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Easy Weeknight Dinner

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roast-chicken-2

You know those days when there’s nothing you want more than to just sit on the couch under a blanket in your PJs? Who cares if it’s only 4 or 5:00? You just want to get home and RELAX- Those days used to mean a frozen dinner or carryout were the only options.

Imagine, now, that you could have a delicious home-cooked meal for dinner on those days… without all the time and effort of laboring over the stove. Amazing, right?  This dinner allows you (after a little bit of prep) to change straight into your pajamas and sit on the sofa relaxing while you let dinner cook itself. You just need a couple ingredients, a nice, hot oven, and patience.

Patience to not rip open the oven door when your mouth starts watering from the smell of garlicky roasting chicken. Patience to not start eating everything within reach because the smell makes you so hungry you don’t think you can take any longer. Patience to let the chicken rest to redistribute its juices (that’s the hardest part for me) and cool to a palatable temperature.

I had had originally planned to make mashed potatoes, but it would have interfered with my sitting-around time, so I opted to roast them alongside my chicken instead. Much easier. If you choose to roast a veggie, any vegetable you would use with a regular roast chicken you could use with this. Think “root veggies”- potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, onions, parsnips, etc… You could use broccoli, cauliflower, or other faster-cooking veggies as well. Just add them later in the cooking process.

roasted red skin potatoes

This almost always yields enough leftover chicken to use the next day in another dish. You could always roast additional as well, though, to ensure extra chicken for another dish. (Cook the meat for two dinner in one night, all while sitting on the couch? That’s what I’m talkin’ about…) You can chop or shred the chicken for tacos, pasta, salad, or any other dish that calls for chicken.

how tasty does that look? seriously!?

You’d be amazed how much flavor you get from roasting the breast with bone/skin attached! And while this preparation will yield a skin that is crispy and delicious, you may remove to save yourself the added fat and calories. DO NOT, however,  substitute boneless/skinless chicken breast. Don’t even think about it. Bad idea.

Roast Chicken Breast & Root Vegetables

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  • 2 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts (mine were just under a pound each)
  • 2 large potatoes
  • ½ tsp each: garlic powder, onion powder
  • 1 tsp each: minced fresh rosemary, fresh thyme, and kosher salt
  • Pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 425F. Remove chicken from refrigerator while the oven is preheating to bring it up to room temperature. Mix together the spices, herbs, salt, and pepper in a separate small dish. Wash & dry the potatoes. I have a handy scrubber that does all the hard work for me!

2. Chop potatoes into even wedges and put into a bowl. Drizzle with a little oil (1 – 2 tsp should do) and sprinkle with about 1/3 of the spice mixture.

3. Place chicken breasts on a sheet pan. Drizzle olive oil (again, 1 – 2 tsp) over the chicken breasts and sprinkle with half of the remaining herb mixture.

4. This is the gross part- Rub half of the spices into the top and bottom of the chicken breasts (I use gloves if I have them- I’m weird like that).  Using your fingers, separate the skin from the breast meat. Sprinkle the other half of the spices under the skin of the breasts and rub it in using your fingers.

5. Sprinkle the potatoes (or vegetable of your choosing) around the chicken. Sprinkle one last bit of salt and pepper over everything and place it in the oven.  Go sit down and relax, you’ve had a hard day.

6. After about 30 min take the sheet pan out of the oven & brush some of the chicken juices onto the chicken breasts. Flip the potatoes to brown the other sides. Try to do this quickly—it’s better to take it out of the oven to do so that you don’t lose a lot of heat having the oven door open while you fiddle around with the potatoes. If you’re not so worried about your potatoes browning on all sides, you can just brush the juices onto the chicken skin, or skip this part altogether.

7. Cooking time will vary depending on the size of your chicken breasts. Once the chicken has been cooking a total of about 50-60 minutes, it should be done. If you have a meat thermometer, check that the chicken has reached around 160F. If you don’t, just make sure the skin is browned and the juices run clear. Tent the chicken and let it rest for about 10 minutes to allow the juices to redistribute. Serve with potatoes.

Tips:

*If you ever don’t have one of the seasonings (rosemary, thyme, garlic, etc), using just salt and pepper will still make a fine dinner option!

Welcome to Patisserie Wee

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croissant main

Warning: If you’re looking for Pilsbury “crescents”, turn back now. These are not for you.

This was my first attempt at croissants. Well second, technically. The first recipe I tried- the dough was WAY too stiff, I knew it wasn’t working and that there was no chance it was going to turn out OK – so 4 packets of yeast and 10 cups of flour went into the garbage… Shame on me for not doing my research… Shame on me. After further examination I realized that recipe was drastically different than pretty much EVERY OTHER CROISSANT RECIPE EVER. So, I was lucky enough to have just enough yeast left to try again…

Croissants get a bad rep for being unforgiving, and I’m here to tell you that’s a lie. Since my first dough was a flop, I was left with just shy of enough yeast, only 2/3rds the amount of whole milk needed (so skim was substituted), I also only egg-washed half of the croissants (to see if it’d make a big difference- it didn’t), and I got tired of rolling them, and thought I’d want some big ones (not realizing how big the little ones would end up) so I made 8 GIANT ones from the same amount of dough that makes 12 average size ones.

For the record, when you break your 2-cup measuring cup. Don’t forget about it, and then have to use a gift from your best friend to make up for it…

Next time, I’m going to try fillings/toppings. With these I replicated something J. Alexanders used to serve on the side whenever you ordered a salad: Honey-butter glazed croissants. Which aren’t filled with anything, but came to your table warm, drizzled with a sweet, sticky honey glaze. They don’t serve them anymore, now they give you cold croissants with cold butter as a place-filler on your table. Bastards.

The recipe I attempted to follow can be found on epicurious here.

Below is the recipe I ended up with is below (along with my notes)

Croissants – makes 24 regular or 16 giant

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Useful equipment: Stand mixer w/ dough hook, pizza cutter, pastry brush

  • 1 c whole milk + ½ c skim, warmed to yeast-loving temps (105°F–110°F)
  • 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 tablespoon plus 1/4 teaspoon active dry yeast (or the majority of 2 packets)
  • 3 3/4 c all-purpose flour (plus extra for dusting)
  • 1 Tb kosher salt
  • 3 sticks cold unsalted butter

Making the Dough

  1. In the stand of an electric mixer with a dough hook attachment, mix the milk, sugar, and yeast. Let sit until foamy (appx 5 min). In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and salt, set aside until yeast has foamed, it’ll look something like this…

yay! my yeasts are alive!

2. Add flour/salt mixture to yeast, while mixing on low. (I usually add half, then once incorporated add the rest)

3. Once it comes together into a smooth, slightly sticky mass, shape it into a rectangle about 1 ½ inches thick, wrap tightly in plastic wrap and set in the fridge for about an hour until chilled.

Laminating the dough

4. Once dough is chilled, line up sticks of butter and smash with a rolling pin between two sheets of parchment paper until they are roughly the shape of an 8 x 5 inch rectangle. Wrap and chill, swapping butter for dough in the fridge.

5. Unwrap dough and roll out onto a lightly floured surface, dusting with flour as necessary* into a 16 x 10 in rectangle. Arrange dough w shortest side nearest you, put butter rectangle in the center, and fold like a letter—cover the butter with the bottom 1/3rd of dough first, then with the top. Brush off any excess flour with a pastry brush.

then fold the top over as well

6. Turn dough 90 degrees so new shortest side is near you, then pound with a rolling pin at even intervals, making uniform impressions (this will help the butter to spread). Roll dough again into a 15 x 10 inch rectangle. Brush off any excess flour, and fold in thirds again, stretching the dough as needed to square off the ends—thus forming a 3 layer 10 x 5 inch rectangle.

7. Give yourself a congratulatory pat on the back for doing your (presumably) first ever “fold”, rewrap the dough in plastic wrap, and stick it back in the fridge at least another hour. (I’m not going to lie, I got a little impatient and may not have waited the whole hour… on that same note, I also left the house a while between another fold and it was in for over an hour, and alas the world has not come to an end)

8. Repeat 5 & 6 three more times, creating a total of 4 “folds”. Once you have completed your last fold, rewrap the dough and place in refrigerator for 8 – 18 hours.

When you’re ready to shape the croissants…

9. Remove dough from refrigerator, unwrap and cut in half cross-wise. Re-wrap half of dough and place back in the fridge.

10.  Roll on lightly floured surface into a 16 x 12 inch rectangle, stretching as needed to maintain rectangular shape

11.  Cut in half again cross-wise and place half back into the fridge to chill

12.  Cut the remaining half into thirds, then cut those thirds diagonally into triangles. I stretched my short side to be longer, so that my croissants could look prettier. Not all of them wanted to stretch, though, so just do your best 🙂

13.  Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place appx 2 hours.

Baking your croissants

Some croissant recipes are very intricate, while others are very basic. Being of a curious nature, of course I had to experiment with the complicated directions, then tried the easy way. Both came out fine, so I’ll give you the easy directions

14.  [Optional] Using pastry brush, give your croissants a light egg-wash coating. I did some with egg wash and some without, and they cooked the same either way.

15.  Bake your croissants at 375F  for 15 – 20 minutes until golden brown.

*When you first start rolling, you will think you’re super awesome, not needing any additional flour. “What does it mean, adding flour when needed? I don’t need any flour…” I was even a little worried that I did something wrong because it was rolling out so nicely… Trust me, somewhere around your 3rd “turn” you will understand why you might need that flour…