REAL Lemon-Garlic and herb chicken.

So what's for dinner? I muttered to myself as I packed up my stuff and readied to leave my school internship for the day.

Pot Roast? Too long to cook. Potatoes Au gratin, too complicated sounding. Beans, Too “musical”. Ahh. CHICKEN! I feel like chicken tonight, like chicken tonight!
I decided that tonight I wanted to do a lemon and herb chicken. But I didn’t want to just sprinkle on some of Larry’s Lemon Seasoning and be done with it. I wanted the real thing. Plus if I researched this right, it would teach me how to really get golden and delicious chicken every time.

The technique was pretty much similar to a pot roast I suppose. Brown chicken in pan, braise, and chomp. What did I learn? Well I’m glad I did a little bit of reading on How to get a nice brown chicken skin. Because I found out I have been doing things wrong. First is to make sure the chicken is dry going into the pan, or else it just steams instead of browns. Second is do not crowd the pan, or else the chicken steams, and doesn’t brown. Since browning is what I wanted, I followed both these bits of wisdom to see what would happen. Alos I figured out that blasting the chicken under the broiler for a few minutes before serving made the skin nice and crispy in addition to being brown. (after sitting in the braising steam and liquid, the skin was a bit...flabby).

I stuffed some lemon slices, rosemary, thyme, salt, black pepper, and one diced red chile UNDER the skin of my chicken. I figure that skin is supposed to keep things OUT of a critter, and I wanted to flavor the meat, not just the skin.
Then I dried off my pretty chicken legs and thighs, and put them in my hot pan with butter and oil, where a symphony of sizzling sounds, aromas and little steam vapors wisped from the pan.
It was not long before my entire apartment smelled like chickeny-goodness! I still had a bit of time before the stuff was done so what do I do? I looked in my fridge and I had some mustard greens I wanted to try out. Since they cook fast, I decided to go with it!
I sweated some garlic in butter and olive oil, then sauteed the greens over high heat until they got nice and wilty. A dash of minced garlic near the end and some salt and pepper really gave the greens some extra bite!
When the chicken was ready, I took it one step further. I broiled the chicken for 5 minutes just to crisp the already browned skin a bit.
I made a quick white wine pan sauce (thank god for the gravy seperator!) and soon I was digging into a piece of poultry heaven, Lemon, herbs, and garlic leapt from the chicken straight to my taste buds. I served the mustard greens below, and it was a beautiful mix of bitter and a little sour, yet buttery garlic was in every bite. Along with a little pinot grigio, which added a mellow sweetness, I was in culinary heaven. I am so glad I wrote this recipe down. I’ll be making it again in the future, the very very near future.
So that’s 2 more recipes in one day. 497 to go!