My good friend Jami has been very supportive of my new blog endeavor.  A frequent visitor, Jami was quick to offer suggestions for future posts – the most challenging of which was this:  Plan a dinner I can make and eat on Sunday that will provide lunches for the rest of the week (and it can’t take too long, and it can’t be too difficult, and it can’t require many ingredients, and oh right, I have very few pots and pans).

Only because I love you Jami….

So this was my task for the last couple of weeks, lying in bed at night, on my drive to work, I have been running over recipes in my head trying to be as creative as I could with the little I had to work with (no offense James).  And what crazily creative concoctions did I come up with?  Roasted Chicken!  Sometimes the simplest things are the answers to difficult problems.  Roasting a chicken is not difficult, you just have to be patient with the longer cooking time.  However, if you put in the time on a Sunday afternoon, not only can you create a wonderful, warm, healthy dinner for that night, but the left-over chicken can be used in a variety of quick and easy recipes for later in the week.  Hence, dinner for Sunday, lunches for the rest of the week.

So let me walk  you through the roasting of a chicken.  The fanciest of chefs will tell you that roasting a chicken is one of the hardest things to prefect…and maybe it is, but I am not looking for perfection (yes, I said it) but just for a good, flavorful bird.  And it is very doable.  I slather my chickens in a lemon and herb “scrub,” but zesting all the lemons not only takes time, but requires a microplane (a fine grater) as well – that means the lemons are out.  So I decided to go for the simple and classic flavor combination of garlic and rosemary.  Because both of these flavors are bold, you do not need a lot of them to impart great flavor (which means less prep time for you).

I have to admit that my first time roasting a chicken was interesting, to say the least.  Shortly after I had taken over dinner duty within my family, I decided that I would tackle a roasted chicken (something we only knew to come from the rotisseries at the grocery store).  I spent the time zesting the millions of lemons, chopped all the herbs, did my best to figure out how to separate the skin from the meat,  put it in the oven and held my breath.  An hour later, I was so proud to see a beautiful bird emerge from the oven.  Caught up in the glory of my first roasted bird, I presented it whole at the dinner table and set about a grand carving display.  (At this point I was really thinking I was something special with my perfectly roasted bird.)  I made my first cut and was surprised to hit bone.  I tried again on the other side of the breast, and the same thing – bone and hardly any meat.  I was horrified, I had spent all this time and I bought a bum bird….it had no meat!  Assessing the problem, my mother asked if I roasted the bird upright?  “Upright?”  there is a up and down to a bird?  Turns out there is – which was something I knew – but not something that I knew well enough to discern looking at a raw chicken.  So yes, ladies and gentlemen, I roasted my first chicken upside down.  My mother loved it and laughed and laughed.  She said that one day when I was a famous chef, she would tell everyone that I roasted my first chicken upside down.  Even though I was embarrassed by my amateur mistake (being quite the experienced 17 year old chef) the fact that my mother thought I would be “famous” one day for my cooking made everything all right.  I felt so proud that she believed in me and my passion.   She truly intended to tell every food magazine my story when they came knocking, to her it was only a matter of time.  (This is also the woman who saved my college rejection letters because she planned to mail them back to the colleges after I became famous to say “Look what you missed”)  I often think about how proud she would be of my culinary accomplishments thus far, even though still relatively modest, she would have viewed each small step in my career as a huge leap towards the fame she spoke of.

So anyways, turns out once you flipped the bird, the meat was fantastic.  My disaster of a carving display turned out to be a wonderful meal.  In later years, I’ve learned that some chefs purposely roast their chickens breast-side down because they believe all the juices running down the bird will provide more tender breast meat. (Clearly I was light years ahead of my time)  However, I stick to roasting my chickens right-side up these days (I think mainly to prove to myself that I can figure out which side is up.)   The moral of the story is you can’t screw this up too badly.  Upside down, right side up, as long as cook the bird properly, you are golden.

So here’s the deal:  Jami, there is a roasting pan and meat thermometer in the mail to you.  (I know you don’t have either)  I have done my part creating these recipes, now its your turn to give them a try.  You have to roast the chicken and try one or two of the lunch recipes using the left over chicken.  We are expecting a full report of what worked and what didn’t, with pictures of course (Jami is a very talented photographer).  I will post the results to this mission impossible dinner when I receive them.

We are all rooting for you James!

For more details and recipes, read: Roasted Chicken 101 &  Chicken Dinners for a Week