I don’t know if there is anything more delectable than the perfect roast chicken. It’s not only comfort food at its very best, but there is something of a bit of mystery about the proper preparation of this simple, elegant dish. Many people find it difficult to transform a piece of poultry into something moist, succulent and flavorful. They either overcook or undercook the bird. The former resulting in something more akin to shoe leather than luscous, the latter resulting in a safety hazard and the need for take-out.

Roasting the perfect bird really only requires a bit of know how and the proper tools. I don’t recommend that a novice cook try to tell when the bird is done by wiggling the leg joint. It takes years of practice to perfect this skill, and even though I have known how to tell if a chicken is done by using that method for over a decade, I still prefer to use a probe thermometer, it takes the guesswork out of it.

A properly cooked chicken should be cooked to 165 degrees Fahrenheit, or 74 degrees Centigrade. I pull my chickens out of the oven at approximately 155 degrees, then cover loosely with a double layer of aluminum foil. The heat already present in the chicken will carry the temperature to the required levels, if not a bit higher. This ensures that the bird is not only properly cooked, but that it will still be moist and delicious. Serve when the temperature begins to drop.

As for basting… I never open the oven door unless there is another dish in the oven with the chicken. Basting will not make for a moister bird. As a matter of fact, constantly opening the oven door will lower the oven’s temperature, thereby resulting in a longer cooking time and a drier chicken, so even if all of your previous experiences say to baste, resist the urge! If you must have the satisfaction of knowing that the chicken has had some liquid moving over the skin, drape some salt pork or bacon over the breast and wings, you’ll not only have your basting done for you but the bacon is a nice accompaniment to the chicken when done.

I find that a great side for roasted chicken is roasted sweet potatoes. These cooked in the same baking dish as the chicken, with the whole lot of the food suspended above the pan on a wire cooling rack. using this method assures that the chicken gets crisp all the way around and that the vegetables aren’t being cooked Con Fit, or in the fat of the chicken. They will however pick up a bit of the flavor since they are suspended over the pan drippings. All the flavor without the fat!

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(I’m combining this post with my weekly Thursday Thirteen, if you were just here to see the TT, scroll to the bottom of the post.)

As foodies we are sometimes driven to try the most recent trend in foods. To go after more exotic ingredients and preparation methods. To push our cooking skills and palate’s further than they have ever gone before. All of these are good things and make for a very interesting culinary life. Food should never be boring, after all.

While I subscribe to the concepts mentioned above, there are still times I when just want a really good French Fry, and yesterday was one of those days.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t liked fast food french fries in a very long time. Most are nothing more than overcooked, greasy little processed things that don’t do anything at all for me, other than perhaps cause a case of indigestion later. On the other hand, I rarely turn down the opportunity to indulge in a homemade fry, whether I’m the one making it or not, making fries one of the things I almost never order in a restaurant. I’ll take mine my way, thank you.

I prefer to make fries in a cast iron skillet rather than in a deep pan or heavy dutch oven for several reasons. One, the oil heats much more quickly in a heavy shallow pan. Two, it cools more quickly when the heat is lowered because of greater surface/air ratios. Three, It’s a lot harder to crowd the pan, which allows me to see each and every item that I’m frying while keeping my temperatures constant. Taking out the guess work is a good thing, as it means that you won’t end up with greasy food.

(Read the bottom of the post to see the thirteen things I will almost never order out)

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As a not so spicy compliment to my Asian Inspired wings, I offer up my wife’s lemon garlic chicken wings.  We came up with this recipe in the hopes that it would pick up on some of the flavors of Greek chicken, or at least Mediterranean cuisine, and I don’t think we were too far off. (There should have been honey in here somewhere, but it was close) 

To carry the Mediterranean feel a bit further, we paired it with some leftover tzatziki we had in the fridge from a few days earlier.  The result?  I can only call these wonderful and suggest you give them a try.  Really, I wish I had more to say on the subject, but honestly, I’m just wishing we had a few wings left right about now…

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I’ve been blaming a lot of other food bloggers for my entries here lately, and today seems to be more of the same. This time it was Katerina of Daily Unadventures in Cooking who decided my fate for me. I was just taking my daily dose of food blogs when I ran across her recipe for Acorn Squash with Toasted Seeds, and I knew I had to make it, or something like it.

My first attempt was a complete disaster. Nothing I had read prepared me for the fact that acorn squash seems to amplify salt to a magnitude heretofore unknown by man. I’d used chicken stock as the liquid, and even though I use the low sodium variety, I figure that played a part in the over salinization. The resulting dish would have tasted great, if I’d been able to get past the saltiness of it, but I couldn’t. It was drain fodder, nothing more.

In the end, I looked over Katerina’s recipe again and decided I’d like to up the flavor by adding roasted garlic, cut out the chicken stock altogether and loose the toasted seeds, since my dental work didn’t find them to be all that much fun.

The resulting dish is thick, satisfying and oh-so delicious. I can honestly say that this is my own creation, since I used the original recipe only as a guideline for cooking the squash, which is of a variety I’m unused to working with. This has been an egregious oversight on my part, and I’ll not be failing to give the little forlorn acorn squash his due from now on. I crafted at least three new uses for it when I tasted this soup, and I can’t wait to see if they stand up as well as I think they will.

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For this issue of YPOM we delve into the deep dark world of leftovers! One of the things tat struck me about dew’s pantry list was that she had “Several cooked, half consumed pork roasts” lying around in her freezer that she usually uses for sandwiches.

While pork sammiches are definitely on the good side of wonderful (especially if they’re pulled), I thought perhaps I’d dive in and see if we couldn’t pull a double-duty dinner out of what would otherwise be a porcine sacrifice to whole grain bread and a few lucky condiments.

I’m not sure what variety of pork roast lives in dew’s freezer, but for this exercise I used a pork blade roast that weighed in at just a bit over 6 pounds. (It was the smallest they had at the market that day.) Said piece of meat was roasted with nothing but salt and pepper, served up gleefully for one meal, then retired to the fridge for three days before this experiment began.

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Spaghetti squash is one of those vegetables from childhood that I don’t remember very fondly. This dislike was probably due more to the fact that somewhere in my mind I expected it to taste like pasta, and the reality is that, well, it doesn’t. It might also stem from my childish aversion to squash in general, a malady I no longer suffer from.

As I grew older, I discovered that I really enjoyed squash. I frequently make zucchini and yellow squash sautéed in butter and garlic, and the thought of butternut squash soup makes me tingly. I even add butternut squash to my chili. (I know. I know. That ain’t Texas Red… but it’s my chili, and I don’t call it Texas Chili, so Nyah!)

As I walked through the produce section a week or so ago, I spied some spaghetti squash and thought “Why Not? I can make this!” And bought it I did.

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Mrs. seat of her Pants took the kitchen out of my control over the weekend, and with stunning results, I admit! she whipped these out Sunday Morning in lieu of the normal “fried spuds” which of course I made on Saturday.

Though we just made these to snack on, I think they would be outrageously perfect if paired with seafood, especially shellfish or chowder.

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