Good Eats Challenge Week 4: Roast Chicken and Cesar Salad

Since I am worn out from the back yard I thought I'd catch up on my blogging and finally get around to posting last Friday's Good Eats Challenge (you can read the back story to this here). This week is week 4 and we decided to make two recipes this week: Caesar Salad (Season 1 Episode 4) and the Roast Chicken (1.5). 

In the spirit of following his recipes to the tee we went all out on this one and even made croutons (apparently that is what makes french cooks look down on us, our penchant for buying pre-made croutons). 

They are pretty easy:

Cut up a loaf of day old bread, bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes (until the bread is nice and dry) and then fry them in a pan with 3 cloves of garlic, 1/2 tsp salt and 8 tbs of EVOO (that's extra virgin olive oil for those of you who aren't Rachael Ray fans). 

Now, put the croutons aside and let's focus on the chicken.

Step 1: Butterfly a 3-4 pound chicken. You'll need a good pair of shears for this as you will basically be taking out the backbone. I suggest watching this YouTube video if you've never done it before (or just watch the show, he shows you how to as well).

Step 2: Loosen the skin by sliding your finger between the skin and the meat. You don't want to pull it off, just get it loose.

Step 3: Make your gremolata (we used the mortar and pestle because that is what he used). Corsely grid 1 1/2 tsp black peppercorns, 3 medium cloves of garlic, 1/2 tsp of kosher salt, zest of one lemon, and 1 tsp chopped parsley with 2 tbs olive oil. Like so

Step 4: place one spoonful of the mixture in between the skin and meat of both breasts and thighs. Just work in around with your fingers so that it gets spread out a bit. Sprinkle the skin and underside with a little more salt and oil.

Step 5: Place chicken breast side up on a bead of 1 onion, 3 carrots, and 1 celery heart. Like so

See my toasty croutons in the back? Yum!

Step 6: (we deviated from this) Position top rack of oven 8 inches under the broiler and crank it to high. Broil 25 min on each side or until meat registers 160F. Since our oven is gas and has an under oven broiler we just roasted at 425 for 25 minutes on each side.

Step 7: Remove chicken and let rest covered in foil. Straddle pan over two burners and turn them on medium high. Deglaze pan with 1 cup red wine and 1 cup chicken stock. Remove veggies and toss. Reduce liquid to 1 cup. Like so

Step 8: Serve chicken as half or quarters with Jus on the side.

Since we are adding the Cesar Salad I made this while Daniel made the jus.

Cesar Salad: (Warning: this has under cooked eggs in it so be mindful if you are immune compromised or young to either stick to pasteurized eggs or bottled dressing)

Step 1: Bring 2 cups of water to boil and toss in 2 eggs for 1 minute. Remove and place in an ice bath to cool. Now you have your coddled eggs.

Step 2: Assemble your ingredients to make table side.

You will need

• 1 pound cut and washed romaine hearts
• 1/2 lemon
• 1/2 tsp Worcestershire sauce'
• 4 oz Parmesan cheese
• Olive oil
• Black pepper
• Salt
• Coddled eggs
• Croutons

Basically the next step is to toss it all together to build your dressing. It was fun doing it this way and it really coated the lettuce well. 

Step 3:  Just follow the steps tossing each until the lettuce is completely coated. Toss in 2 tbs olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss with another 2 tbs of oil, then add the lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce tossing away, break in your eggs and keep tossing until a creamy dressing forms. Lastly toss in Parmesan and croutons and serve.

Results? Amazing! Definitely the best chicken and Cesar salad I've ever had. The dressing was subtle and smooth and the chicken was deliciously flavorful. I'm filing this in the will make again file. The nice thing is that the chicken recipe can be tweaked for any flavors you want. Putting the seasoning under the skin ensures that it wont burn and will seep into the meat just a little bit more.

I'm calling it a success! Join me next week for Ice Cream!
Cheers!

Slow Progress

It feels like the back yard is creeping along at a snails pace (honestly I can't work more than 4 hours on it at a time before wanting to die so it is understandable). Lucky for me Daniel had a slow day at work and put in a few hours of digging and post holing.

Now it looks like this

Yeah, doesn't look like much to me either. It didn't help that Daniel decided the plan didn't "make sense" to him and stared at it for about 45 min. Which was probably good because our new terracing marks will be a lot less work. (yay for being married to an engineer!) Looks like this project will be a long time coming so hopefully you aren't holding your breath. I'll just keep working in 4 hour chunks and let you know when I'm done. 

Cheers!

Privacy Please!

Hope you all had a good weekend. We stayed pretty busy all weekend even though very little got done on our main project, the yard. Saturday Chocolopolis, the chocolate shop I help out in, was having a guest chocolatier come and do a private chocolate and beer tasting. I can never miss out on a opportunity to meet someone in the world of chocolate and this did not disappoint. If you haven't tried Christopher Elbow chocolates you are missing out. Chris is a world class chocolatier and he makes some of the best chocolates I have ever tasted. Definitely worth missing out on yard work for (like I needed an excuse!). We used the rest of the afternoon to put in the first two fence posts and finish leveling out the first terrace. Sunday it poured on and off so we got a little done but not much... One thing we did manage to complete this weekend is a little privacy issue that has come up between our house and the one next door.

I love hanging out in our library because it gets great light and, well, all my books are there but it does have one flaw. A serious lack of privacy. Especially now that the house next to us is for sale. People are traipsing past at all hours of the day. So, while we were getting the lumber for the back yard we picked up some rolls of reed screening. You know, this stuff (at Lowes)

It took our privacy issue from this

To this

It still wasn't private enough for Daniel so we added a second layer (picture taken much later in the day)

Since no one is living next door we popped over to the other side of the fence and checked to make sure it was giving us adequate screening. Perfection!

We liked it so much we lined the whole side yard (only one layer for the rest of the way). Just look at the difference!

Before

After

Much nicer! (Can you see the change from my sunny Saturday to my rainy Sunday?) It still needs to be weeded out and cleaned up but I'm letting it all go while we deal with the back yard since it is creating such a mess. We used five rolls total for about 23$ a roll (each roll is about 15 feet long). Coming in just over 100$ it is a nice easy upgrade. There is already an old wire fence between the two yards so we just wired it on to that. In a year or so we'll probably spring for a real fence but until then (or until whomever buys the house next to us puts in a new fence themselves) we are very happy with how it looks.

I'm hoping to get some work in on the yard today but between the weather and my tired self it may be slow. Luckily there is lot's to occupy myself with during down times (like dreaming about my upcoming birthday present aka the closet makeover I've been promised).  Anyone else have fun project they are dreaming about?

Cheers!

I've Finally Done It!

I've updated the House Tour page! Now you can get a better over all feeling for how things have changed in the last two months.

So Much Time, So Little to Do...

Wait. Scratch that, reverse it. I have way too many things that I want to do. You might might have noticed I've been doing a lot of little projects lately (like the button monogram, button billy balls, and spray painting my side table) in between work on the back yard. There are just so many fun projects I want to work on but the bigger things have been getting in the way. I decided I needed to make it official and make a list.

I started to type out the whole list but decided you'll just have to wait and see what I come up with. If you'd like a sneak peak check out my Pinterest To Make page. Here are a few at the top of my list.

A terrarium 

Closet storage

Sunburst mirror

Shabby flower pillow

Scrap colorways pillow

and a Lacquered side table

Just to name a few. 

Every time I read a blog or get on Pinterest I add a few more to my list but there is nothing wrong with that. Just wait until the holidays, my head just might explode from all the craftiness. Joy!

The lumber is here so we are going to try to knock the backyard out this weekend. Fingers crossed people!

Cheers!

Sprucing Up

Since I'm still waiting for the lumber needed to finish the back porch (and let's face it, I'm tired) I thought I'd tick a few more things off my to-do list (more on that later).

Ever since I did my final porch reveal I've been wanting to change one little thing. Do you see it?

That side table. I love the brown wicker chairs but the tan table was too much. Wood on wood on wood. So, I changed it! Don't you love paint? I'm starting to see what all the fuss is about.

It went from this

To this

Using this-Rust-oleum's Wildflower blue.

Doesn't it just look so much brighter and friendlier out there now?

Before

 and After (don't mind the sun the angle was all wrong for the shot)

Look how pretty it is! I love the bright blue with the sunflowers next to the darker chair.

It certainly made my day. Now I can sit out on my beautiful porch and enjoy the cool summer breeze as Seattle has become quite warm (say 72, I know, but that's hot for us). Not that this makes me want to go back to digging but I'm excited to get the yard done. It is hard working on it only on weekends (Daniel may work from home but he still has to work) so it feels like my momentum for the project waxes and wanes but it will be so nice to have a back yard that we can use.

Who I'm sharing with:
Savvy Southern Style and Wow us Wednesday
Miss Mustard Seed and Furniture Friday
The Shabby Nest and Frugal Friday
Just a Girl and Show and Share Friday
Serenity Now and Metamorphosis Monday

Button Monogram

I got this fun DIY from Myra at My Blessed Life. I pinned the project ages ago (remember here) and finally got around to it yesterday while taking a break from the yard. We've gotten a little further but are waiting for the lumber so for now it hasn't progressed much past this state.

You can read Myra's whole tutorial here but I'll give you the basic rundown.

Start by printing out the letter you want to have on an 8X10 piece of card stock. I used Bookman Old Style in size 500 (sorry for the bad picture the camera didn't like focusing on the paper).

Start by out buttons around your perimeter like so.

Don't worry about the gaps in the middle but try to cover all the lines as much as you can. It really helped me lay out all the buttons first before beginning to glue so that I knew I had the spacing right (though I ended up with one leftover button when I was done, it was like putting together Ikea shelves).  Then just keep adding buttons until you like how it looks. This is definitely an easy project to go overboard on so when in doubt, you're probably done.

Next just pop it into a mirror (without glass otherwise you will need a shadowbox frame) and enjoy.

See how fun the textures of all the different buttons are? I tried to put my favorite pretty ones near the top so I could see them. I also made sure to find places for those cute heart buttons. I love getting close to it and looking at all the different ones.

As to framing, I used a spare frame I had laying around for when I get to making my gallery wall. I've been collecting nice wood picture frames from the thrift store that have interesting designs to flesh out my gallery. I plan to just spray paint them all black to match. It's a great way to add some texture to a gallery wall and not have everything looking too flat and Ikea-ie. I'm still in the market for some more frames but they are piling up downstairs.

Until I get the wall up this little gem is up on my mantle so I can enjoy it. It looks great next to my button billy balls.

Now I can finally clean up all the piles of buttons on the dining room table and pretend my house is clean again. I've still got plenty of buttons left and have many more plans for them.

For now it is nice to have a break from the yard and catch up on the Norman dust bunnies that are multiplying in corners. Funny how that happens...**sigh** such is life.

Cheers!