Posts Tagged roasted
Roasted Rosemary Potatoes
Last night I posted about rolled pork stuffed with mozzarella and pesto, which I served for dinner on Sunday night. With that dish, I served one of the easiest, most satisfying sides I’ve made to date. Potatoes are a blank canvas that you can paint with all kinds of flavors and textures, and oven roasting is one way to bring out the best in them.
This is so easy it’s almost laughable, but I promise you, these potatoes are way more impressive eating than they have any right to be.
You’ll need:
- 6-8 small golden potatoes
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp fresh rosemary, minced quite fine
- 2 tsp coarse salt
This serves two generously.
Preheat your oven to 375°.
Cut the potatoes in half and dump them in a gallon ziploc bag. Add the olive oil and seal the bag without pressing out any air. (This is the best way I’ve found to get an even coating of oil.) Give it a few good shakes and dump the potatoes into a baking dish. Arrange the potatoes skin side down in a single layer.
Sprinkle the tops of the potatoes with the salt and the rosemary.
Bake the potatoes for about 45 minutes, or until the tops begin to brown and a toothpick or fork can be inserted easily into the flesh.
Wasn’t that simple? You seriously will not believe how delicious this is.
Lemon Garlic Chicken
Tonight I brought home a cornish hen for each of us.
Cornish hens are just small chickens, typically under 2 lbs. They’re just right for an individual, but they do require some effort to eat.
For this dish, I used:
- 1 lemon per hen
- 2 cloves garlic per hen
- 1/4 cup olive oil
Preheat your oven to 425.
I started by quartering and juicing the lemons. This is not a hardcore juice-wringing operation – you want the quarters to retain some of their juice.
I wound up with about 1/4 cup of juice, so I added a roughly equal amount of olive oil. You’ll use it a little later.
Unwrap your hens, drain off the excess liquid, and pat each one dry inside and out. If there are any parts in bags, pull them out.
Shove the garlic cloves and lemon quarters inside the body cavity. It can be a little bit of a challenge to fit four lemon slices and two garlic cloves into such a small bird, so if you have to leave a piece of lemon out, that’s fine.
You can see the lemon poking out.
Stir or whisk the lemon juice and olive oil together. Rub the mixture into the skin of your birds and dump any excess inside the cavities. This helps the skin crisp up and brown. If you like very crisp skin, use more olive oil and less lemon juice.
Toss the birds in the oven and turn the temperature down to 375.
While the birds were cooking, I prepped a side dish of potatoes, zucchini, and mushrooms. I didn’t cut up the potatoes, since they were small, but I should have – I wound up having to microwave them for a couple of minutes after everything came out because they were still somewhat firm. I did dice up the mushrooms and zucchini. These got tossed with a little olive oil and finely cut fresh rosemary, and sprinkled with sea salt.
(Pre-cooking)
My chickens were done at the 45 minute mark, and while the potatoes needed a quick stint in the microwave to soften them up, everything was still ready to eat at the same time.
My husband took a picture of a finished plate for me:
