Week 3, Day 5 - Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

Once or twice a month we order food from a farm in Pennsylvania.  Organic meat, eggs and raw milk.  But I'm not here to get into the raw milk discussion, I'm here to talk about the chicken.  Same as in the store, the chicken is cheaper when purchased whole.  Typically I pop these guys into my crockpot with some seasoning and call it a day.  But there's no crockpot chicken in the Smitten Kitchen.  There is, however, whole roasted chicken.  It was beautifully seasoned and browned - delicious without doubt.  I will say, though, that for efforts sake, I'll probably return to the crockpot next time around.  However, I'm switching to fresh herbs - huge difference.

The time spent on the chicken was all forgotten though when I tasted the bread salad.  I had great expectations for this dish - a stuffing (er, dressing for my southern friends)-like mixture on top of a bed of greens with a vinaigrette and chicken drippings dressing.  Are you drooling yet?

After the little one went to bed, I brought my older son into the kitchen to help me make cookies.  Earlier I had browned some butter into a brown nutty liquid and popped it into the fridge to resolidify, so all we had left was to finish off the basic final steps in making cookies I've been eyeing up for over a year.  Brown. Butter. Brown. Sugar. Shorties.  Five simple words that were meant to be together.  I want so badly to say that these cookies panned out just as the bread salad did, meeting every high expectation I had set for it, but it just wasn't the case.  I could not get the dough to be doughy - I was left with sand.  If I were one for expletives, I may have pulled a Lily here.  But here's where Deb's honesty pulls through.  You see, I'm not the first to have issues with the recipe, so Deb put a warning right up front that the recipe has failed some.  I knew going into it that it was a possibility.  After pulling a couple baker's tricks, I managed to salvage the batch and though they look nothing like Deb's cookies, they're brown butter scrumptious.

In the morning I whipped up a cream cheese pound cake and some mixed berry coulis to bring to playdate.  It was flawless.

Finally this evening I used the leftover chicken (as one is usually two meals, plus broth) to make chicken tacos and salsa fresca.  Nothing new in this household, but enjoyed none the less.  Even without cheese, which is nearly criminal in my tacos, these were wonderful.  So much so, it never even occurred to grab my camera.  Luckily, I think I can safely assume you all know what a taco looks like.

1/18
- Zuni Cafe's Roasted Chicken and Bread Salad
- Brown Butter Brown Sugar Shorties

1/19
- Cream Cheese Pound Cake and Strawberry Coulis
- Chicken Tacos and Salsa Fresca