French

Today was a lot of fun!  I got to hang out with one of my friends, Talia, and cook french food!!!  It was oh sooo delicious!  We made Poulet Rôti à la Normande (Normandy Roasted Chicken) and Leeks a la Greque a french pastry.  The chicken was to die for!  I read about it in the Julie and Julia blog, she said that it had the best stuffing ever, and since I'm all about the stuffing I wanted to try it.  I found this recipe on the internet but it said it's based off of Julia Child's who I am starting to believe is a freaking genius.  Anyway, this has turned out to be one of the most perfect and delectable things I have ever made.  And really easy!  You basically rinse (using this term pretty loosely) and drie (I used a lot of paper towels for this part) sprinkle the inside with salt and stuff with the stuffing (it would have been amazing if I hadn't put too much salt or cream cheese, yes, cream cheese, in), and then here's the kicker, you massage the whole thing (this is a whole chicken) with butter!  About 3 tablespoons.  And then you put it in the oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for an hour.   Then you leave it in for another 20 minutes (with the heat still on) and baste it about every 4-5 minutes with cream, you use about a cup of cream total.  This turned out so amazing!  The best thing ever!!!

The stuffing was kinda crazy but with a few tweaks I can foresee this being the best stuffing ever (sorry, Aunt Jenny!)  The weird part was that it didn't use a lot of bread and then it used about the same amount of cream cheese.  Since the recipe said it only fed four people I decided to double (almost triple on the bread part of it).  That wasn't the only thing that went wrong though, it called for all the chicken guts, the heart, the gizzard (what the heck is that??  I always thought mom made it up!), and 1-4 livers, to be sauteed in butter.  Well, my chicken only came with a neck (couldn't figure out what the heck that was until I asked mom) and one liver.  Already my stuffing was doomed to failure.  Well, I followed the directions to the best of my abilities and turned out still edible and promising for next time.  The best part was the thyme, ahh!  That gave it the best flavor!

The leaks were ok, I kinda burned the sauce which looked like the best part in the picture.  And the leeks weren't cooked long enough so they weren't as tender as they were supposed to be.  But leeks are a revelation to me as a vegetable that actually tastes good!  Hopefully I'll fine tune the recipe so that it actually looks good and has a sauce and not burnt bits spices...

The pastry was ....  I'm actually not sure if I liked it or not.  It wasn't enough for me but I don't think I pulled it off right so that might be the problem.  Dad ate it though which is a pretty high complement when it comes to sweets.

Well, I better bundle (is that right word for this phrase?  Maybe it's trundle?  ahh, who cares!) off to bed!  I'll have pictures tomorrow!