Roasted a chicken last night.

I usually stuff a lemon in the cavity but we didn’t have any lemons, so I went totally plain. A little salt inside and salt and pepper on the outside. I took a little from these three posts and roasted as follows:

Simple Roast Chicken
Total time: about 1 hour

5 lb bird, which has been allowed to rest out of the fridge
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 450 convection (or 500 regular) with large cast iron skillet on middle rack. Dry your bird and season inside with salt, outside with salt and pepper. I like to truss chicken by poking the ends of the legs through the extra skin around the cavity and tucking the wing tips under the bird. Place on hot pan and return to oven, legs in first. After about 10 minutes, move the bird on the pan so it doesn’t stick. Roast about 30 minutes until the thigh is 135 degrees (decreasing oven temp by 25 degrees or more if it starts to smoke), then turn off oven and let rest until temp is 175 or whatever you’re comfortable with, maybe 20 minutes. Let rest out of oven for a bit.

With the drippings I made a sawmill gravy, adding a bit of flour, cooking for a minute or two, then adding milk, lots of pepper and a bit of salt. I guess I haven’t had gravy in a while because it was soooo good and reminded me of my dad’s dried beef gravy.

We also had salt and vinegar potatoes, which were okay but I probably won’t make again. They were not as vinegary or as crispy as I wanted.

Some other things we’ve been cooking include these really good apple pancakes, which I made using half white and half wheat flour and canola oil instead of the butter in the batter. Halving this Smitten Kitchen recipe to make chocolate pudding for two (adding a couple spoons of cocoa powder and subbing flour for cornstarch), served warmish. And this morning C and I made another cake, an apple cake as detailed here, but I cut the recipe by 1/3 because we only had two eggs. It turned out a little gummy and I don’t know if this is due to my modification and using approximate volume measurements instead weight or the fact that I was making it with a toddler. Anyway I don’t know if I will make this again, or if I do, I’ll actually follow the recipe.