Rosemary Roast Chicken and Vegetables

Another recipe from Emiril Lagasse. I bought this book at Half Price Books a few years ago. I thought, hey, it’s cheap! And it has turned out to be our only can’t-fail cookbook. This is my go-to when I’m not trying to be a vegetarian.

Anyway, tonight I made rosemary roast chicken and vegetables. This is a very basic recipe. In other words, you don’t need a celebrity chef to tell you how to do this.

Get a chicken, put some garlic cloves and rosemary under the skin above the breast, put a quarter cup each of chopped onion, celery, and carrots inside the cavity along with a couple of bay leaves, rub a tablespoon of olive oil on the bird, lay on some salt and pepper, put it in a roasting pan on a bed of carrots, celery, potatoes, quartered onions, and maybe other stuff, with a cup of water and another dose of salt and pepper. Roast at 400 degrees for 45 minutes, and 350 for another hour.

We had gotten some root vegetables in our Local Box that we didn’t recognize. They’re the size and shape of radishes, but they’re white. I figured we should throw them in with the veggies and see what they’re like. They were awesome, like a cross between carrots and potatoes. My Google search suggests that these may be turnips! Anyway, a perfect wintery vegetable for a chicken roast.

Dinner in a Huff

Tonight I was in a lousy mood, but I was determined to at least cook something so the day wouldn’t be a complete loss. I made burgers. I am zeroing in on a pretty good formula, which goes something like this:

• into two pounds of ground beef mash:
• an egg
• a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce
• a teaspoon of onion powder
• a teaspoon of garlic powder
• a teaspoon of Emeril’s southwest seasoning

I make six generous patties and sprinkle some salt and pepper on ‘em for good measure.

We also had a glorious salad from our Local Box, augmented by an organic red bell pepper from California we paid two fucking dollars for. Didn’t I say I was in a bad mood?

A Few Nights Ago

It’s hard to keep track, but on Tuesday night I grilled up some of our Bastrop Cattle Company grass-fed local (round) steaks. I also wanted to get rid of some new potatoes and a big ass pile of collard greens. I mashed the potatoes with salt, pepper, and buttermilk and stewed the collards in the Kashmiri fashion, which involves asafetida, chiles, cumin, coriander, and turmeric. The collard greens were more bitter than I would like, and the meat was a little tough (in the near future I want to get the Grassfed Gourmet cookbook). But boy, was this meal local!

We were on our way out the door to see The Business of Being Born so we probably spent about ten minutes eating dinner. Now we know what it’s like to be Graham.

Local produce

Tuesday is Greenling day, and our local box arrived brimming with sexy greens, grapefruits, oranges, carrots, and potatoes aplenty.


Here, Graham shows off what real carrots, grown by real farmers, look like.


Baby gourmand Dean tries some mustard greens:


I've also updated the post below with a picture of the fish tacos we ate last week.