Recipes from My Ugly Blue Kitchen: Garlic Roasted Chicken and French Beans

You don't need me to devote an entire paragraph to describe how hectic the dinner hour is in a household with two children under the age of three.  Add to the chaos a husband who gets home from work at 6:30 and then goes on a training run because he is running the New York City Marathon two years after you did and is hellbent on beating your time, and you have yourself a recipe for daily dinner takeout.

But who are you kidding?  You have a mortgage.

Enter quick and dirty recipes that require very little preparation and few ingredients.  Bonus if they're for food your toddler will eat, thus eliminating the extra step of having to heat up chicken nuggets in the toaster oven.

This recipe is adapted from Everyday Food: Great Food Fast From the Kitchen of Martha Stewart Living.  It is one of the first dishes I taught myself to make after I was married, and, four years later, it is still my husband's favorite dinner.  When he limps in from his run and smells the garlic roasting, it puts a smile on his exhausted face.  The best part is this meal requires exactly five ingredients to prepare, not including olive oil, salt, and pepper, which I don't count because I use them in almost everything I cook.

Of course I'm going to get on my soapbox and tell you that yes, the chicken you use matters a great deal in this recipe.  With hardly anything to mask the flavor, you have to use the highest quality poultry available.  It should be raised locally, without hormones and antibiotics.  Bonus points if it's free-range and/or organic.  Believe me, I am no vegan, but I do care about the quality of life my chicken enjoyed before it became my supper.  The brands I like are Murray's or Bell and Evans, or if you're fortunate enough to live near a Stew Leonard's, Stew's Naked Chicken brand.

This is what the chicken looks like going into the oven:

And this is what it looks like when it comes out:

Serve this dish with lots of crusty whole wheat bread (it's one of the five ingredients!) so you have something on which to spread the roasted garlic cloves, which become soft and buttery while roasting.

Garlic Roasted Chicken with French Beans (Feeds 2 adults and 1 toddler)

Ingredients:

1) 1 bone-in, skin-on chicken breast, halved.  (If you can't find chicken breast halves, find a whole chicken breast in the poultry case and have the butcher halve it for you.  This may sound obvious, but I didn't know you could do this until my husband told me so.  I lived a very sheltered existence before I got married.)

2) 2 heads of garlic

3) 4 sprigs of fresh rosemary

4) 1/2 lb. French beans

5) 1 whole wheat baguette

Plus olive oil, salt, pepper

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Slice the tops off two garlic heads (reserve the bottoms) and place them cut sides down on the bottom of a square baking dish.  Place one sprig of fresh rosemary on each garlic top.  Arrange the chicken breast halves over the garlic tops.  Sandwich the two reserved garlic bottoms, cut side up, between the chicken breast halves.  Place the remaining two rosemary sprigs on top of the chicken.  Drizzle the chicken and garlic with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Roast the chicken for a half hour, then turn the garlic bottoms cut side down and rotate the pan.  Continue roasting the chicken for another half hour, or until the skin is brown and the juices run clear. 

While the chicken is roasting, bathe the children. Clean the bathrooms. Do a load of laundry.

About ten minutes before the chicken is done, trim and cook the French beans.

Did you know that when you trim French beans, you're only supposed to cut off one end, leaving on the stringy, elf-shoe looking end?  Well, I didn't, but that's because growing up the beans I ate came out of a can.  Thanks, Ina Garten, for teaching me this important lesson.

The way I cook my beans is I fill a shallow frying pan with about a half inch of water and bring it to a boil over medium heat.  Then I toss all the beans in the pan and allow them to steam for 3-4 minutes.  This method is a bit unorthodox, but I guarantee you will get perfect, crisp-tender beans every time.  

Serve the chicken with the whole garlic bottoms, the pan juices, the French beans, the bread, and a sweet, juicy red wine like Rex Goliath Free Range Red.  It's got a big rooster on the label; you can't miss it!

Enjoy!  Let me know in the comments if you try this recipe and what, if anything, you did to tweak it for your family.

Recipes from My Ugly Blue Kitchen: Super-Delicious Chunky Marinara

With Peanut due to arrive any day (my swollen ankles and stretched maternity tees say the sooner the better), it was time for me to stock the freezer with a homemade favorite.

I am Irish and grew up on store-bought pasta sauce.  My husband is Irish-Italian and also grew up on store-bought pasta sauce.  After we were married and I lost my job as a law clerk, I watched a lot of cooking shows, both at home and- oddly- at the gym, where Food Network seemed to be a favorite channel among those using the treadmills.  During this time I became an enormous Ina Garten fan.  It is Ina who convinced me that making one's own pasta sauce is not only easy, but nutritionally necessary.  Have you ever read the label of a conventional jar of pasta sauce?  I guarantee you that the second ingredient, after tomatoes, is sugar.

There is no sugar in my homemade pasta sauce.  In fact, there are only ten ingredients total. and it is incredibly easy to make.  It is also astoundingly delicious, at least, according to my Irish-Italian husband.  Because I want you, too, to make your own pasta sauce and not consume freakish amounts of sugar, I am sharing my recipe, which I've adapted from several sources, including Ina, below.

CMC's Super-Delicious Chunky Marinara

Ingredients per batch (one batch serves approximately four hungry Irish-Italians):

2 tbsp olive oil (I like Colavita)
1 yellow onion
6 cloves of garlic
1/2 cup merlot or other robust red wine
1 can San Marzano whole peeled tomatoes
4 tsp tomato paste
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1 handful fresh basil leaves
Salt to taste

Directions:

Step 1: Dice the onion.  Or, better yet, if husband is around have him do it, so you don't have to touch up your eye makeup later.  Saute diced onion and salt in 2 tbsp olive oil in a Dutch oven over low heat until translucent, about 8 minutes.

Note: Don't worry about over-salting.  I took a cooking class once and the instructor declared that it is impossible for Americans to over-salt while cooking because our natural inclination to limit our salt-intake preventst us from using too much salt before it becomes a problem.

Step 2:  As the onion is sauteing, mince the garlic.  Of course you could use minced garlic in a jar, but why would you?  In my opinion, fresh garlic is worth the extra bit of effort, especially if you have a good chef's knife.  We use six cloves per batch, but we are garlic fanatics.  Adjust to your preference.

Step 3: Add the garlic to the softened onion, stir with a wooden spoon, and allow to cook for about sixty seconds, until garlic is fragrant.

Step 4: Turn up heat to medium-high, Add 1/2 cup of merlot, and cook until most of the wine has evaporated.

Step 5: Add whole peeled tomatoes and juices.  Crush each individual tomato with your hand before adding it to the pot.  You may want to wear an apron for this step!

Note, this recipe specifically calls for San Marzano tomatoes- the best on the market.  I've tried other brands, including Scalfani and Cento, and there is no comparison.  This sauce calls for so few and simple ingredients, t's important that they're high quality.

Step 6:  Add the tomato paste, stir, and bring sauce to a boil.  Lower the flame to medium-low.

Step 7: Add the herbs.  I use another dash of salt, 1/2 tsp of oregano, 1/4 tsp of red pepper flakes, and about eight leaves of fresh Basil.  You can buy fresh packaged basil leaves at any grocery store, or, if your husband enjoys gardening as much as mine does, you can convince him to plant about twenty basil plants in your vegetable garden so you never run out.  Just make sure you rinse the leaves well before adding them to your sauce!

Step 8: Allow sauce to simmer on stove for forty minutes, until thick and saucy.

Step 9: Jar it!  Assuming you have leftovers (or you've made four batches, as I did), you'll need air-tight mason jars to freeze for later.  Santa brought me these mason jars last Christmas because Santa really likes my pasta sauce.

(Don't worry, Santa also brought me the J.Crew leopard flats and Fair Isle sweater I was pining for.)

The finished product!  Ready for post-baby consumption with my favorite portobello mushroom ravioli (which I buy at the Fairway.  I haven't ventured into pasta making just yet).