Culinary Disasters

First off before I start rambling I have been seeing a lot of bloggers out there posting pictures of their gardens and I felt left out.  If you don’t know I love to garden in fact it is one of those things I look towards every year spring.  This year I had in my front window enough work lights and plants growing I am actually shocked the DEA was not knocking on my front door with a search warrant. 

I started 72 tomato starts and a majority of them ended up donated to friends, compost bin, or a lucky 18 made it into the garden.  By the time transplant shock claimed a few and wonderful Indiana weather that had me debating turning my back yard into rice patties I have 12 tomato plants alive and well.  Besides the tomatoes I have 2 jalapenos, 2 habanero, 4 green peppers, peas, beans, lettuces, beets, radishes, cucumbers, cantaloupe, beans, brocoli, spinach, squash, and a lone evil unnamed pepper plant (actually I am pretty sure there is still some stuff I am missing).  Next year the plan is the garden will probably close to double in size.  Currently I have been designing and building the raised beds in the garage.  Which I might say is slowly becoming my new favorite hobby since it requires tools that make a lot of noise and look cool. 

Actually do any of the gardeners know out there know if is there any problems with using Trex decking for raised beds?  All the wood to date has been untreated wood but I know it will have to be replaced in probably 5 years but the Trex stuff is guaranteed for 25 years.  Their website says safe for garden raised beds but I would rather have seal of approval from a 3rd party than the company. 

Here are just a couple quick pictures I snapped off over the weekend:

German striped tomatoes

Black Krim

Habanero

Cucumber

I did not get any pictures of the herb garden which is alive and doing well and actually where the rosemary for this dish came from. 

Rosemary and lemon chicken is one of my favorite quick and simple chicken dishes.  However, my number 1 complaint is in a marinade it never seems to get to the meat but rather just flavors the skin.  Sitting in training today got me thinking that what if I peal back the skin, place some chopped rosemary on the meat, take a mandoline and slice the lemon super thin, place it on top of the chopped rosemary, and then put the skin over top.  I have done this countless times with dry rubs on the smoker and even compound butter rubs under the skin so why not.  Plus grilling lemons like grilling anything completely changes the whole taste dynamic of them so maybe I can get some of the grilled lemon flavor into the dish.  Hmmm…this could work and to answer the next question the taste of lemon and rosemary were definitely present in the meat but played nicely and did not kill the beautiful chicken taste (reason 4000 to find a good local farmer and buy from him/her if you actually just thought I was smoking something for thinking chicken actually has taste).

For this recipe you will need (please note this is only for 2 chicken quarters not my normal 4):

• 2 chicken quarters
• 1/4 lemon finely sliced on a mandoline or with a good sharp knife
• 1 TB of freshly chopped rosemary
• Kosher salt and black pepper

This also makes this another five ingredient or less recipe.  Yeah for simplistic dishes and hopefully this is helping a couple of you who have asked for easy dishes.

Peel back the skin of the chicken to expose the meat.  Sprinkle the rosemary and layer with lemon slices.  Cover with the chicken skin and salt and pepper the outside of the chicken.

Preheat your grill to medium-high and cook the chicken quarters till done (about 10 minutes a side).  I also threw on a couple ears of corn that I peeled for a couple minutes a side just to heat up and get some decent char on them.

If you are a brave individual just eat the lemon slices with the meal but if not just discard them (*cough* chicken *cough*).  Personally for me I love sucking on lemons so I was right in heaven. 

Tags: Quick, Healthy, chicken, All //