roasted chicken & vegetables (chicken no. 9)

After a weekend full of birthday celebrations, revolutionary celebrations, just-because celebrations, Thomas Jefferson was a great architect celebrations, all kinds of celebrations…I have not gotten around to cooking all the things that are on my on-deck list of things to cook. So I’m posting a recipe I made a few weeks ago.

It’s a roasted chicken I made with the help of a few various and sundry vegetables. I used drumsticks, which was cheap & delicious, but it should work for any combination of chicken parts. For me it was mostly a way to use up the extra vegetables I had lying around before they went bad (pretty much any veggies will do), and with some good olive oil and a few herbs & spices I think it turned out quite well.

gotta eat em sooner or later...

my grandmother’s manicotti

one-dish wonder

I have been saving this recipe for a while now. It’s a pretty legendary family recipe, so it feels like it merits a worthy occasion. One came upon me almost spontaneously this weekend: the combination of a snowy winter night, the start of the year and a new semester, and a happy confluence of dear friends, old and new, suddenly somehow made it the right time for manicotti. With a few bottles of Chianti, a simple salad and some hot rolls, this makes a perfect, deceptively simple dinner you can throw together as a prelude to a night out.

need i say more?

eritrean spinach to die for

a new new year's tradition?

You know it’s going to be a great year when it kicks off with not one but two fabulous dinner parties featuring home-cooked Eritrean/Ethiopian food. After the first such party I just had to ask the hostess of the first dinner for the spinach recipe (which may have been my favorite dish, probably because spinach is my favorite vegetable, as the one spinach vendor in the Moroccan province of Taroudant will tell you) so that I could make it at the second dinner a week later. At this point I’ve fed this to about a dozen people and I think the consensus is that it’s about the tastiest spinach dish we have ever witnessed.

chickpea tagine revisited

Needless to say, the month of December got away from me a bit.

It did involve some classic moments such as this one:

arrogant bastard

and this:

stone IPA

aaand the best:

new year's tagine + sister act with the best brother in the world

…but now I’m back in DC post a wintry (well, not so wintry – let’s say an almost-too-sunny) Carolina-San Francisco tour and with no meat in the fridge and a vegetarian houseguest on the way I finally have an excuse to revive the blog and an old favorite recipe at the same time with a chickpea tagine.