In the Kitchen With Mattie

I bought these two chickens the other night when we went grocery shopping, they were nice and plump and on sale for .79 a pound. I figured I would make soup from one and use the other to roast. Unfortunatly I woke up the other day with my left eye half closed and puffy and red…….behold a stye, have only had one other in the past 50 years that I can remember and that wasn’t a real pleasant experience either. I stayed in the house all day yesterday and tried to keep a warm compress on the eye just hoping that it would go away by today, no luck, today it is even more closed than yesterday and is now itchy as anything. I didn’t do any cooking yesterday so thank goodness I had that beef barley soup on hand that I had made, I ate it twice yesterday as thats all I really had here  to eat, unless I was going to do some real cooking that is, as it was the soup got better and better with re-heating and it satisfied me. Today I had also planned to go over to my daughter in laws and have some fun making some things for her classroom this year, like I said the eye was even worse and I had to cancel on her, I feel so bad about doing that but I won’t drive when my vision is affected and right now it is in that eye, hopefully tomorrow when I get up it will be better and I will go over then. It is funny, each time I was pregnant my hubby would say “ooooo maybe we will have a girl just like you” and I would tell him “no way, I don’t want any girls” everyone always thought I was terrible for saying that but I didn’t think I would handle a young girl with all the problems they go through attaining womanhood. You have to know and adjust to your strengths and weaknesses and I knew I would never be able to handle a girls issues, that being said I really wasn’t a problem teen when I was young, I was too much of a nerd to have too many of the problems most young girls have,so consequently I felt myself  ill equipped to deal with the issues they face and would have hated to let down a daughter if we had had one of our own. With all that being said I have to say I love the women our sons married and see them as the daughters we never had, they are bright, ambitious, hard workers who really enrich our sons and our lives and they have given us the greatest gift of all, 6 grandchildren to enjoy. So tomorrow hopefully my eye will return to normal and I will get to spend some enjoyable time with our daughter in law who lives locally and  I will bring her one of the chickens I made so she won’t have to cook dinner one night as she gets prepared for another year of teaching school, she can then just heat it up and with some salad and veggies alongside  have a nice dinner on the table in 5 minutes.

                                                   High Heat Roast Chicken

1 or 2 plump chickens 3-4 pounds each

6  tablespoons softened butter

1 teaspoon each of sea salt, chopped fresh rosemary, and herbes de provance

1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper

smoked paprika

Pre-heat your oven to 400.

 Mix the salt, pepper, rosemary and herbes de provance into the softened butter. Wash the chickens and trim all the visible fat off them. Drain and dry the chickens and put your hand under the skin above the breastbone to loosen the skin, do this carefully so you don’t tear the skin, work your way down the chicken to over the thighs and loosen all the skin you can. Take 2 tablespoons of the butter mixture and place it on each breast under the skin and spread it all over, try to get some onto the legs and thighs too, then take one tablespoon and spread it over the top of the skin of each chicken and rub it all over the chicken, do both birds the same, use three tablespoons of the butter mixture for each bird in total. Sprinkle the chicken with the smoked paprika and grind some more fresh pepper over all. Put the chickens onto a rack set into a roasting pan and place in oven, rotate the pan after 45 minutes and baste with the accumulated juices in the pan bottom at that time. Continue roasting until a digital thermometer registers 165 in the thickest part of the leg thigh junction and the juices run clear when the chicken is pierced with a thin knife. Remove to a platter and let rest for 10 minutes, cut up and serve.

If you want to serve a light gravy with the chicken, remove the accumulated pan juices to a fat separator and let the fat come to the top. Place the roasting pan over medium heat on the stove top and add back 2 tablespoons of the fat and one shallot diced finely whisk together, let it saute for a minute and then add 2 tablespoons of flour, whisk it well and cook for 2 minutes until it is well blended. Whisk in  a half cup of white wine and whisk rapidly, when it is incorporated and comes to a boil start adding up to 2 cups of low sodium chicken stock, whisk and boil for 5 minutes and serve alongside the chicken.