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Dimanche Roast: Chicken with Potatoes & Plums

October 5, 2014 By Lauren

sunday mealYears ago, while traveling through France, I had the good luck of my train getting terribly–I’m talking four hours at a standstill, day turning to night, plans for a transfer toward Florence going, going, gone–delayed.  I say good luck because this delay somehow landed me in the care of Laurence–a fellow passenger with a kind heart and a keen eye for those in need of care–and her sweet family in their sweet home in Lyon.  While there, I had my first experience of the French Sunday, or Dimanche as they say, and, specifically, the Sunday roast:  the French translation of our Sunday brunch, a slow-cooked meal requiring little in the way of preparation, typically enjoyed in the late afternoon and amongst family and extended family and, in this case, stranger from a train.

Dimanche in Geneva, as I’ve experienced it thus far, doesn’t stray too far from what I first encountered in Lyon.  A late start to the morning, coffee over newspapers at a neighboring cafe, some hours in a nearby farmer’s market meeting L’s family and eating falafel and drinking ginger juice in the sun, the selection of vegetables, cheese, cut of meat, type of wine for our own Sunday roast, then home, where we’ll truss or marinate, chop or not, toss everything into a dutch oven and then into our oven-oven and spend the roasting hours looking at old books or reading new ones, cleaning the bathtub or watering the plants, calling my family or sweeping under the bed, writing postcards or taking a walk around the neighborhood, tending our physical nest or our metaphysical one until it’s ready.

In effort to spread this cozy Sunday feeling, I’d like to introduce the Dimanche Roast: a series of nourishing recipes that require little preparation and that give you those empty roasting hours to enjoy your Sunday however you like it.

This Dimache Roast took ten minutes to prepare.  The plums caramelize during roasting, coating the potatoes with a kind of savory-sweet jam that brings this simple meal into other-worldly territories. We only had seven small plums on hand, but I would definitely recommend using more for maximum dimensions of jamminess.

Some brief notes on choosing a chicken:

The majority of our meat birds come from only one type of chicken: the Cornish Cross.  These birds has been hybridized, or engineered, to function in factory-like conditions, with a factory-like emphasis on productivity.  They are, essentially, a “chicken” only in name, having lost much of their cleverness, their vigor, and, in turn, their nutritive value through this hybridization.

Even “free-range”, “pasture-fed” birds may be of the Cornish Cross variety (you can spot them by the size of their unusually large, ahem, breasts).  Unfortunately, “pasture-fed” is a misnomer in the case of these birds, as they lose their ability to stand (those big breasts are heavy!), let alone forage about, within a few weeks of their short lives.

Heritage breed birds, on the other hand, are chickens as they naturally evolved to be: foragers of leaves, seeds, berries and bugs, they know best how to nourish themselves and, in turn, provide the best nourishment for us.  Their names evoke places both distant and near, Rhode Island Red, Blue Andalusian, White Crested Black Polish, and can be indicative of their plumage or (if they’re layers, as well) the unique color of their eggs.

If heritage breed birds are unavailable in your community, perhaps an inquiry to your local farmer would be fruitful.

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Dimanche Roast: Chicken with Potatoes & Plums

Ingredients

  • 1 whole chicken, trussed
  • 8 small, new potatoes, halved
  • 10 ripe plums, halved
  • 1 yellow onion, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 1 lemon, chopped & sliced
  • 1 knob ghee
  • salt & pepper, to taste

Directions

  1. Heat oven to 350F.
  2. Rinse chicken with cold water, pat completely dry. Stuff with halves of lemon, onions, and garlic. Slice upper layer of skin and rub ghee under skin. Place thin slices lemon under skin. Salt chicken.
  3. Heat dutch-oven on stove on medium heat. Once nice and hot, place chicken top-side-down in dutch-oven. Let sear for a few minutes, then turn onto opposite side. Remove dutch-oven from heat.
  4. Add halves of potatoes, onions, and plums to dutch-oven. Add knob of ghee, salt and pepper to taste. Cover dutch-oven with lid and place in oven. Let roast for 90 minutes.
  5. Slice into breast to see if it's done.

Enjoy a long meal with your loved ones.

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Filed Under: Chicken, Dinner, Fall, Recipes Tagged With: chicken, dinner, plums, potatos, roast, sunday

Yin Rösti

September 14, 2014 By Lauren

This past weekend, I crossed the rösti divide.

Though the name may conjure images of narrow mountain-pass or swift-and-icy ravine, in substance it’s far less dramatic than that.  It’s the cultural border between the French-speaking side of Switzerland and the German-speaking one and also heaving plate of, what us Americans would term as, hash browns.

Shredded potatoes fried in animal fat, sometimes topped with an Alpine cheese, or an egg, or Speck (or, depending on the contents of your fridge, all three); a farmer’s breakfast that suits its mountainous terrain with assurance and compliments this transitional season with its comforting qualities.

Late summer’s shift toward fall, while characterized by abundance, moves inward: daylight wanes, the wind quickens, leaves and fruits fall, grasses dry, cows are taken down from mountain pastures, the last of the season’s crops are harvested and stored; the preparation for winter’s stillness begins and the desire for comforts–from what’s on our feet (hand-knit woolens, please) to what’s on our plates–deepens.

According to Chinese Medicine’s theory of the five elements and their corresponding seasons, Fall corresponds to the Metal Element, the lungs and yin energies.  Yin can be thought of as contracting energy, receptive and passive as the moon; it follows that foods with yin qualities are grounding–warming and deeply nourishing like slow-roasted beets or brothy soups.  The lungs are said to be negatively affected by unresolved grief and sadness and positively affected by yin energies including comfort foods like the dear potato.

Yin Potato

The shift toward Fall brings a shift in the Northern Hemisphere’s farmer’s markets.  The bright jewels–berries, apricots, tomatoes–of summer wane and are replaced by the substantial, soil-covered root vegetables of winter cellars.  With an ever-increasing variety of foods available to us regardless of region or season, many of these modest vegetables are overlooked in favor of something snazzier: for who among us would choose a regular potato when a sweet one is an option?

Not to belittle sweet potatoes but as they require a warmer climate than Geneva offers I’d like to sing the potato’s praises for a while.  The potato has suffered an unfair reputation in the health-conscious community due to its status as “comfort food“: the potato chip, the pomme frite, the double-chili-cheese fry.  We seem to have mistaken convenience for comfort and in the process have discredited one of the most nourishing, truly comforting foods around.

The potato, when eaten with its skin on, is high in fiber, B-vitamins–namely B6, B3 and B5, vitamin C, potassium, manganese and copper.  It contains a variety of phytonutrients–carotenoids, flavonoids and caffeic acid–that act as antioxidants, protecting against free radical damage.  The potato helps build and maintain body tissues, reduce bodily inflammation, promote healthy digestion and elimination, strengthen immunity and even ward off carcinogens.

My version of rösti forgoes the Alpine cheese and Speck for my favorite food-ally of the approaching season, another yin food:  wild-foraged mushrooms.  The turmeric-yellow, woodsy-delicate, butter-pat-softness of the Chanterelle, the smokey-black, earthy-dark-firmness of the Black Trumpet; to me, they are an emblem of the season. 

chanterelle

rosti

Das rösti ist tip-top!

Print
Yin Rösti

Ingredients

  • 3 starchy potatoes (shredded with skins on)
  • 1 handful small onion (finely chopped)
  • 2 Handfuls chanterelles (sliced)
  • 1 knob ghee
  • salt & pepper (to taste)

Directions

  1. Mix potatoes and onions together.
  2. Melt ghee in cast-iron skillet on medium heat. Once skillet is hot, add potato-onion mixture and distribute evenly across pan.
  3. Let cook 7 minutes, checking underside edges to see if it's browning.
  4. Use large plate to flip rösti--cooked-side up. Add more ghee to skillet. Slide rösti back into skillet. Let cook 7 minutes.
  5. Turn oven on Broil. Slide rösti out from skillet and onto a heat-proof plate and place in oven.
  6. Add more ghee to the skillet and cook mushrooms for 5 minutes,stirring until ghee has been well-absorbed.
  7. Take rösti out from oven, spread mushrooms on top and enjoy.
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Filed Under: Dinner, Fall, Lunch, Recipes, Vegetable Tagged With: dinner, lunch, potatoes, switzerland, traditionalfoods

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