A Delicious Amish Recipe

Last week I tried this recipe from a book called "New Recipes from Quilt Country" by Marcia Adams. I don't actually have her book, I got the recipe out of "Food and Wine Magazine's Best of the Best" 1998 edition. But now I'm tempted to try to find her book because this recipe was so delicious and for what it is, very easy!

The recipe is as follows and the photos at the end are how mine turned out. By the way, I was cooking for 10 people so I doubled the recipe. The parentheses are my comments.

1 free-range roasting chicken, approx. 4 lbs

2 handfuls fresh thyme (the recipe says optional but I can't imagine not using it!)

1 large onion, cut into chunks

4 red-skinned pootatoes, 2 inches in diameter, sliced 3/4 inch thick (I wasn't this specific, I just used as many potatoes as I thought my family would eat and cut them thin enough to cook as fast as the chicken.)

6 cloves garlic, skin on

1/2 cup or one stick butter

1 cup chicken stock or canned broth

1/2 lemon, seeded

Salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Rinse and clean the chicken well and pat dry with a paper towel. Place the chicken breast side up in a shallow 15 by 12 inch greased pan.

Seperate the skin from the breast meat with your fingers and insert a liberal amount of thyme between the two. Place another handful of thyme inside the cavity.

Scatter the onion chunks, potato slices, and garlic cloves around the chicken.

In a messuring cup, heat the butter and chicken stock together in the microwave; pour over the chicken and vegetables.

Squeeze the lemon half over the chicken and place the lemon in the cavity of the chicken along with the thyme.

Add salt and pepper to the chicken and vegetales to taste.

Bake the chicken for 30 minutes , then turn it over, back side up, and baste with the pan juices. Lower the heat to 350 degrees and bake the chicken 20-30 minutes longer, basting occasionally, or until a meat thermometer inserted into the thigh registers 180 degrees and the potatoes are tender.

Remove the chicken from the oven and, keeping it covered, allow it to rest for 10 minutes. Carve and serve with the vegetables and pan juices. (I think that I ended up cooking it a little longer than this to get it browned to my liking.)

The Closest I've Come to Cuinary School

My sisters, Everly and Fairlight, accompanied me to a cooking class held here in our town a few weeks ago. We had so much fun! None of us had ever been to a cooking class and this was a really good first experience. It was put on by Taste of Home Cooking School which is a company that travels around the country and teaches cooking classes based on dishes that they feature in one of their magazines. We learned about several yummy-sounding dishes that we hope to try in the near future. We also just had a lot of fun hanging out together for the evening and strolling through all of the vendors that were there. We even got our make up done at the Celebrity Spa and Boutique booth! We got goodie bags that had several magazines with lots of new recipes to try along with a few other fun trinkets. Lots of fun!

La Riviera and why we like Madden's even more..

Donavon and I went to La RIviera this past weekend while he was here for a visit. We were both very excited about it after reading over the menu online, something we do frequently. We went for dinner and so I'm not sure how an experience at lunch would differ from the one we had. I had heard that it was also a bakery.. but that was hard to believe with the way it was set up for the evening. Maybe we'll go back earlier in the day sometime. Anyway, I got a grilled pork chop and Donavon got seared duck breast. My pork was kind of tough and though a few bites were very flavorful, the entire thing was not. The duck breast was interesting, but I had never tried duck before. It was not my favorite but I could see the appeal, were I more used it, I probably would have enjoyed it more. We got an appetizer of French Onion Soup which was really, really yummy. It was very creamy, which made it unique, but very good. The atmosphere was a little different than we expected.. very formal and quiet. No music! A little music would have made it feel less stuffy and like you could actually visit at a normal sound level. We, of course, still enjoyed ourselves. But it was not our favorite. For the price, the food was not that great. At least not the food that we ordered, anyway. And the atmosphere, though nice, was not incredibly enjoyable. I will point out that our waitress was very nice and friendly. We will probably not become regulars there....
But Madden's on the other hand is doing a very good job encouraging us in that direction! We haven't had a chance to go back but we will definitely do so. We have now recieved two $10 gift certificates from them! One, because the first time we tried to eat there, there was no room. And the second because we filled out a comment card while we were there and they sent it to us in the mail! Thank you Madden's for the exceptional service!