Recipe: Roast Chicken Sunday Night Dinner and Leftover Chicken Soup

Despite our best efforts, we don’t make a really amazing dish every night. Sometimes we are tired after work, and do cheese toast or a quick mess of veggies, or a quesadilla. However, today I spent most of the afternoon cooking. It was relaxing – I listened to The Cure’s “Staring at the Sea” album, which I haven’t heard in ages. It takes me right back to high school.

Recipes Below:

• Salsa
• Roast Chicken with Veggies
• “Leftover Chicken Soup”

For an appetizer for Luis, I made fresh salsa from a recipe hijacked from my ex-mother in law, who was from Guadalajara

Aim’s Ex-Mother-In-Law’s Salsa
3-4 cloves garlic, minced and smashed to a paste with sea salt.
3 serrano peppers, minced
2 red jalapenos, minced
1/2 small onion, diced
Combine ingredients, and add:
squeeze of lime over the top
freshly ground seal salt – eyeball this. You want a few turns of the grinder.
Allow ingredients to sit together in a bowl while you chop tomatoes.
3 roma tomatoes, chopped
handful of small cherry or grape tomatoes, chopped
Gently stir all ingredients together, and sprinkle a pinch of cumin on top.
Serve with chips.

While he had some chips and salsa with a bottle of beer, I started the chicken.

Roast Chicken
1 whole raw chicken, innards removed
1 large bunch basil, divided
3-4 garlic cloves, minced
3-4 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed lightly with flat side of a knife
1 sprig rosemary
1 small bunch thyme
1/2 onion, roughly chopped
3-4 stalks celery, chopped into 3″ long pieces
3-4 carrots, chopped as the celery
olive oil
leftover bottle of white wine or mead

Clean the chicken, and remove the innards. Discard, or save to make gravy as you prefer. I discard.
Loosen the skin all over the chicken by sliding your hands between the skin and the meat, front and back (don’t forget the legs!)
Place chicken in a 9×13 or 10×15 glass baking dish
WASH YOUR HANDS WELL.
roughly chop thyme and basil and mix them with the minced garlic
drizzle olive oil over chicken. Rub in.
Pick up herbs in handfuls and slide under chicken’s skin. Use hands to rub the herbs all over the chicken under the skin. Don’t forget the legs or the back. When finished, hands will be messy with herbs and oil. Wipe them off on the outside of the chicken’s skin.
WASH YOUR HANDS WELL.
stuff chicken with part of the onion and the whole garlic cloves. Shove in a few whole basil leaves and a sprig of rosemary.
place celery and carrots around the chicken in the dish, along with any remaining onion or garlic.
place in 425* oven for approximately 30 minutes.
WASH YOUR HANDS WELL.

After the chicken has cooked about 25 minutes prepare the vegetables. You will need:
3 carrots, cut into bite-sized pieces
1 small bag new potatoes – cut the bigger ones in half or quarters as necessary to make potatoes all similar size.

Take chicken out of the oven, and use slotted spoon to transfer all the original surrounding vegetables to a crock pot or slow cooker.
Baste chicken with wine.
Add potatoes and carrots around the bird, tossing them with the oil/drippings
Return bird to oven for another half hour.

Add 2 or so cups of hot water to the crock pot, and a sprig of rosemary. Add other herbs as desired.
Start on slow simmer. We’ll use this to start the soup base, later adding the chicken’s bones.

When bird is about 5 minutes from done, ladle about 1/2 cup of the soup starter into a saucepan. Add a tablespoon of butter and bring to a boil. Add half a bag of flash-frozen high quality green beans (or fresh if it’s the right time of year and you can find them!!) Cook beans quickly, no more than 5 minutes, until cooked but still slightly crunchy. Sprinkle with sea salt and set aside.

Remove bird from oven and ensure its doneness with a thermometer or visually – there should be no pink in the meat and edges should be nicely browned. Carve chicken and plate up with vegetables.

When done eating, carve rest of meat from chicken and set aside. Toss carcass and any drippings into soup you started, and leave to simmer overnight.
The next day, make your soup.

Leftover Chicken Soup
1. Strain all solids out of the broth by pouring through a strainer or cheesecloth into a large pot.
Add freshly-chopped carrots and celery, as well as some of the reserved chicken meat.
Add a few drops sesame oil, and herbs and spices to taste.

2. Alternately, strain all solids from broth, add 3-4 cans of beans (I like white kidney aka cannelini beans, black beans, pinquitos, kidney beans, whatever else is in the cupboard)
Pan-sear and then add 2 links chicken chorizo, chopped into bite sized pieces. You can use tofurkey sausages or bratwurst if you prefer. Simmer and add herbs and spices to taste.