Citrus Roasted Chicken

One of my favorite pieces of cookware is the All-Clad Ultimate Chicken Roaster from Williams-Sonoma. This pan has a liquid well in the arm that holds the chicken up that you can fill with beer, wine, stock or anything else you dream up. It also allows your vegetables to brown while still coating them in the wonderful chicken drippings.

For this recipe, marinate the chicken for 24 hours in a dry brine then rinse, pat dry and rub the skin with olive oil. Fill the well on the roasting arm with white wine and place the chicken on the arm, breast side down. (I prefer breast side down for more moist breast, if you prefer crispy skin, place the chicken breast side up.) Then fill the cavity of the chicken with slices from half a lemon and one whole orange. Using kitchen twine, tie the legs together. Toss potatoes, baby turnips, garlic cloves, and onion in olive oil, salt and pepper and place the pan under the chicken. Insert a probe thermometer into the thickest part of the breast and roast in a 425 degree oven until the thermometer reads ~160 degrees. Let the chicken rest 10 minutes before cutting. Top the vegetables with fresh parsley before serving. Any root or sturdy vegetable can be used in this recipe, just make sure the vegetables in ~1" pieces to allow for even cooking.

Chamomile simple syrup

I pondered all week on what to do with the bunch of chamomile that was going to be in my Saturday delivery from Abundant Harvest Organics. I was uninspired after searching the web and asking around so I decided to make a simple syrup out of it. The possibilities are endless for this syrup. It has such a nice floral sweetness and I can't wait to brush it on stone fruits before grilling. It also makes a great sweetener for lemonade so I decided to make a lemon martini out of it. See the recipes below.

Chamomile Simple Syrup

3/4 cup of water
1 1/2 cups of sugar
squeeze of lemon
one bunch of fresh chamomile flowers (approx. 2 tbsp)

To make the syrup, bring water, sugar and lemon to a simmer over medium heat, stirring occasionally until the sugar is dissolved. Once the mixture is clear, remove from the heat and stir in the chamomile flowers and let steep for 15 minutes. Strain, let cool, then store the mixture in refrigerator for up to a month.

Chamomile Lemon Martini
Yield = one 6 oz. martini

3 oz. Grey Goose Vodka
1 oz. Lemoncello
3/4 oz. Chamomile Simple Syrup
1 1/4 oz. fresh squeezed lemon juice

Combine ingredients in a shaker. Strain into a sugar rimmed martini glass, garnish with lemon rind and serve.

Tri-tip with sauteed greens & mashed potatoes

We love meat and potatoes and there's no meat that says "California" like tri-tip. I, like most people from the east coast, had never heard of it until I moved to California. It's a triangle-shaped cut of beef from the bottom of the sirloin that weighs 1.5 - 3 pounds and cooks great on the grill. For this one, we marinated it for 3 hours in cumin, grill seasoning, onion powder, garlic, red wine vinegar, hot sauce and a little A1, then grilled it until medium rare. I served it with a bunch swiss chard that I sauteed in 2 tbsp of garlic infused olive oil and yukon gold potatoes that I mashed with half and half, horseradish and butter. The plate was garnished with a few spring onion tops.

The best sandwich bread...ever...

I love bread and when it comes to bread, no one does it better than King Arthur Flour. I signed up for their eNewsletter several months ago and one of them referenced Walter Sands bread. Walter Sands was the owner and president of King Arthur Flour from 1943 to 1968. He created the bread recipe and made it every week. I decided to give it a shot a few weeks ago and haven't turned back to store bought bread since. You can find the recipe for a 9" loaf in their baking banter blog. I replace 1/4 cup of the all-purpose flour with 1/4 cup of potato flour to keep the loaf moist and kneed it using my kitchen aid mixer. I highly recommend the bowl scraper mentioned in the blog too!

Abundant Harvest Organics

I've always been intrigued by blogs, but never felt I had anything to blog about until I signed up for Abundant Harvest Organics. AHO is a alliance of small family farmers in Central California that grow organic fruits and vegetables that are boxed and delivered each Saturday morning. The boxes vary from week to week depending on what's in season. I think AHO is fantastic for so many reasons. It's fresh (field to table in 48 hours), it's organic, it's local, it requires the recipients of the boxes to try new foods and eat more fruits and vegetables. For cooks like myself, it provides an inspiration to build meals around. We've signed up for the small box, which feeds 1-2 people for the week.

It's almost like Christmas each Saturday since you never really know what you're going to find when you open the box. This week was our first pick-up and we opened our box to find Red Sails lettuce, Swiss chard, chamomile, spring onions, broccoli, baby turnips, fava beans, potatoes, Valencia oranges and mandarin oranges. Stay tuned to find out what I do with it all. I've never had baby turnips and these sugar snap peas are huge so it should be fun.

The beginning...

I've been cooking as long as I remember. I think it all began with cookies when I was around 8 years old, moved into truffles when I was 12 and all the way to my first turkey and Thanksgiving meal at 14. Not surprising since I grew up in the southwestern part of Virginia, food was always an important part of family gatherings and was one of the ways my family showed love. That's where I developed my love for food and cooking. That love only grew when I got to college in 1999 and discovered the Food Network. I expanded from the traditional dishes of my family to international and modern dishes. Wolfgang Puck was one of the first chefs I watched, hence the blog title. I'm very excited to document my cooking adventures and hope they might inspire others to try something different in the kitchen!