Well, that Christmas Eve didn’t exactly go smoothly.
There was the no-water problem (see paper plates, above). And then there was a little issue with the chicken. As in, I put it in around 5:15 to be done for a 7PM-ish dinner…and then at 6:45 checked on it and saw that it was a little…
…raw.
See, I have to light our stove manually, which means I have to turn the knob to low and then more or less stick my head into a gas-filled oven with a lit match in order to cook anything. And that means that every so often (like on Saturday) I forget, in my relief at having lived to light the stove another day, to turn the heat up to whatever it’s supposed to be set at.
But I’m always telling people who say to me that they can’t cook to try roasting a chicken, and this is exactly why: you just cannot screw the thing up. I mean, I really tried hard with this one: I basically blew gentle kisses at it for two hours, then allowed the oven to rise 250 degrees with the little guy still sitting in it, and then crossed my fingers and wished on a star…and about an hour later, it emerged from the oven quite delicious. And while I fancied mine up with chopped prosciutto, lemon zest, and thyme, you really can just rub some olive oil and salt on it before roasting, and it’ll be awesome.
So even if you’re one of those who swears up and down that they’re a disaster in the kitchen, know that it doesn’t get much more disastrous than the disaster I created on Christmas Eve, and give roast chicken a try.
Click here for Variations On A Chicken.
