Last night we had my web designer (AKA my best friend Cam who I pay in chicken dinners) and my friend Brynne over to share a roast chicken dinner with us. The spring theme of the dinner was the spring onion which was used in both the chicken and the potatoes. With a few minor exceptions I would call the meal a success.

The biggest problem was that although I meant to start cooking at 5:45 and get the chicken in the oven by 6:00 Cam and I got behind schedule and nothing got started until closer to 7:00. We had decided to meet at my place right after work and go for a quick jog before he started making improvements to the site and I started dinner.

Here’s what actually happened from my perspective: I got off work a little late, then I had to stop for gas because I was way below the little E, it took me longer than usual at the gas station because there’s a leaking gasket somewhere in my engine that’s spewing oil everywhere and would cost $800 to fix so I have to check my oil all the time now, then I stopped at the store to buy celery and carrot (I know I said I was going to be better about the grocery thing, but at least this was the only trip to the store the whole night), when I got home it was 5:45 and I was expecting Cam to be waiting for me, irate that I was more than half an hour late, instead he still wasn’t here either.

So in reality it was 6:30 when I popped the chicken out of the fridge and started preheating the oven. Roast chicken is the simplest thing in the world to cook if you have a little time. Your average 4lb bird takes about an hour to cook, although I prefer to use a meat thermometer rather than the guess and check method involved in simply using a set amount of time in the oven. The bad boy I had purchased was 4 ½lbs so I was guesstimating 70 minutes in the oven plus 10 minutes to sit before we carved him up.

I don’t believe in using bread stuffing in birds. Using stuffing slows the cooking time and seems to both leech flavor and moisture from the bird while at the same time resulting in drier stuffing than you’d get from the stove top. When I stuff poultry for roasting I use veggies that will lightly impart flavor on the meat while leaving the cooking time the same. In this case I used the green tops of 8 spring onions, 1 carrot cut in half, and two sticks of celery. If I have fresh herbs I’ll often use them as well, but this time I kept it very basic to emphasize (hopefully) the light, subtle flavor of the spring onions.

Half an hour of gossiping and wine drinking later I was ready flip the bird and start on the potatoes. I used tongs to flip the bird breast side up and then inserted a meat thermometer’s probe into the thickest part of the breast. Then I based the bird with a slice of butter and closed the oven to let it get on with cooking.

The potatoes were another invented-for-this-evening recipe. I made them with more of the spring onions from the farmer’s market.

You may be wondering just how many bunches of spring onions I purchased seeing as how I have mentioned them in almost every recipe. Here’s the deal: the spring onions I got at the farmer’s market are not the sissy spring onions that I’m used to seeing year-round at the grocery store. These spring onions were over a foot long each and as thick as my thumb. The one bundle I got, which cost me a dollar, had fifteen onions and probably weighted half a pound.

 

Anyhow, I added a couple of tablespoons of olive oil to a pan and heated the oil to medium-low. I then sautéed the onion until they were translucent and then added the yellow potatoes. I added the yellow potatoes first because they are slightly tougher and less mealy than the purple potatoes and probably take more time to cook, and also because I was hoping that if they were already a little cooked when I added the purple potatoes that they might stay yellow instead of getting stained. My plan worked and after a few minutes when I added the purple potatoes the yellow ones stayed resolutely yellow.

I allowed the potatoes to cook in a covered skillet for about 15 minutes until the meat thermometer for my chicken read 150 degrees. The chicken should cook to 170 degrees if the thermometer is inserted into the breast, 165 in the thigh. The trick is that the closer to done the bird gets the faster the temperature rises. At least, it seems that way, I suppose I could be wrong. Anyways, it was time to start the kale.

My recipe for kale is one with mysterious origins. I thought I stole the recipe from my mother, one Christmas I realized that she thinks she got the recipe from me. Where did it come from? Nobody knows. In any case, it’s the simplest recipe ever and very tasty.

The four of us, Nick, Brynne, Cam, and I ate our dinner at 8:00 rather than 7:00, but it was just as good if not a little more so because we were so hungry by then. We drank a bland but crisp Sauvignon Blanc with the chicken and it went very well. The spring onion was so delicate that we needed a very light wine to go with it or the flavors would have been over powered. The only think I would have changed about the meal would be the kale. As much as I love the recipe, it just didn’t go with such a lightly seasoned meal. We should have had a fresh salad or something instead.

The recipes for all three dishes can be found in my new recipe database (hooray!) sometime after I get off work today and have time to put them there. And if you do go to the database and get some recipes from it please think of my friend Cam when you do. He worked through his hunger to set that up last night while I cooked our late meal.