I get mine from Haskins Family Farm, which I will rave about at another time)
salt, white pepper
2 lemons (unfortunately usually not local, but I do have a lemon tree now!), one juiced, the other cut in half
herbs to taste or as available
unsalted butter

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees
2. Butter a baking dish (you want it to be deep so that it can hold some water)
3. Rinse the chicken with cold water, inside and out
4. Pat the chicken dry with paper towels
5. Grab about a tablespoon of salt and rub the inside and outside of the chicken (sometimes you will need more--don't be afraid to salt a lot!)
6. Rub the inside and outside of the chicken with white pepper
7. Stuff the lemon halves inside the chicken along with any herbs that you have available (if you don't have any, you can skip this)
8. Place the chicken in the baking dish, fill the bottom wiht about an inch of water
9. Put it in the over for 30 minutes
10. After 30 minutes, pull it out, turn the chicken over in the dish, and pour lemon juice all over it
11. Back in the oven, 20 minutes
12. Pull it out, turn it over, and rub the chicken with 1 tablespoon of butter
13. Back in the oven, 20 minutes
14. Out of the oven, pour pan drippings over the chicken, flip it over, in again, 15 minutes (you will keep doing this last step for 2-3 more times depending on the size of the chicken). I usually check doneness by poking the joint between the leg and the body to see if the juices that run out are clear. Others prefer a thermometer, which should read about 165 degrees in the thickest part of the thigh.
15. When it is done, remove the chicken from the dripping and let it stand and rest on a platter for about 10 minutes.

In the meantime, you can make gravy with the drippings. Use a fat separator and let the drippings divide into two layers. Grab about 2-3 tablespoons of the fat and put it into a pan. Add 2-3 tablespoons of flour to the fat and cook for a few minutes (don't let it burn). Then whisking fast, add the drippings (minus fat) to the fat and flour in the pan. It will thicken quickly. If it gets too thick, you can always add some milk, cream, or stock to thin it. Salt and pepper to taste (mine is usually pretty salty, so I definitely check the salt before adding any).

I usually serve roast chicken with roasted root vegetables (whatever is in season or I have around the house) and some kind of salad. Again, it really depends on what's available and looks good at the farmer's market.