Blogging in the Kitchen while Roasting a Chicken

Although I have a laptop, I rarely actually use it unplugged. I just like having the “lap” part work when I write up stuff at night, sitting back on the couch or watching tv. Today I’d gone to Costco and bought, among other things, two whole chickens. Not a great price, but I really need some chicken broth, hence I really need some chicken bones and necks and backs! I’m roasting one chicken for tonight. I thought about roasting two, conserving the oven energy and all that, but I wanted to make them two different ways.

So one is now marinating, hence the reason for this title. I’d never gotten around to printing off the marinade for whole chicken I used a while back and loved. So I unplugged the laptop and once I’d gotten the first chicken in the oven, I mixed up the marinade by following my own blog post. Now I’ve written this with the laptop on the kitchen counter (away from the sink and active work!), while basting tonight’s chicken. Quite useful actually!

For the chicken in the oven, I’m following a recipe in How To Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food, one of my all-time favorites, although this is a new recipe. But how can you really go wrong with roast chicken?

I’m roasting the chicken with some red potatoes, cut in half. He has you start the chicken, breast side down on a rack, at 450 for 10 minutes, with the potatoes mixed with half the olive oil and seasonings mix. Then you spread some of the olive oil on the chicken, turn the chicken breast-side up (still at 450), baste with more olive oil, and bake another 7-10 minutes at 450. Then, baste again, turn the oven down to 325, and cook, basting now and then, until the chicken is done, about an hour total (so another 30 minutes or more. This chicken’s on the large side (over 4 pounds), so I’m cooking at 350. Call me chicken–pun intended. But I wanted to eat somewhat close to 7pm, our normal dinner hour. I don’t think this bird would be done in an hour if I didn’t raise the heat a bit.

Ah, the olive oil mix:

6 Tbs olive oil
1 Tbs chopped fresh herbs or 2 tsp dried. Choose from thyme, rosemary, marjoram, oregano, or sage
salt and pepper to taste

1.5 to 2 pounds small red potatoes, or cut larger ones into roughly 1.5″ chunks