A Delicious Day

This was definitely a food and friends kind of weekend. Please ignore the fact that I mentioned I can't say no to social engagements in my last post. *ahem* But we're not going to talk about that! We're going to talk about food.

We had a couple of friends from LA area staying in San Diego this weekend, and invited them over for dinner on Saturday night. For some reason I felt like planning a large meal, with many steps. And I totally cooked the hell out of it, and it came out wonderfully, and I was not even stressed. How did I accomplish this great feat? Planning, my friends. Careful planning. And a good healthy dose of not caring too much if dinner ended up being late.

First thing in the morning I made some bread dough. I had found this recipe online and had been wanting to try it, so I figured today would be a good day for that. The recipe makes several loafs worth of bread dough, then you keep the unused portions in the fridge for up to two weeks, pulling out a hunk and baking it when you need it. I thought this sounded like a wonderful way to have fresh bread pretty much whenever you want, so I was totally itching to try it. Here's the link to the article about the bread:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Artisan-Bread-In-Five-Minutes-A-Day.aspx

It's a long article, but really explains the whys and wherefores about the bread, gives you a breakdown of exactly how to handle the recipe, and then not only gives you the basic recipe but several other things you can do with it. Homemade pizza crust is on the top of my list for next time. Yum! Anyways, I followed the basic recipe, let the dough rise for a couple of hours, then put in the fridge for a few more hours. During that time I didn't really have to do anything with the bread, so I got busy doing other things, like going for a run, taking a shower, cleaning up the apartment with J, and grocery shopping.

Next step in the dinner plan was the chicken prep. Got a whole chicken to roast, cleaned it up (like you do) and set it in the roasting pan. Put a cut up half an onion and a small cut up lime inside the cavity. Washed and cut up some potatoes, and surrounded the chicken with those plus baby carrots. Drizzled the chicken and veggies in olive oil, then coated the "Simon & Garfunkel" chicken in a spice combination of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Well, I would have used parsley but it turned out I couldn't find any in my pantry, so I used marjoram instead. Then I dusted the veggies with the same spice combo, and gave everything a sprinkling of lemon pepper. Then I put the roasting pan into the fridge to wait until I was ready to cook it.

At that point, time to start the bread. I pulled out a couple of grapefruit sized balls of dough to make two loaves. The dough is really wet. I mean, really really wet. You must use a LOT of flour to coat your hands to get this to work. I placed the balls onto a wood cutting board coated in flour to rest for 45 minutes. At that point, on to the next part of dinner, which involved dates. Specifically, pitting several dates. 24, I think I pitted. It didn't actually take as long as I thought it would, which was nice.

Oh, another thing I had been doing all day long was cleaning up after myself as I went. This is a handy trick that I have only started doing in the last couple of years. But it means you don't have a huge amount of dishes piled up in your sink and making things difficult in the kitchen. And with our kitchen, that's a problem. I am currently in the smallest kitchen I have ever been in, and it's hard to maneuver when there are dirty dishes everywhere. But what's nice about doing dishes as you go is that not only does it save you space, it also doesn't really take that much time to handle just a few dishes. It takes a lot longer to handle them all at once in the end when you're tired and sad. So don't let that be you!

At this point the oven is preheated, there is a hot baking stone in the center rack, there is a boiler pan in the bottom for the cup of water, and the bread has rested and is ready to bake. I popped it in, put a cup of hot water in the pan below, and closed the oven door. Half hour later I had DElicious homemade bread. Of course, during that time I was not wasting time, but instead making a little cheese plate to go with the fresh bread. Bread comes out, chicken goes in, pan comes out and gets washed and tinfoiled, and switched to bacon wrapped date duty! This is just as easy as it sounds. Take pitted dates, wrap them in bacon. Secure them with toothpicks or skewers. Bake on a foil lined pan for about 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees. I drizzled a touch of honey over them once I pulled them from the oven, and they were seriously amazing. And guests will be quite impressed.

Whilst the chicken was still doing its thing in the oven, I grated up some zucchini for the Magic Zucchini recipe. I would post it here, but it's from friends of ours and I'll have to ask permission for it first. I let the zucchini drain while gabbing and hanging out, and then started cooking it so it woud be done with the chicken. And the voila, roast chicken, root veggies, and magic zucchini were all served to delighted guests, and the world was saved once more by good food and smart preparation.