A well Orchestrated meal...

i love to roast a chicken. i adore the simplicity of it, the satisfaction that comes from that golden glow when you pull it from the oven. The warmth it creates in the kitchen and the aroma that penetrates the home while it is cooking. i find myself enamoured with the search for crisp skin perfection, which i also find interesting because i rarely eat it. For awhile i was enticed by the french pot method to cook a chicken, and while i still believe this to create a moist chicken superior to many  (ready for an instant soup of delicious proportion), this evening i discovered another way to prepare chicken that lent itself well to the meal it inspired.

There has been little fried chicken in my life, and i seek to remedy this. Tonight i used a relatively new knife for exactly what it was designed to do: cut a whole chicken into pieces. It was a satisfying way to start a meal. Desecrate the carcass of the creatures body who was to nourish me in an honourable way and then lay it in a pool of milk to rest.

While this was occurring, i diced beets from our friends beautiful garden and tossed them with olive oil. These went into a 425 degree oven with two heads of garlic, the tops sliced off and then the bodies salted. An onion was diced. A pot of water placed on the stove to boil. Six small red potatoes were diced and placed in the water till tender, these were then mashed by my daughter with a bit of cream and a sprinkle of salt. We then mixed up flour, smoked paprika, salt and almond meal in a bag and tossed each piece of chicken to coat well. These went onto a hot baking sheet that contained a pool of melted butter. The onions went into the large cast iron skillet with olive oil to brown and we then added the leftover flour and almond meal until it bubbled and dissolved. In went the milk in which the chicken had rested and we stirred and stirred. We flipped the chicken and baked it a bit longer. The gravy thickened and the children were asked to go outside to get flowers for the table.

i set the table and the family was gathered.
          Dinner was a blessing,
  playing its own melody in the form
of savory  morsels dancing on our taste buds.