12: Thyme Chicken

There are other Mollys in blog-land who do an admirable job in the kitchen, who sail through with valiant ease (and share recipes for my favorite sort of cake, like she did today!), who aren't complete disasters as I am. Perhaps you should trust her more than me, but I will tell you this: we have a fridge load of local herbs and we intend to use them. Brace yourselves, if you happen to enter our house this summer: we're eating local and we've got an abundance.


Case in point: arugula pesto. I burned the pine nuts as I was toasting them--blackened them, essentially, though the dogs certainly didn't mind the bottom-of-the-pan flavor. I followed the recipe, but sometimes intuition should kick in: as in, the half cup of olive oil you used to wilt the arugula probably shouldn't go with the arugula into the pasta. Unless you want your digestive track to do some kind of protest later in the evening--hence, the reason Ryan sort of pushed his pasta around on his plate and had crackers and cheddar after an appropriate amount of time had passed. It doesn't help that we apparently don't like arugula. Along with cilantro, these greeneries will not enter our kitchen again. And like cilantro, you either love this bitter flavor or you hate it. I'm willing to try things (see, Mom, you can take me to France), and my not liking the arugula got us an extra pound of honey when we had our pick up this last Saturday. I might have to start not liking more things if it brings local farm-harvested honey to our table.


Thyme, however, is welcome, and is in abundance, thanks to our CSA share. So tonight we are trying something brave: a whole chicken (from the co-op, which means it is local and raised well, taught to respect its fellow chickens and given a clean bed every night), stuffed with olive oil and thyme, sprinkled with some of the garlic chives we also received this week. We used the assistance of one Martha Stewart in recipe and in how to stuff a chicken and I am loving the smell of the roasting.


There are only two of us, so we plan to see how this chicken will work in wraps and salads (salad we, of course, have acquired from our very green CSA) with the leftovers, of which I am sure there will be plenty.


We adapted the recipe a bit, however, not adding potatoes, but instead, putting the garlic chives on top (since we have so much of them) and squirting lemon juice on top, as it is lemon thyme that we have. It tastes good--for once, not a flop in the kitchen--the skin crispy and the meat tender. With a side of fresh greens from the farm, it's a perfect summer meal, despite how warm our kitchen is now!