Of Dinner Parties and Chickens
Everytime we have a party at our house - which happens all too infrequently - I think to myself, "there is no way we can fit that many people (that many being any number over two) in our apartment" and everytime I am proven wrong. Along the same lines, we rarely invite people over for dinner for concern over the fully expanded table taking up the majority of our office / dining room / additional kitchen imlement storage area. This January we decided to be bold and make dinner for two friends.
Slightly inspired by Spoons' farmers market salad (ah, Spoons - the best casual-quick soup and salad restaraunt), we started with a harvest salad that used up the tail-end of our CSA winter squash. I'll miss seeing those gorgeous squash in our fruit basket, but they were quite tasty when roasted and dusted with chipotle powder.
A gift subscription to Fine Cooking inspired the main course whole roast chicken with root vegetables- which only set off the smoke alarm twice and had to be returned to the oven once after our ever imprecise meat thermometer led us astray on "doneness". The remarkably straight forward recipe came from Thomas Keller and currently has 523 (!) rave reviews on epicurious.
I've not been one to make New Year's Resolutions, but were I to change that practice, I would include more cooking for friends for 2012. So far Miles (the cat) is in- especially if it includes more chicken.
