Food Friday - Roast Chicken Edition

I often consult my kids on what to make for Shabbat. My daughter is hankering for Jerk Chicken. I would happily comply but my husband is feeling a bit delicate in the stomach, so we decided to make something a bit gentler and save the Jerk Chicken for another week. My daughter then mused that chicken made with rosemary and lemon is always good.

So, in a bowl I mixed dried rosemary, parley and oregano. I put the chickens in their pink enamel pan, squeezed a lemon and a live over and then rubbed the chicken well, inside and out with the herb mix. I cooked until it was brown, and then turned the chickens over. There is lots of juice , which I will  fortify with wine and then reduce and pour over the chicken when I heat it up. it smells heavenly.

I also cooked a bunch of grains in the matching pink enamel pan with dried mushrooms, olive oil and salt. and covered the pan with foil ad let it cook in the oven with the chicken. Today’s grain mix is wheat berries, barley and  large grained Israeli couscous. I’m making a salad and serving ready made taboule and humus to round out the meal. I’m cooking an infusion of ginger that will be turned into a sorbet to be served with fresh raspberries.  all simple food but full of flavor.

I have been playing with how to make a non dairy  ice cream stand in taste good.  For a while I was using soy milk for the base of my dessert. Soy has a bit of a beany flavor that I don't love. Additionally, my youngest has a soy allergy. I have also used canned coconut milk as the base for fake ice cream. It has the lovely fatty mouth feel one expects in ice cream , but then every flavor is infused with coconut flavor.

Another idea I have been thinking about, is how flour molecules grow and become slippery to the mouth when heated in a liquid, the way they do in a white sauce. For today's mock ice cream , I was thinking about a ginger flavor. I made a syrup with sugar and water and addeda hefty tablespoon of flour. I chopped about a thumb's worth of ginger and let it steep in the mixture. i cooked it until the mixture was fairly clear and the liquid was pretty gingerey. I then mixed in three eggs and cooked onm a low heat until cooked. The resultant texture was very ice cream like, it isn't as fat as a regular ice cream but it has none of the weird under tastes one usualy finds with non dairy ice cream. The flavor was a bit wan so I added a shot of bottled lemon juice and some juice from a jar of pickled sushi ginger. I then threw the mix into my ice cream maker. If my older son were here, he would suggest the addition of one more flavor element that would make you want to bark with happiness. It's really good, but would just be better with his input. I plan to serve the ginger non dairy ice cream with fresh raspberries.