I've been cooking since I was rather young. I still remember the first thing I cooked (with my mom's help) when I was roughly 5-6 years old. I made "Mexican pizzas" out of Mexican cookbook my mom had (they were actually tostadas). I remember at that time being so happy to be able to serve the rest of the family those tostadas.
Since then I have been in and out of the kitchen over the years, sometimes going through periods where I spent alot of time trying out new recipes and working to develop my own, and others just sitting back and consuming rather than creating, which seemed to be most of my high school years.
Once in college, without my mom around to prepare meals for me, I ended up back in the kitchen. I became tired of the cafeteria food that was served on campus, and in the interest of both saving money by not eating out, and being able eat food that had some semblance to the meals I was used to eating back home, I took to the kitchen once more. The food I created during that time was whatever I could cook in my spare time that reminded me of home, while also delving into more ethnic cuisines.
Since that time, I have really grown to love the whole process of cooking, and to appreciate the ingredients that go into a quality meal. This is what led me to The French Laundry and Bouchon cookbooks. Both books are based upon restaurants owned by Thomas Keller, who has become one of the top chefs in America. His restaurants are constantly winning awards, and The French Laundry has been ranked #1 in the world for several years.
My goal is to bring my cooking skills up to a new level by attempting to cook my way through both of these books, while at the same time, using the techniques taught within them in my own recipes. I expect some of these recipes to be pretty difficult, so I might have to try them a few times to get them right. I hope that by following me through this that you will be inspired to try new recipes and bring your own cooking up to the next level. Don't be afraid to try something new. It's just food.
Also, for those who might be wondering.... sel gris is French gray salt, which Keller uses in quite a few recipes. I thought it might be a decent name for the blog.
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Simple Roast Chicken
I'm starting off by cooking the very first recipe in Bouchon, entitled "My Favorite Simple Roast Chicken". Keller is a big fan of roast chicken, and has a number of roast chicken recipes in his books.
The recipe calls for a 2-3 pound chicken, which I had a hard time locating in the grocery stores around here. Luckily, I was able to get a 2.84 pound bird from a butcher, which is what I will be using in this recipe.
The simple roast chicken is exactly that...very, very simple. The chicken is rinsed, dried, seasoned with kosher salt and black pepper, trussed, and roasted in the oven for just under an hour. Afterwards, it is basted in its own juices and some fresh thyme, which I luckily had quite a bit of.
Here's the bird before going in the oven. Please ignore the trussing, my trussing skills aren't really up to par. Not that it's difficult to begin with, I just don't do it enough.
The bird had a bit of a lean to it that I didn't notice when I bought it, so it looks a little weird when trussed.
And here it is fresh out of the oven after I added thyme to the juices and then basted it and let it sit.
And here being enjoyed by Mike, my roommate/taste tester.
Notice there's not much meat left on there. It was very good, and cooked up nice, juicy and tender.
I also want to note: total cost for this recipe, not including the fresh thyme I had in my fridge: $3.75. Just shows that you CAN eat well, and cheap.
So that's it for my first post. If you have any comments/suggestions, feel free to let me know.
One recipe down...many more to go. Stay tuned.
I'm SOOOO glad you're doing this, Aaron. The recipes you've shared with me have been awesome. I'm going to find these books and follow along with you.
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