Since we have so much produce, we decided to share this amongst our good friends who also live in the Sacramento area. Please welcome Shawn & Claire into the picture. Shawn is a good buddy of Dan’s from AEPi, lives in Downtown, and is a tree hugging, green friendly dude. Claire is another friend of Dan’s who is Ms. Politico Activist and a not so dirty hippie girl. These are the members of our new urban family.
Our first box of yummy, fresh organic produce was ready to be made into a delicious dinner on Friday evening. (See previous entry for contents). However, due to being busy people, we could not make dinner until Monday night for everyone. Some how, someway, this dinner turned into six people. Let’s introduce Nick & Tiffany — Nick is an AEPi (of course) whom I met on Houseboats 2007 and Tiffany is his awesome girlfriend. They have both moved to Natomas and have become more Davis Ex-Pats; Dan and I both forgot they lived in Sac b/c we always saw them in Davis.
Enough of that….on to the food!
Due to the random mix of foodstuff, how could I put it together? Since we had so many root veggies, I figured a roast was the best way to go. We made two roast chickens, stuffed with rosemary, thyme and lemons. I had seasoned the cavities with olive oil, kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper. On the outside of the bird, it was very simple — olive oil, kosher salt (okay, all of my salt is kosher) and pepper. I had made a mix of flat leaf parsley, basil, thyme and rosemary to put in between the skin and the breast meat (after seasoning of course). On a tip from Jamie Oliver who likes overcooked thigh meat, I slashed the thighs, rubbed in the seasoning and extra herbs. We preheated the oven and the roasting pan so that we could place the chicken breast side down to give it ahead start on cooking. After about 10 minutes, we switched the chickens to the other side and repeated.
Meanwhile, I cubed up all of the potatoes, carrots, onions and turnips (we bought turnips…one of the few ingredients not in the box) to go with the chicken. Seasoned liberally with olive oil, S&P, plus the same herbs to maintain flavors. After the chickens got their headstart, we lifted them out of the roasting pan, dumped the root veggies in to create a rack for the chickens to rest on top of. In the oven they went to finish.
As the chickens were in the oven, we started to make the babaganoush (this was Dan’s project of the night). Dan roasted the eggplants in the oven because that is what you do. We blended the roasted eggplant with garlic, tahini, flat leaf parsley, olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika and lemon. The flatbread was placed in the toaster oven to warm through. As a first course, it was quite a hit since everyone asked for more flatbread to finish up the ‘ganoush with.
We also had these lovely, heirloom tomatoes that we ate with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. Claire ate most of these tomatoes and Shawn was left without. Tragic.
First Urban Dinner Menu
Heirloom Tomato Salad
Mixed Greens w/ walnuts, cranberries, apple w/ a balsamic vinegrette
Herb-Lemony Roasted Chicken w/ roasted root veggies
WINE
…lots of wine! In the end, it was a fantastic evening with friends which then turned into….the monster. More to come.