Seasonal Recipes for Locally Grown Food

I have teamed up with a local cook book author and friend to begin bringing you some in-season recipes for locally grown food on this blog. Not many fresh vegetables are available this time of year in New England but you can usually find some chicken/pork/beef/lamb.

Roast Chicken Dinner
Adapted from The Complete Idiotʼs Guide to Cooking for Guys, by Tod Dimmick

Fun History: Steve Friedman wrote about this recipe in a New York Times article titled Cook and Tell Confessions of a Kitchen Romeo.

A roast chicken takes only minutes of prep, and then the oven does the rest of the work.
Bring out a roast chicken for a dinner for a group of people, serve with your favorite
Merlot or Pinot Noir, and everything is right with the world.
Prep time: 5 Minutes Cook time: 120 minutes
Serves: 4 guys or 6 regular people
1 whole free range chicken, approximately 4-5 pounds. What flavor!
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup water
3 large baking potatoes, scrubbed and cut into pieces about 2 inches square
3 onions, peeled and quartered
5 big carrots, peeled and cut into 2” pieces

Preheat the oven to 325. Rinse the chicken under cold running water and pat it dry with paper towels. Chuck the towels. In a bowl, mix the olive oil, lemon juice and chopped garlic. Place the chicken in a large roasting pan without the grill or a large casserole dish. Drizzle the chicken all over (even get a little on the inside) with the olive oil mixture. Then sprinkle the chicken with the Italian seasoning, cumin, and salt and pepper, (get some on the inside, too). Pour the water into the pan (not on the chicken, donʼt want to wash off the seasoning), and slide the chicken into the hot oven. Cook for about 2 hours, and then add the potatoes, onions and carrots around the chicken, adding a little more water if the pan is dry. Cook for another hour (the total cooking time will be about a half hour per pound of weight), or until chicken is fully cooked. If you have a meat thermometer, the meat should be 185 in the thigh.

Pull that masterpiece out of the oven, and let it cool for a few minutes, then carve off slices to serve with cooked carrots, onions and potatoes alongside. The drumsticks and legs are darker, richer meat, the breast is the white meat.