You come home Sunday evening after a long trip (ok maybe not so long, but I was tired). You need to make dinner. It has to be quick, since the kid is up early for school tomorrow morning. What to do, you ask? In most cases, you grab something from the freezer, microblast it and voila, dinner's ready.
Well, for starters, I don't own a microwave. And I don't usually keep precooked meals in the freezer (unless I've cooked them myself that is).

Instead, what I do keep in the fridge is the lovely farm raised chicken I bought at the market yesterday. So here's the recipe for my quick-Sunday-dinner-after-a-long-trip chicken:

- Take one farm raised chicken you bought yesterday at the market, two carrots, two onions, three potatoes (approximate quantities).
- Put the carrots and potatoes through a nice razor sharp mandoline (I personally recommend the benriner one), roughly chop the onions, or cut them into quarters, or use the mandoline while you're at it.
- Throw everything together onto an oven tray, season liberally with salt, pepper, olive oil and maybe some oregano if you have it. Garlic is good too.
- Take the chicken as is, put it on top of the veggies, more salt, more pepper, more olive oil, and into the oven it goes. I know this is not the way they teach you in cooking school but hey, as I've said, it's Sunday and I'm tired. It will still be yummy, trust me.
Total preparation time, 5 minutes. If it takes you more than five minutes to slice 4 vegetables with a mandoline and put a chicken on top of it, go ahead, go for the precooked dinner and the microwave, I don't care.

- Now go, throw the kid into the tub (ok, don't THROW him in, but you get the point), check email, discuss football over the phone with a friend or whatever set of actions you do on a Sunday evening, just make sure they collectively take about half hour, no more, no less.
- Go back into the kitchen, open the oven. The chicken should look like the one in the picture (fine, mine IS a bit burnt, so sue me. History and crispy chicken skin will prove me right).
- Eat dinner (a glass of young Fitou wine you bought during the aforementioned trip will help you sleep), put the kid to bed, discuss more football with friend, watch movie with wife, yada-yada-yada, see you tomorrow.

Posted by SillyDisciple at 1:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I must admit this has been quite a though week. A project which we've been working on for a while, and which looked almost closed, is proving to be much more elusive than we thought. Luckily, I can take this weekend off, and tomorrow after my morning visit to the market I'm taking the family and running off to Fitou, a cozy little town in Languedoc-Roussillon, just past Perpginan and altogether about 250 km. from Barcelona, center to the Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée with the same name. So what's there, you might ask? Well, wine, as I've said. And food, quite a lot of it actually. Mostly local oysters which are not that bad considering the price. Local fish is good if you know where and when to buy. Same goes for wine. We also get really good bread from a bakery in Perpignan (Why oh why can't we have bread like this in Barcelona?), and cheese and charcuterie from a few places in the area. But most of all, good friends who live there and will always welcome us with a smile.

Tags: Fitou, Languedoc-Roussillon, weekend getaways

Posted by SillyDisciple at 3:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently ran into this short video by Chef Heston Blumenthal, of The Fat Duck fame, which I think is part of the BBC show he used to have.
With all the hype surrounding molecular gastronomy, I think this is a good example of what this concept really means. It is just about having proper scientific knowledge about how and why the ingredients we used are modified by the techniques we apply to them while cooking. Making it about foam, air, gels and all the other stuff is, I think, smoke and mirrors.

If you are interested in Molecular Gastronomy, or knowing more about what happens to food when we cook it, I suggest you check the excellent book On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee.

Posted by SillyDisciple at 2:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)