Barb wrote:

> Roast lemon pepper chicken (I roasted it; on sale at Cub this week for
> $3, half the cost of a rotisseried one. Couldn't have been any easier
> to cook.); a baked sweet potato for me, roasted white potato chunks for
> Rob; mongo mixed greens, etc. salad with fat-free Catalina dressing on
> top (I prefer the olive oil and balsamic drizzles that I do); couscous
> (mmmmm, fiber!) for me and green peas for Rob. And 9 Abdallah's pectin
> spice flavor jelly beans for 'sert. Too bad the chicken's so salty.

Must have been a good night for roast chicken; I roasted one, too.
Butterflied and brined with salt, sugar, and Old Bay seasoning. While the
chicken was busy sucking in the salt, I made a pseudo-stuffing of bread,
black pepper, lemon zest, and garlic. After the bird had been in the brine
for three hours (I didn't have to work today), I stuffed the bread mixture
under the skin, then roasted over a bed of olive-oil-drizzled onions at
350°F until it reached an internal temp of 165°F. While it was roasting, I
made Dimitri's recipe for asparagus with bacon and balsamic vinegar. (I am
*hugely* indebted to Dimitri for this; it was very good.) Since the oven
was at 350° already, I also made corn pudding, following another recipe from
this NG. (Google says it was posted by Karen in November of 2003. Thanks,
Karen!) When the chicken was done roasting, I let it rest while I deglazed
the pan with chicken stock, scraping up all the now-caramelized onions.
After the liquid had reduced a bit, I added a slurry of cornstarch and
half-and-half and brought it back to a boil to thicken it. I used that as a
kind of chunky gravy for the chicken and stuffing.

So dinner was:

Asparagus with bacon and balsamic vinegar
Corn pudding
Stuffed-skin Old Bay/Lemon chicken with caramelized onion cream gravy

It took a while to get dinner on the table (mainly because of the brining
and roasting times), but there wasn't really much cooking effort involved;
I'll probably make that same menu for company sometime -- although I'd make
a dessert for company! I didn't feel the need for dessert tonight, probably
because the corn pudding and the gravy were both a bit on the sweet side.

Bob