THE ONE HUNDRED AND SECOND WAY TO ROAST A CHICKEN!

I'm on a bit of a Barefoot Contessa run at the moment, along with Tiffany.
Was just the 3 of us for Sunday dinner so, to Alan's disappointment I did not do my regular roast chicken ( I say 'mine', the recipe it is based on is Delia Smith's). I made Ina's 'Perfect Roast Chicken', how can you resist that title??  Main difference is that this has no stuffing, seemed appropriate for  a summer evening,  you stuff the cavity with lemon and garlic, sounded good to me!
Verdict is 'pretty good'.  You roast this bird at a higher temperature, with no foil  protecting the breast.  The result is a delicious, crispy skin BUT the breast meat was a little dry.  The gravy was very tasty which compensated for the dryness of the breast meat.  Alan and I debated various methods to achieve both - hopefully I will be successful at that and will be publishing a book of my own!
While I was breaking all the traditions tonight, I did not do any roasted vegetables.  I made Roatsed New potatoes in parchment and steamed green beans.  The potatoes were from a recipe in the NYTimes which I cannot find right now but easy enough to include here.  Worked well with the chicken as the oven temp worked for both.

• Fingerling potatoes ( or a mixture with red, white and purple pots)
• virgin olive oil
• garlic cloves, peeled and left whole
• herb of your choice: rosemary, oregano or sage
• chopped parsley to serve

You can figure out quantities, depending on how many you are serving, be generous with the oil.  Mix the potatoes in a bowl with oil, garlic and herb, season well.  Put contents of bowl onto a sheet of parchment  which is on a baking sheet.  Make a parcel by folding the top and tucking in the sides.  Bake at 450 degrees C for about an hour, can adjust depending on whatever else is going on in your oven. Transfer parcel to serving dish, open parchment and sprinkle parsley.
I happened to have some purple and fingerling potatoes, so mixed them.  Visually it was pretty appealing but I have to say that the fingerlings taste so much better than the purple potatoes, shame, wish it weren't so!

BOB DYLAN'S FIGGY PUDDING

Life takes some fun turns every once in a while........  We went to see Bob at Jones Beach last night and started chatting to the guy next to us who had sold us the tickets on Stubhub.  He is a journalist,  Duff McDonald, who writes business stuff mostly for Fortune and occasionally for Vanity Fair.  He is also a big Dylan fan and had written an article on Bobby, which was in the April 2009  Vanity Fair edition, and was based on Dylan's DJ-ing on Sirius radio.  Anyway, this morning I was checking him out and read the article, which is fabulous.  I started reading the highlights to Alan,  including some recipes he had apparently read on the show.  One of them was for Figgy Pudding, which, after reading,  I casually added: 'easy to make, I think I have all the ingredients'.  Our Bob Dylan weekend was about to continue!

You have to scroll down in the article to find the recipe, it was fun to make and pretty good!  I changed a few things so here is how I made it:

4 oz of plain flour, sifted
a pinch of salt
4 oz bread crumbs
4 oz shredded suet - I used butter
1 teaspoon mixed spice - I used half teaspoon Jamaice Allspice
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 oz dark soft brown sugar
8 oz chopped dried figs ( I chopped in mini Cuisinart)
finely grated rind & the juice of one lemon
2 tablespoon milk
2 beaten eggs - I used 3 eggs
4 Tablespoons of golden syrup, plus more to serve

Cream the butter and sugar then add the flour, salt and breadcrumbs. Add the beaten eggs then the lemon rind and juice and the figs.  Beat well, the mixture should have a soft dropping consistency.  (This is when I added an extra egg as my mixture was not dropping!)  Put into a greased two-pint pudding basin, cover securely,  (I used two sheets of foil and 2 elastic bands) and steam for three hours. I also put the syrup in the basin before adding the mixture, then added more syrup to serve.

It was pretty good, served with some Birds custard.   Found that harder to make than proper custard and it was not as good in my view.........  but Alan loved it and that was what it was all about.

I know the ounce measures are tricky for my US friends, one day I will find a conversion site and link it.  I think the recipe is pretty forgiving if you want to have a go!