Month: March 2007

Roasted Mashed Potatoes, and another Roasted Chicken

Roasted Mashed Potatoes

I had been thinking all weekend about why mashed potatoes are always made with boiled potatoes. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone cooking the potatoes in another way, so of course, I had to give it a go. How would they turn out if the potatoes were roasted, instead of boiled? What about roasted with a chicken, so the mashed potatoes would have all the chicken juices mixed in? Well, now I can definitively tell you, they are awesome.

I, once again, tried to find a new way to roast the chicken: I decided this time to rub it with a gremolata, a mix of parsley, lemon zest, and garlic. I suppose the only thing that makes this different from past chickens is the addition of parsley, but it turned out well. I have been having some problems lately getting the chicken cooked all the way through. I suspect I need to buy an actual roasting pan. The pan I’ve been using is much too small, and with potatoes thrown in the bottom, the chicken is mostly raised above the sides of the pan. I’ve heard that the higher sides of a roating pan help poultry cook all the way through by refracting heat or something like that, so my too-small pan might be the problem.

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Failed Meatball Bolognese

Turkey Bolognese

So far, Giada and I are 0-2 as far as the Everyday Italian recipes go. I have not yet relayed my ricotta cakes story here, but the problem I had with her turkey meatball recipe was similar, and I was left feeling sorely disappointed. And meatball-less. Yes, the bolognese-like sauce that resulted was delicious, but it was not meatballs.

I’ll be honest and say that I only half followed her arancini recipe to make ricotta cakes, so the failure could very well have been mine. But the meatballs? I followed Giada’s lead to the letter. And instead of cooking up into beautiful bites of meaty goodness, they fell apart completely in the pan. It was useless trying to cajole them into retaining their round shape. Completely useless. They were determined to become bolognese. What went wrong, Giada? What went wrong?

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Mozzarella Olive Bread

Mozzarella Olive Bread

I have been having dreams about baking bread for a week, and yesterday I finally had some time to do it. I wanted to try something different, something inspired by one of my new cookbooks, Margaux Sky’s Beautiful Breads and Fabulous Fillings. This cookbook, though…this cookbook I have some problems with. Every single recipe calls for Lowry’s Lemon Pepper. And for some kind of crazy complicated sauce. Everything looks beautiful, but when I sit down and read the recipes, I realize I don’t want to go to all the trouble. I suspect that this book will serve mostly as inspiration, which is exactly what it did yesterday. I didn’t even end up using her basic bread recipe, because it called for all kinds of stuff, like half and half, that I just didn’t have in the house. Simple is my bread-making motto.

Instead, I tried another new bread recipe: Jamie Oliver’s. I couldn’t find the recipe on his website, but it was published in The Return of the Naked Chef (which was the first grown-up cookbook I bought). Reading through the recipe, my first thought was it seemed to require a lot of yeast. A lot. But as a novice bread maker, I went ahead and followed directions. I added a lot of yeast. And I ended up with monstrously large bread. I actually shouted out when I opened the oven door and realized it had expanded to three times its size!

I also ended up with some pretty delicious bread. The crust is near perfect. The cheese formed a lovely ribbon of melty salty goodness straight through the middle. The olives did decide to take a trip down and out through the sides of the bread, but the olive taste suffused the rest of the loaf, and when you do get the occasional meaty kalamata bite, it’s a bit heavenly. I will definitely be making this bread again, though I might cut back on the yeast a bit. Or a lot.

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