April 10, 2009

Five-Spice Roast Chicken

I’m excited for Easter. I love this time of year we have to reflect on the live and sacrifice of our Savior. I love the significance of springtime and the renewal of nature reminding us that He lives!I’m also excited to stuff my face with bread, pasta, and everything that we’ve been depriving ourselves from the past 38 days. This little gluten-free experiment we’ve been doing has nothing really to do with Lent, besides the time frame. I wanted to do it just to see if I could do it, and to feed my curiosity of what a gluten-free diet would be like. Steve wanted to do it because a gluten-free trial may be something he would suggest to one of his patients, and he didn’t want to advise someone to do something he wasn’t willing to do himself.

Thus, we’ve been eating a lot of chicken and rice lately.

I found this chicken recipe in this month’s issue of Bon Appetit, where it was featured in entire meal. Rarely do I see an entire meal in a magazine and want to make all of it. They put things together for a reason, as I learned with this meal. It was so good. All of it. The chicken had just the right amount of spice, it was juicy, and it perfectly complimented the ginger rice and snow peas (recipes to come).

Chicken shown above with Ginger-scented Rice and Snow Peas with Toasted Almonds

Five-Spice Roast Chicken

Ingredients:

4 garlic cloves, pressed
1 T coarse Kosher salt
2 T olive oil
1 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
1 cut-up chicken (8 pieces; about 3 1/2 lbs)
1 large onion, peeled, cut into 16 wedges

Directions:

In a large bowl, combine pressed garlic, salt, olive oil, five-spice powder and mix well. Add the chicken pieces and turn to coat. Cover and chill at least an hour or overnight.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Arrange onion wedges in a 13x9x2 roasting pan. Place chicken, skin side up, over the onions. Roast until the chicken is cooked through, basting occasionally with pan juices, about 50 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to rest for 10 minutes or so. Transfer chicken and onions to a platter and serve.

Nat's Notes:
1. Honestly, dealing with a whole chicken, skin, bones, icky slimy parts and all freaks me out still. (I'm working on it.) I halved the recipe and used two large boneless, skinless chicken breasts - about 1.5 lbs total. If you use this type of chicken, reduce the amount of salt at least by half.
2. This was so good, I may venture out and disassemble my own chicken next time. Gulp.
3. You should be able to find Chinese five-spice powder either in the spice section or the ethnic food section of your grocery store.

from Bon Appetit Apr 2009