A Good Team

Not to brag or anything, but I've been incredibly lucky enough to find a completely awesome boyfriend who loves to cook (and eat!) as much as I do. At least one or two evenings a week, we get together and make a dinner that can range from a tomatillo and chicken soup to a potato and chickpea curry. Recipes usually start with the random ingredients we have on hand, and then cookbooks and websites are scoured for inspiration and ideas. Sometimes, however, a simple meat well seasoned and grilled is really all we need, and we recently made what we both agreed was "the best" chicken dinner we've made to date.

Roast chicken is one of those dishes that can be pure, juicy heaven when done well, or a tasteless, dry hell if not. The chicken above (and below), was definitely the former.

This particular (whole) chicken was purchased at Whole Foods, split in half, and brined for several hours. Then, with some help from the awesome, spice-geniuses at Penzey's, The Grillmaster covered the two halves with the Chili3000 and Northwoods Fire seasoning blends. (HIGHLY recommend the Northwoods Fire--it's good on everything!) I missed the details of the grilling, but I do know that Mr. Chicken was grilled over a pan of moist wood chips--you can see them below--for about 25 or 30 minutes.

While man was tending to the fire and animal carcass (yum!), woman was attending to roasted green beans, tossed in a Ziploc with about 6 cloves of chopped garlic, some sea salt, fresh ground pepper, and halved cherry tomatoes. Roast on some foil in the oven at about 475 degrees, tossing once or twice to get good browning. Done.

But....since I'm a wicked multi-tasker (and I have more fruit right now than I know what to do with), I also made two personal-size yellow plum and blueberry crisps.

As I've mentioned before, I love the concept of "rustic" desserts, and crisps are right up there in the ridiculously easy category. Just chop up fruit of your choice (in this case, yellow plums and blueberries), toss with some sugar and flour (less sugar=more tart, more sugar=more sweet), dump into the baking container of your choice and top with a mixture of flour, oats, chopped nuts, brown sugar, spices and softened butter.

For the crisp, you're looking for a sandy/chunky consistency, definitely not of a uniform smoothness. For the pear crisp, I added cinnamon and nutmeg to the crisp mixture, as well as the smallest bit of chopped, fresh rosemary. The rosemary didn't really come through, so next time I think I'll use a bit more. Bake at 350 for 20 or until the fruit is bubbling and the crisp is golden brown and voila!

(If you have a little whipped cream or ice cream on hand, that might be a nice addition, too...)

Oh yeah, that French Rose in the top picture--a 2007 Cotes du Rhone Heritages--made an excellent contribution to the feast. It was dry, not a sweet rose (I guess that would be called a white zinfandel!), and paired really nicely with the spicy seasoning on the chicken. Definitely a good summer wine.