Cooking Healthy

Not too long ago a friend of mine showed me a cookbook she had from probably about 1950.  The food was pretty much basic Americana, but what really stood out were the cute (and I say this with all the sarcasm I can muster) little "helpful hints for housewives."   Most of them were pretty lame, but one that actually stood out as making sense is having one or two reliable meals for when you have guests over.  Now I obviously wasn't cooking to impress my husband's boss or anything, as I'm very much not married, but I had a friend over for dinner.   I wouldn't say I really have standard meals. I'm good at cooking, and I get creative.  But I took inspiration from the 1950's and made a simple pretty meal that works well for company--Roast Chicken, Grilled Vegetables, and Mashed Sweet potatoes.

First, the chicken. Who doesn't like a nice roast chicken?

Preheat the oven to 450°F. Rinse the chicken, then dry it very well with paper towels, inside and out.

Salt the cavity, then truss the bird. Trussing is not difficult, and if you roast chicken often, it's a good technique to feel comfortable with. There are plenty of good instructions to be found via google. I'm not going to bother. When you truss a bird, the wings and legs stay close to the body; the ends of the drumsticks cover the top of the breast and keep it from drying out.  Trussing helps the chicken to cook evenly, and it also makes for a more beautiful roasted bird.  I was out of twine so I disloacted the wings and tucked them under the chicken, then used a piece of the flappy skin at the end of the bird to tuck the legs into. Creative chicken bondage! 

Now, salt the chicken— I use a lot of salt, but if you aren't a salt fiend like me, or if your blood pressure is high, you can salt it much less.  When it's cooked, you should still be able to make out the salt baked onto the crisp skin.

Place the chicken in an oven proof saute pan or roasting pan and, when the oven is up to temperature, put the chicken in the oven. Leave it alone. You don't need to add butter, baste it, or do anything. Roast it until it's done, 50 to 60 minutes.   Remove chicken from pan and let rest for 15 minutes before serving.  

The beauty of having to do absolutely nothing to the chicken while it roasts for an hour, is it gives you plenty of time to prepare other stuff.  First thing I did was throw together some salads? Why? because that way, If the chicken is being a turkey and taking longer than it needs to, people have something to eat. And when trying to impress the husband's boss, you better not leave him hungry.  I didn't put dressing on the salad till the last possible second, but other than that, they were cooked, done, and out of the way.  And colorful and pretty!

Salads put aside, it was time to start on the sweet potatoes. Initially I was going to grill the potatoes with the veggies, but due to unforseen circumstances (i.e. Kate messed up) I ended up mashing them.  I used white sweet potatoes, skim milk, chicken stock, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg to make things nice and flavorful.  

So first, I cut up the sweet potato, and boiled until just tender.  Next, drained the water out  of the pan, added the mixture of chicken stock, milk, and spices, and put everything on the back burner on low, stirring occasionally, using a fork to mash the potatoes as they continued to cook in the liquid and absorb the chicken stock and spice flavor. Pretty simple. Maybe not the most beautiful side dish, but super tasty and tastes really good with all the nice juices that run out of the chicken. 

Once all the potatoes were done and the chicken was resting, I went ahead and grilled the vegetables.  Being all organized and stuff, I had already cut them into relatively even sized pieces.  You can grill pretty much anything, I just went with what I had on hand that I thought would taste good with chicken.

I grilled up zucchini, yellow bell peppers, onion, and asparagus.

Grilling vegetables, especially when cut this small, goes pretty quickly.    Once the chicken was out, I heated the grill pan till nice and hot, and lightly coated it in pan spray.  You can use regular oil too.  You just want a really nice, light coat of oil so nothing sticks.

It is important not to crowd the pan so I worked in small batches. If you haven't tried grilled asparagus, do so. It is one of the best ways to prepare asparagus that doesn't involve copious amounts of bacon.

So with the veggies grilled, and the chicken all nice and rested, I plated everything up. I used a nice big platter with slightly raised edges, as the chicken was pretty juicy.  First, I put the grilled veggies on the plate, lightly salted them, and drizzled them in good balsamic vinegar, leaving a nice spot in the middle of the plate for the chicken.

Next the chicken went down on the plate.  Sometimes I also put the mashed potato or sweet potato or rice on the plate, but this time I did it on the side.  Ok, I forgot.  But no matter, It was still very good.

And there you have it, Ladies and Gentlemen, a good meal to impress whoever you feel the need to impress. . . Or just to make so that you have leftover chicken to turn into chicken salad or whatever.