CRISPY HERB-ROASTED CHICKEN

I love chicken.  I can’t eat it every day for the rest of my life, but man, I do love chicken.  Until recently, I was very partial to the chicken breast.  I think the reason for this dates back to my childhood.  Growing up, my father loved fried chicken and would often get a bucket of chicken from KFC for dinner.  Being the smallest and youngest, the only pieces I was ever allowed to eat were the drumsticks.  I never got a wing, a thigh, or the piece I wanted the most – the breast.  It just looked so big and full of meat.  The drumstick soon became my least favorite part of the chicken.  When I moved out, in order to compensate for this tragedy, all I ever bought were chicken breasts.  I appreciated its versatility, but I started to crave something less bland – something juicier.  I began to buy more dark meats.  I still despise drumsticks, but I now view them as a necessary evil.

I followed Emeril Lagasse’s recipe for this herb-roasted chicken.  Instead of using a chicken half, I used four drums and two thighs.  I also omitted the lemon at the end.  Two of the commenters mentioned they did this because the chicken was tasty enough without it, and they were right.  I used dried thyme because I didn’t feel like bothering with fresh herbs.  Laziness often wins out in my world.  Finally, I melted the butter with garlic and thyme before spreading it over the chicken.  Mixing that unmelted butter with the garlic and thyme was kinda hard, and again, laziness.  I busted out my trusty, and rarely used, cast-iron skillet since the recipe called for it.  For the first time, something other than steak touched its surface.  This must be growth.

Ingredients (Serves 1 or 2, depending on how much of a beast you are)

·         1/2 (3 1/2-pound) chicken, (halved with the breast bone, back and first 2 digits of the wings removed)

·         1/2 tablespoon kosher salt

·         1 teaspoon ground white pepper

·         1 tablespoon olive oil

·         1 tablespoon unsalted butter

·         1/2 teaspoon minced garlic

·         1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme leaves

·         1/2 lemon, juiced

 Directions

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Season the chicken on both sides with the salt and white pepper. Set a cast iron pan over high heat and add 2 teaspoons of the olive oil to the pan. Swirl the pan to evenly coat and lay the seasoned chicken half, skin-side down in the pan. Sear until golden, about 3 minutes and place the pan in the oven. Bake until the chicken is fully cooked through, about 17 minutes.

While the chicken roasts, combine the butter, garlic and thyme in a small bowl and use a fork to combine. When the chicken is removed from the oven, place on the wooden trivet, and turn over with a spatula. Spread the thyme-garlic butter over the skin of the chicken, drizzle with lemon juice and serve immediately.

I had no idea what a wooden trivet was until I used the hyperlink.  I do not have one of those, nor do I plan to get one.  Instead, I rested the pan on one of the stove burners, did my thing, and moved my pieces to my plate.  It worked just as well.  No need to be so fancy. 

OLD-TIME BEEF STEW

The idea to cook this dish stemmed from wanting to cook a huge batch of something that I could eat throughout the week and that would still be good for reheating days later.  Well, I eventually realized that whenever you invite a man-friend over for dinner, that idea pretty much goes out the window. 

I decided to use Paula Deen’s recipe from foodnetwork.com, as it seemed extremely simple and looked to yield a decent amount of servings.  The recipe used Worcestershire sauce, which I had never used before, nor do I know how to pronounce.  Paula Deen says, “Woostershire.”  I found myself saying, “Wor…chester…shire.”  Paula Deen also pronounces paprika as “papper-eek-ah.”  I had no idea how Southern that woman’s accent is.  I was so confused when she said, “Oil.”  It sounded like, “Awl.”  If the video had not shown her adding the oil to the pot, I would have been lost.

The instructions for the recipe are about as half-assed as my instructions would be.  For example, the recipe doesn't tell you that you may need to add more water as you cook, though I would assume that’s a given.  Paula Deen uses a cast iron Dutch oven (is that redundant to say?).  I, unfortunately, do not have one.  The maintenance for those things intimidates me and I have no idea where I would store it.  I used a basic stockpot.  I also added a potato along with the carrots for starch, as I wanted to avoid having to eat rice, and omitted the celery, because, well, I hate celery.  Lastly, I read all of the instructions as though Paula Deen was narrating.  It was quite awesome.

Ingredients (Serves 6)

·         2 pounds stew beef

·         2 tablespoons vegetable oil

·         2 cups water

·         1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

·         1 clove garlic, peeled

·         1 or 2 bay leaves

·         1 medium onion, sliced

·         1 teaspoon salt

·         1 teaspoon sugar

·         1/2 teaspoon pepper

·         1/2 teaspoon paprika

·         Dash ground allspice or ground cloves

·         3 large carrots, sliced

·         3 ribs celery, chopped

·         2 tablespoons cornstarch

Directions

Brown meat in hot oil. Add water, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, bay leaves, onion, salt, sugar, pepper, paprika, and allspice. Cover and simmer 1 1/2 hours. Remove bay leaves and garlic clove. Add carrots and celery. Cover and cook 30 to 40 minutes longer. To thicken gravy, remove 2 cups hot liquid. Using a separate bowl, combine

1/4 cup water and cornstarch until smooth. Mix with a little hot liquid and return mixture to pot. Stir and cook until bubbly.

I probably should have made the rice.  My friend had two large servings.  While I had only one, there was only enough left for just one more meal the next day (which I ate with rice).  Came out a bit sweet, but nothing a little extra salt couldn't cure.

INTRO

A friend via facebook recommended that I start a food blog because I was constantly posting pictures of the dishes I made.  I replied that I didn’t feel right starting a blog with the recipes I used because I used recipes that anyone could find on the internet.  But everyone got a recipe from someone else, right?  So I shouldn’t feel so ashamed about my thievery, as long as I gave proper credit.  Plus, it would give me something to do in between gaming, watching TV shows/movies, reading books, gchatting, and all-around bumming it.

First, I’ll explain the title of the blog.

Many moons ago, I had a myspace account.  Yes, I know – who DIDN’T have a myspace account?  At the height of my account usage, I was in law school and desperately trying to stay awake in class and also find any sort of distraction from reading the vast amount of cases we were assigned as 1Ls.  So I posted comments, did surveys, made my page look pretty, wrote blogs – whatever it took to keep myself entertained.  One day, I became curious about the Chinese zodiac (and by curious, I mean that I read some article on yahoo about what the Chinese zodiac predicted for the following year – death, famish, impending doom), and I read up on my sign, the pig, on Wikipedia.   Not the most reliable source in the world, but good enough for my purposes.  I read about the various types of pigs according to the Chinese zodiac and decided to focus on the “skinny fat pig type.”  I blogged, “How you can have a skinny-fat type of anything, I’m not sure, but since I’m skinny, I’ll go with this one.”  Thus, the phrase, “skinny fat pig type,” was forever embedded in my brain (I’m sure what should have been embedded were all the precedents established from the cases I was supposed to have read).   I think the phrase is appropriate in this context since I am on the skinny side and I love food.  When my metabolism slows down, I’ll rename the blog and refer to myself as just, “Fat Pig.”

Second, I didn’t start cooking for myself until about 3 years ago, when I finally moved out on my own.  The circumstances about my moving away from my parents are a story that would be better suited for a therapist’s ears, so I’ll refrain.  Once I no longer had the benefit of mom’s cooking, I knew I couldn’t subsist on ramen alone.  Thus began my quest to learn how to cook.   I spent hours watching youtube videos on how to cut vegetables and reading articles on anything food-related.  In the process, I made some tasty dishes, along with a few failures, and saved a lot of money since I didn’t have to buy lunch every day at work.

I’m no gourmet chef, nor am I a foodie.  My purpose isn’t to try to teach people how to cook, but more to satisfy my ego in writing about myself and the things I like – in this case, cooking and eating.  If you don’t mind helping to inflate my ego and enjoy food porn as much as I do, then I welcome your readership.