Crazy for Chicken

Yep, I'm obsessed. I know, I should be totally over it. Nuggets, fingers, and wings have all tried to teach us there's really nothing to learn here, and basically, poultry is a blank slate upon which to scribble in sauce and spice.

Simply, not true.

Once in a column on fried chicken, Nathalie Dupree mentioned that The Pig had the best size of chicken, not too big and not too small. I started experimenting. I started cooking a roasted chicken about every three weeks, and then it got cold (well, frankly, right, it's not exactly "cold" in Charleston, but compared to August, well ...), and I got really serious.

A few rules: citrus always in the cavity, olive oil always on the outside, and always in a cast iron skillet. I've made them countless times, from Cajun to Provencal and even lemon pepper, but a couple of weeks ago, I had a breakthough. Two words: skillet. braising.

I got inspired and decided to try this recipe for Rosemary Chicken from Saveur, and not only was it easy, it created a chicken satisfaction level that I had not yet achieved in the little kitchen. Being a Southern girl, when it came out of the oven, I put the skillet back on the stove, added a little cornstarch, and thickened the pan sauce to a gravy. This one loves her some gravy.

This past week, I didn't have the lemon, or the white wine, but I still had fresh rosemary (plant outside my front door), and chicken stock, so I performed the same method with amended ingredients.

Skillet braising before going in the oven

The results were not as bright of a finished flavor as the original recipe, but still oh-so-good, so good that I waited for 11:01 a.m. the next day, "lunch" as we at The Beehive call it, so I could take the short walk down the hall and throw leftovers in the oven to warm. I had cereal for dinner, OK, so don't judge me.

I make pickles on Friday night -- don't you?

This weekend, I needed to spend a little time in my little kitchen, doing a little project to take my mind off some things.

I chose Dilly Beans.

I had some of the last green beans of the season in my fridge, and it was time to either use them or freeze them. So I decided it was time to face the pickling process again. During any summer the past few years, you'd find some fresh refrigerator pickles in my fridge, sometimes with radishes or a jalapeno thrown in. But the process of processing pickles hadn't gone that smoothly before.

I didn't have one of those jar lifter thingys --

yep, one of these, and I didn't realize how important they were until I had a death grip on a hot jar with my restaurant supply tongs. I didn't have a rack to sit in the bottom of the pot to keep the jars steady, so they started bouncing against each other, which you can imagine isn't a good thing for glass.

But on Friday night, I still didn't have those things, but I knew what I was getting into. I put a clean dish towel in the bottom of my big stock pot and covered it with water. I prepared myself for a two-handed tong grip once the jars were ready. And I picked out pretty jar rings for the holiday.

The result:

Three jars for gifts and one jar for B. already in the fridge. And the fear of the process gone.