the best roast chicken (again)

There are a lot of ways to roast a chicken, and this is my favorite. It's easy, fast, and every single time I've made it it has come out perfect. I posted about it before, a few years ago, and it's still my go-to chicken recipe.

The best roast chicken
From Thomas Keller on epicurious. 


1 chicken, 3-4 lbs (pick a good one, no added hormones or any of that junk)
salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 450. Yes, 450, very hot. Dry off your chicken as much as you can, then sprinkle inside and out with salt and pepper. Truss your chicken, or tie it up tight (check out this link to learn how). Place the chicken in a cast iron pan or other dark, oven proof pan, and cook for about an hour. I cooked mine about an hour and 5 minutes. You'll know it's done when the juices run clear and if you twist a drumstick it feels loose. Let it sit for 15 minutes, then cut up and serve. Thomas Keller recommends slathering the chicken with butter and dipping it in good mustard after it's cooked, but I think it's fine as is.

Manicotti, or lasagna rolls with vegetables

A while ago I saw a recipe for baked manicotti in Cooks Illustrated. The idea was that instead of trying to stuff slippery manicotti noodles, you soak some lasagna noodles and roll them up with filling. That way you don't have to struggle with messy filling of slippery noodles, but still have pretty much the same thing. I thought I'd try it, after getting a comment on my Facebook page asking for a manicotti recipe.

It worked out well, except I forgot that gluten free lasagna noodles are so skinny. Ideally I would have rolled these into long tubes, but the noodles are so skinny that would have been more trouble than it was worth. Instead I rolled these up into fat little rolls, so they're more like rolled up lasagna and less like manicotti. It's got the same flavors, and idea as manicotti, so this is the best I can do without making my own noodles (a project for another time) or buying gluten free manicotti noodles (do those even exist?).

See? Lasagna roll ups. Oh and the best part! I snuck in a bunch of vegetables. Not that I have picky kids or anything, but I haven't been eating enough vegetables (does anyone?) so I added frozen spinach to the cheese filling and shredded carrots to the tomato sauce. Sneaky!

Manicotti, or lasagna rolls
This makes about a dozen rolls, I only baked the six pictured above and froze the rest. When it's time to eat those ones, I will probably stick them straight from the freezer into the oven and bake about an hour or so. 


1 box gluten free lasagna noodles (I used these)
1 28oz can of tomato puree
3/4 t salt
1 t chili flakes
1 t sugar
6 cloves garlic, minced and divided
2 T chopped basil divided
2 T tomato paste
1 16oz container of ricotta cheese (Maplebrook is my FAVORITE)
1/4 c grated Parm cheese, plus more for topping
1 bag frozen spinach, thawed and drained well
2 eggs
1/2 t paprika
1/2 t dried oregano
salt and pepper to taste
6 carrots, peeled and grated

Set a kettle of water to boil and lay the lasagna noodles in a baking dish. When the water comes to a boil, pour it over the noodles, poking them once in a while with a knife to keep them from sticking. Preheat the oven to 350. Combine the tomatoes, salt, chili flakes, sugar, half of the garlic, half of the basil, and tomato paste in a pan and bring to a simmer. Cook until everything else is done. Combine the rest of the garlic and basil, ricotta cheese, parm, spinach, eggs, paprika, and oregano. Add salt and pepper to taste. Check to see if the noodles are softened yet. This might take 15-20 minutes, but be patient. When the noodles are soft enough to roll without breaking them, drain them and rinse them with cold water. Dry them off as best you can with paper towels. Add the carrots to the tomato sauce, then spread enough of the sauce on the bottom of a baking dish to cover it.

Now it's time to roll the noodles! One noodle at a time, spread the filling on 3/4 of each noodle, leaving one end without filling. Roll them up, starting with the side with the filling, and place each noodle roll end side down in the tomato sauce. Repeat with all the noodles. Don't go too crazy with the filling, you just need a thin layer on each noodle, you don't want it to ooze out the sides as you're rolling. Once you've rolled all the noodles, spread tomato sauce all over the top, then sprinkle with cheese. Cover and bake 30 minutes.
Serve with garlic bread and salad, if you have it.

Chicken with olives and things and feta

When we were on Croatia that one time, I didn't like olives. What a bummer! There were olives everywhere and I bet they were so delicious. Now I just eat them off the olive bar. Oh well.
Anyway, this is one of the easiest dinners you can make. Chop up some things, put some chicken on top, and 45 minutes late you have dinner. Yum! Serve with some garlic bread or over pasta or rice or just eat it like this, out of a bowl, like we do because I keep forgetting to make something to go with it.

Chicken with olives and things and feta


2 bone-in chicken breasts
a cup or so of olive bar things, like pitted olives, roasted tomatoes, artichoke hearts, etc
an onion, roughly chopped
a head of garlic, peeled and one clove minced/mashed
a crown of broccoli*
some dried herbs (I used basil, oregano, chili flakes, and rosemary)
some olive oil
a chunk of good feta
*optional other vegetables cut into bite size pieces - carrots, potato, green beans, Brussels sprouts, tomatoes, etc


Preheat the oven to 425. Chop up your olive bar stuff, and toss together those things with onions, garlic (except the one mashed clove), broccoli and whatever vegetables you have around. Mash together the herbs you're using (eyeball it, I used about 1/2 t of each) with the remaining garlic and a little olive oil, about a tablespoon. Smear this all over the chicken, set on top of the veggies, and bake 35-45 minutes. It's done when you poke the chicken with a fork and the juices run clear. When the chicken is done, crumble the feta over the top and serve.

Teriyaki tempeh

Do you eat tempeh? Me neither. But now I'm going to. I bought some tempeh on a whim today and decided to cook it and eat it for dinner. Alex was sad, then he was happy. It turned out that this is delicious. Tempeh doesn't taste like much, but is firm and holds sauce well. 

Tempeh is full of protein, and a little easier to digest than tofu, I hear. The kind I bought had some veggies snuck into it, carrots and peppers. Look how healthy, I am, ma! I served this over brown rice with some kale on the side. Then Alex ate a bunch of gross kim chee. I don't like kim chee. 

Teriyaki tempeh
This is the same sauce I used for sesame tofu a while ago - next time I would double the sauce. 


1 pack of tempeh, about 8 oz
1 T oil

1/4 c honey (or brown sugar if you're vegan)

1/4 c soy sauce (gf)

1/4 c rice vinegar

1 chopped up hot chili, or 1/2 t chili flakes

2 T sesame oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

3/4" piece of ginger, skinned and grated

Cut up the tempeh into thin strips, then cut in half. Heat up the oil in a large pan, and toss in the tempeh. Cook about ten minutes, flipping each slice after a few minutes when the first side is browned. Stir together the sauce ingredients, and pour over the tempeh. Continue cooking for about 5 minutes, until the sauce is thickened. Serve over brown rice. 

Polenta lasagna

I love polenta. The instant kind, that you make in a few minutes but it still kind of tastes like you stirred it for half an hour. I also love lasagna, kale, mushrooms, and ragu. Here, I have combined my favorite things (minus cheese and chocolate) to make a delicious dinner.

Polenta lasagna


1 package instant polenta (mine was about 9 oz, you need to make about 4 cups prepared)
1 big bunch kale
1/2 lb mushrooms, sliced
1 t olive oil
1/2 t pepper
3 c ragu* (or plain old tomato sauce, to make this vegan)

Prepare the polenta according to the directions on the package. Line a cookie sheet with a large piece of foil, and grease lightly. Once the polenta is cooked, spread it thinly in the foil lined pan and let cool completely. When the polenta is cooled, tear the kale into little pieces and steam quickly. Set aside, and cook your mushroom slices in the olive oil with the pepper. Pick out the dish you're cooking your lasagna in, and spread a thin layer of ragu over the bottom. Cut the polenta into quarters, and lay one slice on the ragu in the pan. Spoon another scoop of ragu onto the polenta base, then spread half the kale over, then add another polenta. Next add more ragu, half the mushrooms and the rest of the kale, and another polenta piece. Add another scoop of ragu, then the rest of the mushrooms, and the last piece of polenta. Spread ragu over the top, dump however much you have left around the edges of the lasagna, and then cover with foil. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for about half an hour.

*For ragu recipes, check here or here. If you are vegan or veg, skip the meat and use those little French lentils instead. I love those. Or tofu, I guess, if you're into that kind of thing.

summer rolls and peanut dipping sauce

Hi, sorry for all the Asian food but it's so delicious. You understand, right? These are one of my favorite foods, but we don't have them that often because you know, I'm lazy.

Summer rolls
Really, you can fill these with whatever you want. Vegetables, leftover sliced steak, chicken, whatever. 

a package of shitake mushrooms

1 t sesame oil

a package of spring roll wrappers (I buy these, at Whole Foods)
bean thread noodles (also called cellophane noodles*, my sister Dana calls them jellyfish noodles)
2 carrots, peeled and shredded
a big handful of cilantro
2 scallions, chopped
a few handfuls of cooked shrimp
1 T finely diced chili pepper

Slice up the shitakes and cook them for about 5 minutes in the sesame oil. Bring a kettle of water to boil, then pour over the bean thread noodles. Swirl the noodles around until they're soft, drain, then run under cool water. Use scissors to cut the noodles to manageable chunks, if you need to. Assemble all your ingredients. Fill a shallow, wide bowl with warm water, making sure it's large enough for your spring roll wrappers. One at a time, float a wrapper in the water until it softens, then place on your work surface. Place a bit of each component in the center of the wrapper, then fold up like a burrito (sorry, I was too involved to take action shots. Internet how-to here), then fold the edges in, pull tight, and roll over the top. Set aside and start over, repeating until all your fillings are gone. Serve with peanut sauce, below.

Peanut sauce
adapted from Epicurious


1/2 c peanut butter
1 t minced garlic
1 t minced ginger
2 T lime juice
2 T gf soy sauce
1 T brown sugar
1 t hot sauce, or more to taste
1/3 c milk/soy milk/coconut milk/etc

Dump everything in the blender, and puree until smooth. If you want it to be warm, stick it in the microwave for 15 seconds or so.
*I love how on the Wikipedia article they make a point of saying 'cellophane is not an ingredient'

Bok Choy

Happy 1/11/11!! That's a lot of 1s.

This is also from that Cooking from Above Asian book, but I switched some things up a little bit. Namely, I chopped up the bok choy and tossed it in the sauce instead of drizzling it over the top. This is super good, super easy, and pretty healthy.

Bok Choy
From Cooking from Above Asian

1 T sesame seeds
3 bunches bok choy
2 T gf oyster sauce (I used Lee Kum Kee)
1 t sesame oil

Toast the sesame seeds for a minute or two in a hot pan. Quarter the bok choy and jam it into the steamer basket, cover. Steam 3-5 minutes in your wok over simmering water. Stir together the oyster sauce and sesame oil. Chop up the bok choy (I guess you could do this before cooking) and toss with the sauce.

Steamed ginger tofu

For Christmas last year my sister Dana got me this great cookbook called Cooking from Above - Asian and this is from that. The photographs in the book are so beautiful, and the recipes are so simple. This will clear your sinuses if you have a cold, it's very gingery.

Steamed ginger tofu
From Cooking from Above - Asian


1 box silken tofu
1 T minced ginger
2 T Chinese cooking wine
2 T gf soy sauce
1 t sugar
2 scallions, sliced
1/2 a chili, deseeded and diced

Cut the tofu into 6 cubes (I would cut it into more, smaller cubes next time). Place on a plate that will fit into your steamer basket, and plop the ginger onto the cubes of tofu. Combine the wine, soy sauce and sugar in a small bowl, and pour half over the tofu. Steam the tofu for 10 minutes in your steamer, then serve warm with the rest of the sauce, the scallions, and the chilis. We served this over rice.

Spoon roast

Hi there, yellow-y unedited photo from a film camera! Sorry you don't look as good as say, the pictures of waffles from yesterday, but you do your best. We're still learning, after all. Who cares, though, you can see how perfect and buttery looking this meat looks, and how thin the dreaded 'grey edge' is on the piece in the back (ignore the front piece, that was an end piece). I'd never heard of spoon roast until they were just on super duper sale at Whole Foods recently, so Alex and I splurged and got a big one. We split it in half, and roasted both halves in the same way a few days apart. It's so good. Very tender, super easy to cook, as long as you like rare or medium rare meat. Our pieces weren't super fatty, super flavorful, and beefy. Yum.
Spoon roast is a top sirloin roast, or top butt. Apparently it is so tender you could eat it with a spoon, which sounds about right.

Spoon roast, the easiest way possible
Another customer told me how to cook this roast in this way while I was buying ours, so I didn't invent this, just passing it on. 


1 spoon roast, make sure you know how much it weighs
salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 500, and rub your meat all over with salt and pepper. Cook the meat for 5 minutes a pound for rare, 6-8 for medium rare. Turn off the oven, set a timer for 2 hours, and go do something else. After two hours, take your meat out, slice it, and it's done. Magic!

However! If you have a gas oven that's full of holes and spaces for hot air to get out, you may need to cook your meat for another 15-20 minutes at 400 to get it to not be as rare as you'd like.

Roasted lamb shoulder with vegetables

I saw this recipe in Saveur, I'm not totally sure what month. I'm always looking for good ways to cook cheap cuts of meat, and lamb shoulder is fairly inexpensive and there just don't seem to be a lot of recipes that call for it. This is super easy, and real good.

Roasted lamb shoulder with vegetables
From Saveur, scaled down for two and with some other changes. You can use whatever vegetables you have on hand, I would have liked some carrots in there. 


about a pound of lamb shoulder
salt and pepper
two handfuls of green beans, trimmed
a head of garlic, peeled and smashed
two onions, roughly chopped
1 pint grape tomatoes, sliced in half
2 medium zucchini, halved and sliced
two handfuls of mushrooms, sliced
2 T olive oil


Preheat oven to 325. Sprinkle salt and pepper on the lamb and set aside. Toss the vegetables with the olive oil, and spread in the pan. Snuggle the meat down into the vegetables, cover, and bake an hour. Remove the foil, and continue cooking until the lamb is tender, about another hour. Serve over polenta or rice or as is.