(no subject)
~~AN ILLUSTRATIVE TALE~~
On the doors¹ to our respective bedrooms my roommate and I each have a sticky-backed rectangle of blackboard material, 11 by 17 inches or so in dimension. These (along with a box of chalk and a set of handcuffs) constituted my gift to said roommate on the recent occasion of her birthday. Limitless entertainment! On the cheap!
Right now, thissugarcane's blackboard bears a selection of trenchant comments relating to her graduate research. Phrases like "irrevocable deletion and loss in online spaces" and "unreliable narrators" appear.
My blackboard reads, in lime-green chalk, across its entirety:
LOL
ANTHONY
STEWART
HEAD
--
You guys: I have a date on Saturday night, AND IT IS NEITHER 1. WITH A 19-YEAR-OLD NOR 2. AN ACCIDENT. I -- when was the last time I could say that? Oh man, let's not even go there. (At least I'm having my period, so I still know it's not like the universe actually likes me, or anything.)
--
On Wednesday I improvised a hella good roast chicken (recipe follows, for those who like that sort of thing) for ~dinner guests~ and only broke one wineglass, spilled things on two different pairs of jeans, and tore one shelf out of my bedroom wall. I do not think the last three are directly related to the first, but further study should probably be undertaken. Caveat lector.
OBTAIN
Pour one can of the cider into a small saucepan; add the garlic (separated into cloves, but left in their skins), some roughly-chunked peeled ginger, and the stems from the bunch of sage (reserve the leaves). If you have a bottle of dry vermouth hanging around, add a good slug of that too. If you don't, go out and buy one, for Christ's sake! It keeps forever on the shelf and is a heck of a lot more convenient than opening a bottle of white wine every time you need half a cup to make risotto. (What do you mean, that's not a problem you encounter in your daily lives?) Also, you can make martinis. Duh. I like Noilly Prat.
Uh. Where was I? Yeah. Heat that shit over medium. It'll start to bubble, the alcohol will cook off, whatever; turn it down to low and let it simmer for a while. This is where I took a shower, but you can get on with the next part if you're already clean.
Preheat your oven to 425 F, or thereabouts? Our oven blows, I never really have any idea how much hotter it runs than what it says on the dial, I just turn it about 25 degrees cooler than called for and stuff still gets burnt. Whatever. Throw the lemon into the saucepan so it heats up a bit and imparts a little lemony goodness, but not too much.
Git yr roasting tin out. Cut off the big green parts of the leeks and the gross bit with the roots. Slice on the diagonal, about half a centimetre thick; there should be enough to sort of loosely cover the bottom of the pan in a single layer. Slice your pears into roughly uniform wedges (with big pears this'll mean eighths, for smaller ones quarters). If any of them are on the crisp side (like the Boscs were, for me) add those to the pan now, interspersed with the leeks. Otherwise put the pear wedges to the side for now and get your chicken in the pan. Rub it all over, inside and outside, with olive oil, then salt and pepper. Turn it breast side up and carefully separate the skin from the meat without tearing it; shove some of those sage leaves up between the meat and the skin, both sides of the middle. Strew a few more around the tin, with the leeks and pears, for good measure.
Strain the saucepan business into a measuring cup; pick out all the debris from the colander (yeah, it's hot; suck it up, bitches) and put the garlic, sage stems and maybe one chunk of the ginger in the chicken's cavity. Then do that Jamie Oliver thing where you take the hot lemon and stab it all over with a knife so it hisses and steams and juice comes out, and then shove it in the chicken real quick so all the steam and juice goes in the chicken, which is sorta the point.
Flip the chicken back so it's breast-side down on top of the leeks and pears and sage; roast it for about 30 minutes, then baste with a little of the reduced cider mixture. Another 20 minutes, baste again, then turn the oven down to 400, flip the chicken over so that the breast side is up (note: flipping over a greased and smoking-hot chicken: NOT THE WORLD'S EASIEST TASK. Just try not to tear the skin any, like I did), and scatter the rest of the pears around. Roast another 45 min - 1 hr, until you poke it in the thick part of the thigh with your meat thermometer (what do you mean you don't have one?), and it reads 180 F, or until the leg pulls away easily and juices run clear. Baste maybe one more time during this period, but reserve at least a little of the juice and return it to the saucepan (esp. if you didn't buy that second can of cider like I told you to) -- you're going to want it as the basis for your gravy.
When the chicken's done, let it rest for about ten minutes. This is the part where I poked around at the yams in the oven and started shouting orders at people re: peeling potatoes, but really you should already have your potatoes peeled, cut and boiling away; we had a Potato Incident, is all I'ma say about this one. If you don't have yams and aren't making mashed potatoes, uh, pour yourself a glass of wine? Or start cleaning up, I mean, that's probably a good idea too.
Anyway, let the chicken rest for a bit, then get your roommate to transfer it and most of the pears/leeks etc. to a serving platter. Then get her to hold the roasting pan so the drippings and stuff go into the saucepan with the cider, where you're making your gravy. (SPOILER ALERT: I have not the faintest clue how to make gravy. This is the second time in my life that I've done it, and both times were in the last month. So you maybe shouldn't listen to me? But on the other hand, I apparently make some pretty fine gravy.) Scrape some of the sticky caramellized bits of pear and leek off the bottom of the pan, but don't bother doing the whole thorough deglazing thing, bc our stove is small and the roasting pan unwieldy. So there. You probably still won't have a whole lot of liquid, so this is where I added another third of a can of cider and another few slugs of vermouth; again, heat over medium, stir continuously. If you have a half-full carton of coffee cream in your fridge which you bought three weeks ago with the intention of making a bread pudding that never materialized, this would be a good place to use up a splash of that cream (the rest can go in the mashed potatoes). Eventually it'll start to reduce, but probably not enough for it to be looking much like gravy; this is where you cheat, and mix a couple of teaspoons of flour with the same amount of water, stirring with a fork to make sure you're not getting lumpy disgusting gravy, and judiciously add bits of the flour mixture until the whole business begins to thicken. It'll look kind of chunky bc of the veg and stuff from the pan; that's no problem, because we're about to put this sucker in the food processor. If you seriously don't have one of those, like, what is your damage? You can get a crappy food processor for $7 at Wal-Mart. But I suppose you could just strain out the chunky bits, too. Return to a measuring cup, because you are too Classy Rustic and Authentic to own a gravy boat, or indeed more than one vessel which has any kind of pouring spout. By this time the yams and asparagus will be done, someone will have carved the chicken, and Min will be sticking her fingers into the mashed potatoes and then licking them clean, so it's probably about time you sat your ass down and ate.
_____________
¹ For loose values of 'door', okay? Shut up.
On the doors¹ to our respective bedrooms my roommate and I each have a sticky-backed rectangle of blackboard material, 11 by 17 inches or so in dimension. These (along with a box of chalk and a set of handcuffs) constituted my gift to said roommate on the recent occasion of her birthday. Limitless entertainment! On the cheap!
Right now, thissugarcane's blackboard bears a selection of trenchant comments relating to her graduate research. Phrases like "irrevocable deletion and loss in online spaces" and "unreliable narrators" appear.
My blackboard reads, in lime-green chalk, across its entirety:
LOL
ANTHONY
STEWART
HEAD
--
You guys: I have a date on Saturday night, AND IT IS NEITHER 1. WITH A 19-YEAR-OLD NOR 2. AN ACCIDENT. I -- when was the last time I could say that? Oh man, let's not even go there. (At least I'm having my period, so I still know it's not like the universe actually likes me, or anything.)
--
On Wednesday I improvised a hella good roast chicken (recipe follows, for those who like that sort of thing) for ~dinner guests~ and only broke one wineglass, spilled things on two different pairs of jeans, and tore one shelf out of my bedroom wall. I do not think the last three are directly related to the first, but further study should probably be undertaken. Caveat lector.
OBTAIN
- 2 decent-sized leeks
- 1 lemon
- 1 head of garlic
- 1 chunk of fresh ginger (about the size of your two thumbs put together, say; I didn't buy this expressly for the recipe so much as see it lying around in the fridge and decide to throw it in)
- 1 bunch of fresh sage
- 6 pears (I used two each of the brown Bosc ones, the squat Asian ones, and another kind whose name I don't know; they were diminutive and sort of blush-skinned and I chose them because they were pretty, ngl. I probably wouldn't do this with, like, Bartlet pears, though -- if it's green or crisp it probably isn't meant for this dish)
- 2 cans of pear cider (the LCBO stocks something called "Sir Perry", which was remarkably good. Not gonna lie, the second can is mostly for drinking)
- a chicken, stupid
Pour one can of the cider into a small saucepan; add the garlic (separated into cloves, but left in their skins), some roughly-chunked peeled ginger, and the stems from the bunch of sage (reserve the leaves). If you have a bottle of dry vermouth hanging around, add a good slug of that too. If you don't, go out and buy one, for Christ's sake! It keeps forever on the shelf and is a heck of a lot more convenient than opening a bottle of white wine every time you need half a cup to make risotto. (What do you mean, that's not a problem you encounter in your daily lives?) Also, you can make martinis. Duh. I like Noilly Prat.
Uh. Where was I? Yeah. Heat that shit over medium. It'll start to bubble, the alcohol will cook off, whatever; turn it down to low and let it simmer for a while. This is where I took a shower, but you can get on with the next part if you're already clean.
Preheat your oven to 425 F, or thereabouts? Our oven blows, I never really have any idea how much hotter it runs than what it says on the dial, I just turn it about 25 degrees cooler than called for and stuff still gets burnt. Whatever. Throw the lemon into the saucepan so it heats up a bit and imparts a little lemony goodness, but not too much.
Git yr roasting tin out. Cut off the big green parts of the leeks and the gross bit with the roots. Slice on the diagonal, about half a centimetre thick; there should be enough to sort of loosely cover the bottom of the pan in a single layer. Slice your pears into roughly uniform wedges (with big pears this'll mean eighths, for smaller ones quarters). If any of them are on the crisp side (like the Boscs were, for me) add those to the pan now, interspersed with the leeks. Otherwise put the pear wedges to the side for now and get your chicken in the pan. Rub it all over, inside and outside, with olive oil, then salt and pepper. Turn it breast side up and carefully separate the skin from the meat without tearing it; shove some of those sage leaves up between the meat and the skin, both sides of the middle. Strew a few more around the tin, with the leeks and pears, for good measure.
Strain the saucepan business into a measuring cup; pick out all the debris from the colander (yeah, it's hot; suck it up, bitches) and put the garlic, sage stems and maybe one chunk of the ginger in the chicken's cavity. Then do that Jamie Oliver thing where you take the hot lemon and stab it all over with a knife so it hisses and steams and juice comes out, and then shove it in the chicken real quick so all the steam and juice goes in the chicken, which is sorta the point.
Flip the chicken back so it's breast-side down on top of the leeks and pears and sage; roast it for about 30 minutes, then baste with a little of the reduced cider mixture. Another 20 minutes, baste again, then turn the oven down to 400, flip the chicken over so that the breast side is up (note: flipping over a greased and smoking-hot chicken: NOT THE WORLD'S EASIEST TASK. Just try not to tear the skin any, like I did), and scatter the rest of the pears around. Roast another 45 min - 1 hr, until you poke it in the thick part of the thigh with your meat thermometer (what do you mean you don't have one?), and it reads 180 F, or until the leg pulls away easily and juices run clear. Baste maybe one more time during this period, but reserve at least a little of the juice and return it to the saucepan (esp. if you didn't buy that second can of cider like I told you to) -- you're going to want it as the basis for your gravy.
When the chicken's done, let it rest for about ten minutes. This is the part where I poked around at the yams in the oven and started shouting orders at people re: peeling potatoes, but really you should already have your potatoes peeled, cut and boiling away; we had a Potato Incident, is all I'ma say about this one. If you don't have yams and aren't making mashed potatoes, uh, pour yourself a glass of wine? Or start cleaning up, I mean, that's probably a good idea too.
Anyway, let the chicken rest for a bit, then get your roommate to transfer it and most of the pears/leeks etc. to a serving platter. Then get her to hold the roasting pan so the drippings and stuff go into the saucepan with the cider, where you're making your gravy. (SPOILER ALERT: I have not the faintest clue how to make gravy. This is the second time in my life that I've done it, and both times were in the last month. So you maybe shouldn't listen to me? But on the other hand, I apparently make some pretty fine gravy.) Scrape some of the sticky caramellized bits of pear and leek off the bottom of the pan, but don't bother doing the whole thorough deglazing thing, bc our stove is small and the roasting pan unwieldy. So there. You probably still won't have a whole lot of liquid, so this is where I added another third of a can of cider and another few slugs of vermouth; again, heat over medium, stir continuously. If you have a half-full carton of coffee cream in your fridge which you bought three weeks ago with the intention of making a bread pudding that never materialized, this would be a good place to use up a splash of that cream (the rest can go in the mashed potatoes). Eventually it'll start to reduce, but probably not enough for it to be looking much like gravy; this is where you cheat, and mix a couple of teaspoons of flour with the same amount of water, stirring with a fork to make sure you're not getting lumpy disgusting gravy, and judiciously add bits of the flour mixture until the whole business begins to thicken. It'll look kind of chunky bc of the veg and stuff from the pan; that's no problem, because we're about to put this sucker in the food processor. If you seriously don't have one of those, like, what is your damage? You can get a crappy food processor for $7 at Wal-Mart. But I suppose you could just strain out the chunky bits, too. Return to a measuring cup, because you are too Classy Rustic and Authentic to own a gravy boat, or indeed more than one vessel which has any kind of pouring spout. By this time the yams and asparagus will be done, someone will have carved the chicken, and Min will be sticking her fingers into the mashed potatoes and then licking them clean, so it's probably about time you sat your ass down and ate.
_____________
¹ For loose values of 'door', okay? Shut up.