simplest roast chicken
Andrea
Well...this is awkward.
I prepared this post so long ago that it was actually photographed in the kitchen of the house we sold last May. Not to mention that, actually, the draft date was January of 2013. Two years ago. Before we even knew that we were having a baby. A baby who is now a 15-month old toddler.
Sorry, friends. Better late than never?
My tardiness does help to prove the point of this post, though; that roast chicken is a staple in our house, and this recipe in particular is our favorite. Because, two years later, these images are as relevant as the day I prepared them. Except for that kitchen.
Happy, healthy 2015 to any readers that may still have Bella Eats hooked into their feed reader. All two of you. Hi Brian, hi Momma.
Simplest Roast Chicken
from Thomas Keller, via Epicurious
Ingredients
- one whole, farm-raised chicken, 3-ish pounds
- kosher salt and freshly-ground pepper
- 2-3 teaspoons minced fresh thyme
- unsalted butter
- dijon mustard
Method (in Thomas Keller's words)
- Preheat the oven to 450°F. Rinse the chicken, then dry it very well with paper towels, inside and out. The less it steams, the drier the heat, the better.
- Salt and pepper the cavity, then truss the bird. Trussing is not difficult, and if you roast chicken often, it's a good technique to feel comfortable with. When you truss a bird, the wings and legs stay close to the body; the ends of the drumsticks cover the top of the breast and keep it from drying out. Trussing helps the chicken to cook evenly, and it also makes for a more beautiful roasted bird.
- Now, salt the chicken—I like to rain the salt over the bird so that it has a nice uniform coating that will result in a crisp, salty, flavorful skin (about 1 tablespoon). When it's cooked, you should still be able to make out the salt baked onto the crisp skin. Season to taste with pepper.
- Place the chicken in a sauté pan or roasting pan and, when the oven is up to temperature, put the chicken in the oven. I leave it alone—I don't baste it, I don't add butter; you can if you wish, but I feel this creates steam, which I don't want. Roast it until it's done, 50 to 60 minutes. Remove it from the oven and add the thyme, if using, to the pan. Baste the chicken with the juices and thyme and let it rest for 15 minutes on a cutting board.
- Remove the twine. Separate the middle wing joint and eat that immediately. Remove the legs and thighs. I like to take off the backbone and eat one of the oysters, the two succulent morsels of meat embedded here, and give the other to the person I'm cooking with. But I take the chicken butt for myself. I could never understand why my brothers always fought over that triangular tip—until one day I got the crispy, juicy fat myself. These are the cook's rewards. Cut the breast down the middle and serve it on the bone, with one wing joint still attached to each. The preparation is not meant to be superelegant. Slather the meat with fresh butter. Serve with mustard on the side and, if you wish, a simple green salad. You'll start using a knife and fork, but finish with your fingers, because it's so good.
Maybe its because I am training to be an architect, spending my days working on minute details for buildings that won’t break ground for another six months and won’t be complete for another two years. It takes a lot of time, and a lot of patience, to get to the point in a project where you feel the satisfaction of seeing the results of your hard work. The days can be frustrating, the hours long, and at the end of it all you may not even be happy with the final result. But you continue forward, filing away the lessons learned on one project for a similar situation on the next, always striving for the perfect design against the odds of disagreeable clients and undesirable sites.
There are a lot of similarities between baking and architecture - formula, precision, a bit of risk taking, structure - but one very notable difference is timing. I can enter the kitchen, experiment with a new recipe that I’ve been dreaming about and have results in 1-2 hours. And if the final product doesn’t come out exactly as I had imagined, I can try again the next evening. Or immediately even, if the desire to get it right then and there is strong enough. That [nearly] instant gratification is what I love most about baking. The reactions from friends presented with something you’ve made from scratch help as well - who isn’t happy to be surprised with a plateful of baked goods?
There are nights when I get home from the office needing to bake. Not just wanting to, but needing to. Sometimes I’ll pick a recipe that is tried and true, other times I’ll try drastic experiments that go horribly wrong but always teach me something new. Last week I was looking for a recipe somewhere in the middle - a recipe that someone else had tried and recommended, that I could play with and put my own twist on. Luckily I had recently discovered 
There are a lack of preparatory photographs in this post because baking these cookies on that particular night was purely for my mental well-being. I was tired, a little bit frazzled and a lot in need of the dark chocolatey, almondy, slightly salty goodness that these three-bite cookies delivered to my mouth. The process to make them was really quite simple - melt chocolate, amaretto and butter in one pan while whipping together the egg and sugar in another. You combine the two, fold in some finely processed toasted almonds and then chill the batter for 1-2 hours. If you have the patience, shoot for two hours of chilling. I couldn't stand it and pulled them after just one so that I could get to work on the methodical task of rolling each lump of dough between my palms and coating each ball with granular sugar and then powdered. They bake for a quick 10-12 minutes and then you are free to pile them onto a plate, grab a glass of wine and cuddle up to your partner on the couch. There's no better cure for a long day, I promise.
Also, if you are in need of some cheer the next evening as well, they are great crumbled over vanilla ice cream.
Dark Chocolate Almond Bites
adapted from 
Oh! And if you haven't noticed, I've added helpful links to the right side of the page for you to subscribe to Bella Eats, or follow me on 
The fresh produce this time of year holds some of the blame as well. When you're picking sugar snaps straight from the vine outside your kitchen door and have an abundance of fresh lettuce at your feet its hard to imagine doing anything but going straight inside, dumping it all into a bowl and drizzling it with a simple vinaigrette. Or, when you've just pulled perfect little beets from the ground and realize that you still have some carrots from the farmer's market in your fridge, images of simply roasted root vegetables sprinkled with salt + pepper laid across a bed of lettuce start dancing in your head and eventually wind up on your plate (pictured above). It can't be helped, really. And how about brown rice pasta with quickly-sauteed squash from the market? The quick and simple possibilities are endless.
And then there is my attempt to follow 
So, that was a lot of excuses to say that, basically, I like to eat simply in the summertime. I love salads that I can make on Sunday and eat for lunch the rest of the week, and simple breads that become the star of the meal with very little effort put forth. The plate above was assembled on an evening when we had a few of those salads in the fridge, fresh lettuce from the garden on the counter and 30 minutes to spend making flatbread. The roasted red pepper, chickpea and quinoa salad is simple, delicious and filling...just my kind of meal. And trust me, even on a low-effort dinner night the extra 30 minutes is worth it, because this flatbread is incredible.
I haven't shared the curried tomato salad because I screwed it up the first time we made it and wasn't completely happy with the results. The concept is a good one though and I assure you that as soon as local tomatoes grace the booths at the market I'll be trying it again.
The lentil + brown rice salad can be found 
This visit was no exception. On the drive from the airport we discussed what lunch would be the next day, a trip to my favorite Vietnamese Pho restaurant of course, since Charlottesville is lacking in Pho. Saturday's festivities menu was also discussed and last minute grocery lists were made. On Friday afternoon we got to work in the kitchen, each of the four of us with our own list of tasks and stack of recipes, all delegated at the family meeting around the kitchen table 10 minutes before. We moved around each other as if having been choreographed, the evening nearly flawless aside from my lack of preparedness with eclair ingredients - the pate a choux dough comes together rather quickly, for future reference. Saturday was spent enjoying the results of our hard work with more family and close friends, and celebrating the marriage of two incredible people. It was a lovely, lovely weekend.
Since our return I've been unusually sleepy, most likely because of the ridiculous stress of flight delays on our way there and the busyness of the weekend from the moment we stepped foot in the sunshine state. I still can't help but wonder, however, if the copious amounts of sweets consumed has anything to do with my desire to take a nap at my desk by around 3pm each day this week. I wonder how long the effects of a sugar high and the resulting crash can stay in your system... I'm kidding of course. Maybe.
I've intended to write this post each evening after work these last few days, but every time I opened my iPhoto account and glimpsed the 500+ photos taken during our stay in Florida I became overwhelmed, and even more tired. Its been a struggle to decide which recipe to share with you first, the stuffed french toast filled with sliced bananas and homemade strawberry jam, the tangy creole mustard sauce that graced the perfectly poached fillet of grouper, the unbelievably delicious amaretto chocolate chip cookies and their accompanying amaretto buttercream frosting, or the beautiful mini eclairs with their vanilla custard filling and chocolate ganache topping.
In the end I've decided on this simple salad. It will probably seem bland and boring after the list of possibilities I gave above, but it really should not be ignored. Perhaps that's why I decided to feature it first, to emphasize that although a lentil + brown rice salad may not have been the star at our festivities in Florida, it was certainly a nominee for best supporting side dish. The ingredients are simple - after returning home to a nearly empty fridge and pantry I still had everything I needed to make this salad Sunday night. It was the first thing I did after loving on our dogs and making a quick dinner. Subtle and earthy with a lemony kick and a firm crunch, it has become the star of my lunches each day this week and will continue to make appearances at our table in the future.
Lentil + Brown Rice Salad
modified slightly from 
Congratulations Momma + Joe. We love you very much!
Radishes and I don't have much of a history. In fact, until Sunday, I didn't think that I even liked radishes. But as I stood in front of the deep scarlet globes in the middle of a very busy produce department and racked my brain trying to think of why I didn't like them I could not come up with one recollection of ever actually eating a radish. Maybe once or twice, shaved over baby greens on a salad, but never on their own or displayed proudly and prominently as a key ingredient in a dish. And, since I'd been reading 
I even, coincidentally, picked up 
So impressed was I with my first official radish experience that I came home from the office today to make a salad with radishes for lunch, stopping first at the local market for an avocado. I made 
The 