Roast chicken and sun dried tomato pasta

There's been a whole chicken in the fridge for a couple of days, and my mother mentioned that they'd planned to boil it for dinner. That's right, I said boil it - something which is downright criminal. I put a quick stop to that, and decided to roast it. Even though I'd been out and about blowing off steam after a particularly grouchy day, I still was able to put together dinner with minimal effort. To go along with it, I cooked up some peas from the garden, and one of my favorite easy pastas.

Serious noms. Seriously easy.

If you aren't aware, there's a trick to roasting chicken. Some will argue that cooking a bird breast-side down makes the meat more moist, and some argue otherwise. What's rarely mentioned, however, is that you can cook it breast-side down until it's nearly done, then flip it breast-side up. That way, many of the juices that have drained downward into the breast meat and the pan are able to run back into the rest of the bird. I'm a huge fan of probe thermometers when I cook large pieces of meat, so I usually cook it breast-down until 145 degrees, turn it, and then cook it breast-up until 165 (I sometimes wait an extra few degrees in the case of turkeys). Most days I prefer to brine my meat, but since I got a late start tonight, it just got some salt and pepper, then into the oven it went. Simple, right?

Just pre-flip. It's got a lovely golden color.

The pasta is also very easy - just chop up a few cloves of garlic and half an onion, put some sun-dried tomato bits into a little water to slightly re-hydrate, and even include some bacon in little pieces if you like. Just after the linguine went into the water, I started to cook down the onion and garlic with a little olive oil. Then I added a couple of ladles of pasta water before stirring in the tomatoes and bacon bits.

Just after dumping in the tomatoes, but before stirring them in. Having them slightly rehydrated spreads the flavor around and gives the that pretty reddish tint.

The veggies sat on mid-low heat until the pasta was fully cooked and drained, then it was all stirred in. Add a bit of salt and pepper, and sprinkle some feta or goat cheese on top, and you have a fantastic meal.

After dinner, I made a lot of ganache for five different types of truffles, but that'll be another post once they're complete. All the ganache is setting up in the fridge, so I can roll them up and package them when I get home tomorrow.

Total prep/cook time: 60 minutes
Family happiness rating: 8/10

Roasted chickpeas, where have you been all my life?

No, really. Where? I'm quite the southerner, so I've never really been exposed to chickpeas apart from hummus and that one time when my friend Trish's now-husband added them into a chili. Now, I've never -not- liked chickpeas, so I don't know why I didn't do anything with them before now, except that I just didn't.

This, my friends, is going to change. Roasted chickpeas are about to become a part of my diet.

And it was SUPER easy. I started with two cans of chickpeas, which I rinsed, drained, and rubbed with a paper towel. Rubbing between paper towels got the little husks off, which is very important. If you don't pull them off, you end up with chewy outsides to your chickpeas, which isn't good at all.

I used up what was left of a bottle of cajun shake seasoning, then mixed up some cayenne, garlic powder, salt, pepper, and smoked paprika with a little bit of olive oil, and tossed them all together, then into the oven they went! I cooked them for 30 minutes at 425 in a convection oven, but I think another 10-15 minutes would've made them even more crunchy and lovely.

So, so, very good.

People on the internet weren't lying, either - these things are REALLY filling. I was able to make it through a large handful before deciding that I couldn't eat any more. I'm planning to pick up more chickpeas tomorrow and roast a large bag with garlic and parmesan, because this batch is bound to disappear quickly.

Total prep/cook time: 50 minutes (10 mins prep, 40 mins roasting)

Family happiness rating: 8/10, but with a little more practice they could reach 10/10.

See the full album of the process here.