Ingredients:

Procedure:

1. Preheat your waffle iron.
2. In a large bowl, thoroughly combine flour, salt, baking soda, lemon zest, and poppyseeds.
3. In a separate bow, whisk together egg yolks, buttermilk, yogurt, milk, and melted butter. Set aside.
4. In a third bowl or electric mixer, whip egg whites and cream or tartar to soft peaks.
5. Make a well in the flour mixture and pour in buttermilk mixture. Mix gently with a whisk until just incorporated. Some lumps are OK.
6. Toward the end of mixing, fold in egg whites.
7. Bake in waffle maker until crisp and golden.
8. Serve with powdered sugar, berry syrup, maple syrup or anything else delicious.

An oven-roasted chicken is to my mind one of the most delicious things a person could eat at seven-thirty on a Tuesday night in December, at home, after a sort of long day out in the world. It isn’t part of a “30 minute” meal for sure, but active preparation time is minimal. Whole chickens are relatively inexpensive considering all that you get: bones and cartilage for chicken stock, livers to feed to your cats, and at least two meals’ worth of meat for you and a friend. Plus, a simple roasted chicken is darned tasty and goes with anything you might want to eat it with. I happen to prefer sautéed green beans with shallots, butter, and toasted almonds and lumpy mashed Yukon Gold potatoes, but you can serve just about anything with a chicken. That’s part of what makes them so great.

But here’s the thing about roasting a chicken: everyone, everywhere—in every blog, cookbook, and TV show—claims that cooking a chicken in the oven is the easiest thing in the world to do. They also usually claim that it takes about forty minutes. The first time I roasted a chicken, I accepted both of these premises without question. I rinsed the bird, patted it dry, salted and peppered it, stuffed it with a lemon, and stuck it in the oven. I waited fifty minutes (to be on the safe side) and then I pulled it out onto the counter, hacked into it, and was horrified to find it still pink near the breastbone.

I did this three times with only minor adjustments.

A sort-of-pink-in-the-middle chicken isn’t the worst thing that ever happened to a gal. There’s enough fully cooked meat to have your meal, and the rest becomes stock. Still, my inability to properly roast a chicken grated.

After an indeterminate period of sulking, I resolved to learn how to do it right. I turned to three of the most-referenced cookbooks in my library: A New Way to Cook by Sally Schneider, The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters, and The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. Naturally, each had a different take on “perfect” and “foolproof” procedures. Waters and Schneider both advocate flipping the chicken from its back to its breast during cooking as a means to achieve more even cooking by mimicking rotisserie action. They disagree, however, about which position to start in and how many times to flip. All disagreed about oven temperature and seasoning methods. America’s Test Kitchen (ATK) offered the simplest procedure, of course, though they recommend one additional step—brining.

So I made them all, following the instructions as closely as I was able (perhaps you are familiar with my inability to follow directions), thinking critically about the chicken-baking odyssey unfolding in my very own kitchen. More than two months later (’cause how many chickens, no matter how divine, can you expect a girl and her squeeze to eat?), here is what I know:

• Chicken flipping, though awkward, is worth the effort.

Waters suggests starting the bird breast up, flipping it after twenty minutes, then flipping it again to finish. Schneider advocates flipping only once, starting the bird breast-side down. However you choose to flip, you’ll get a more evenly done bird—no more dried out white meat waiting for the dark to be done.

• Temperature is critical.

Removing the chicken from the refrigerator about two hours before putting it in the oven will also contribute to uniform doneness. Likewise, starting off with a cooler oven (350º) and then raising it mid-roast (to 400-450º) will ensure that the inside of the bird has time to cook through before the skin attains brown and crispy perfection.

• Chicken-roasting to an internal temperature of 170ºF (that’s 5 degrees above the official “safety zone,” even before carryover cooking) will take longer than you want it to.

This mental disconnection may be accounted for by the fact that in recent years we’ve come to equate simple with quick. This is flawed logic. The last bird I cooked, one weighing nearly four pounds, brined (more on this in a moment), and removed from the fridge two hours before insertion into a hot oven, took one hour and fifteen minutes to cook. My oven and yours are different, so don’t count on any chicken you cook to take as long, but you can count on at least an hour to cook, plus ten or twenty minutes to rest after removing the bird from the oven.

• Brining is cool!

To “dramatically improve the flavor and tenderness,” ATK recommends a brine of 2 quarts cold water, ½ cup table salt and ½ cup sugar for a 3½ – 4 pound chicken. Dissolve the salt and sugar in the water in a container large enough to accommodate the bird. Submerge completely, cover, and refrigerate for thirty minutes to an hour. Remove from the brine, rinse, and pat dry.

If brining’s not your thing, there are other ways to season and tenderize a bird, however.

So, here’s A Chicken, Roasted:

1. If possible, season your chicken a day or two before you are going to prepare it. Rinse it inside and out, pat it dry, and remove excess fat. Rub the chicken, again inside and out, with a mixture of 1½ teaspoons Kosher salt and ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper. At this time, you can also put slivers of garlic and sprigs of herbs (I like thyme) under the skin.
2. Wrap the chicken back up and refrigerate until at least one hour before putting it in the oven.
3. Preheat your oven to 350ºF.
4. Prepare your baking pan: Use a V-shaped rack if you have one. It’s good to elevate the bird from the bottom of the roasting pan. This allows air to circulate around the whole thing, which helps cook it more evenly. Having an appropriately sized pan is important, too. You want one about the size of your chicken. As Waters points out, if a too-large pan is used, the accumulated juices will burn and smoke.
5. If you’re planning to make chicken gravy, add roughly chopped carrots, onions, and celery to the bottom of the pan for a richer flavor in the finished sauce.
6. Stuff the interior cavity with lemon quarters, herbs, and garlic. The lemon will tenderize the meat, and impart a distinctly lemony flavor. If you are planning to use the carcass for stock, substitute onion or shallot for the lemon.
7. Truss the chicken. You can watch a how-to video here. If you’re not down with trussing, at least tuck the wings behind the bird. This will prevent them from burning during roasting.
8. Place the bird on the rack breast side up. Roast for fifteen minutes.
9. Remove the pan from the oven and carefully flip the bird (I’ve just grabbed it with pot holders, though bird-lifting gadgets are available). Return to oven and cook for fifteen minutes more.
10. Flip again, so that the breast is up. Return to oven and increase temperature to 425ºF.
11. Continue to cook until an instant-read thermometer registers 170ºF when inserted into the thickest part of the breast. Also, look for evenly browned skin. Remove from oven.
12. Tip the chicken so the juices run out of the cavity. Move the chicken to a carving board and let sit, uncovered, for fifteen minutes before carving.

Ingredients:

Procedure:

1. Give the salmon a generous sprinkling of salt and pepper. Broil the fish to medium doneness.
2. Meanwhile, heat a large saucepan of salted water and cook the noodles. Fresh pasta cooks up real quick-like, five or six minutes. Drain and keep warm if it’s done before you’re ready for it.
3. Heat olive oil and butter in a sauté pan and cook leeks, peas, and bell pepper. I like to leave ‘em a little crunchy.
4. To serve, toss the veggies with the noodles and place the fish on top. Give it all a generous squeeze of lemon juice and dig in.