Grilled Fontina and Vegetable Antipasti

Choosing this recipe for a weeknight meal came more from the awesome bread I had from the farmers' market than it did from its ease and simplicity.  We bought a loaf of Farm Bread from our favorite baker at the market: Rock Hill Bakehouse; it's dense and jam-packed full of flavor but the downside?  It goes bad.  And fast.  So I try to incorporate it into my meals as much as I can before the mold moves in.

Looking through my saved magazine recipes, I found this one from Food and Wine: Grilled Fontina and Vegetable Antipasti.  The online recipe has all the measurements (the original print version I have doesn't have any amounts or measurements) but the beauty of this recipe is that it's perfect for improvisation, especially if you're nervous about improvising.  Here's how mine turned out:

GRILLED FONTINA AND GRILLED ANTIPASTI

adapted from Food and Wine

8 1/2-inch thick slices of peasant bread

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

12 oz. sliced Fontina cheese

1/2 c. (4 oz.) roasted red peppers, sliced thin

1/2 c. (4 oz.) marinated artichokes, drained and roughly chopped

3 pickled jalapenos, seeded and roughly chopped

1 stalk green garlic, sliced thin (optional)

Fresh ground pepper, to taste

Brush the bread on one side with olive oil and arrange, oiled side down, on a work surface.  Top half the slices with Fontina, peppers, artichokes, and jalapenos.  Close the sandwiches.

Preheat a skillet, panini press, or grill (I have a stovetop castiron grill).  Grill the sandwiches over medium heat  until the bread is toasted and the cheese is melted, about 10 minutes.  Use a panini press - or a spatula - to put pressure on the sandwiches; this helps the cheese melt and melds the flavors together.  Flip the sandwiches to toast the other side.  Take off the grill, halve the sandwiches, and serve right away.  Serves 4.

You can treat these ingredients as guidelines rather than rules; it really is all to taste.  I added fresh ground pepper.  And I also had some fresh green garlic (not the usual dried kind) from the farmers' market so I sliced that super thin and added that as well.  I'm not a fan of olives but maybe some olives might be good too?  If you like more heat, you can add more jalapenos.  It's all up to you.  Fun, right?

I'm on the bacon bandwagon and I love myself a chunk of rare steak.  But I do try to keep it to a minimum and, more often than not, we eat vegetarian meals around here.  This one is packed with flavor, and the variations are endless.  Lastly, I can easily deconstruct it for Bug: she just had cheese on hers (a.k.a. a grilled cheese sandwich).

Eat, drink, and don't skimp on flavor just because it's a weeknight.

Roast Chicken

We went to the Union Square Greenmarket on Saturday, and I was so excited about the sun beating down that I  insisted Adam go do the shopping while I watched Bug on the playground, thus allowing my skin to darken from white to...something closer to off-white.  Adam brought back the bounty (sugar snap peas!  strawberries!  asparagus!) and announced that he also got a whole chicken from our favorite stand: Grazin' Angus Acres.  A whole chicken?  What?  We don't tend to eat chicken - it's dry and bland more often than not, it seems - but here's the story Adam told me:

He went to the Grazin' Angus guys to get the eggs and flap steak we love.  They told Adam about the chicken and, of course, he was dismissive.  Long story short, they all but challenged Adam to try it and even went so far as to say, "If you don't like our chicken, you won't like any chicken."  Big words.  But this is one of the joys of buying from a purveyor you know and trust: we knew that these guys weren't saying all this lightly and we have learned to trust both them and their products.  So Adam bought a chicken - all that was left was a rather large one that cost us a cool $37!  And they were holding it for us while Adam sat in the sun with me, relaying this story.  The Grazin' Angus guys also told Adam that all the chicken needed was salt and pepper on the skin.  If you have some gorgeous fresh herbs, stuff those in the cavity.  But that's all.

This is where I kind of lost it.  "Not even lemon?  You sure?  Because I have a le..."

"No, no lemon."

"Seriously?"

"Laura, I'm just telling you what the man said to me.  Ask him yourself when we pick up the bird."

Fine, I will, I thought.  So we pick up the chicken and he tells us that, ideally, you want a 500-degree oven for an hour and 15 minutes; this will create a lot of smoke so, if you're living in an apartment like us, then you can do 450-degrees for the same amount of time.  He confirmed salt and pepper on the outside.  And then I asked, "And in the cavity?"

"Herbs, maybe.  Rosemary is fine.  Just a small amount of thyme - thyme can overpower it."

"And what about lemon?  I have a le..."

"Don't you dare put lemon in my chicken!!!!"

I threw up my hands and begged for mercy, hoping he'd still let us walk away with his chicken (he did).  And our interaction ended with a promise that "you'll be spoiled by our chicken, just like we spoiled you with our eggs and beef!"

We got home and I cranked the oven to 500-degrees.  I knew it would smoke too much for our little 900-square foot apartment but I had to at least try, right?  I sprinkled the outside with kosher salt and fresh pepper, and I crammed the cavity full of rosemary.  I was soooo skeptical.  I wasn't a believer and had no trust.  So I put a ton of rosemary in that thing.

Then it was in the oven.  At 20 minutes, I had to take the battery out of our smoke alarm.  At 35 minutes, I turned the oven down to 450 degrees.  Adam told me the whole floor smelled like roast chicken.  You're welcome, neighbors.  At an hour and 15 minutes, it came out.  Easy as that.  And here's the result:

The verdict?  Outstanding.  The meat was so juicy, of course, but what struck me most was the sweetness.  I had never tasted chicken that was sweet...and flavorful with little help from me.  It was gorgeous.  And the juices had pooled up in the bottom of the platter so we dipped our bites in the juice, which took it up to a whole other level.  The only thing I might have done differently was add more salt and pepper before roasting but, really, I'm being nitpicky.  It was damn near perfect.

We ate it with raw sugar snap peas (from the Migliorelli Farm stand in Union Square) tossed in olive oil and flake salt:

And black-pepper Parmesan bread (from the Rock Hill Bakehouse stand) dipped in olive oil and course sea salt:

What an amazing Saturday meal!

And what about Bug?  Well, she liked the peas and she liked the bread.  We told her she had to at least try the chicken (which she normally won't touch).  When she asked for the wing, we were skeptical.  But what do you know...she ate the whole wing.  Then she at a leg.  In short, she loved it.  Do I think she'll be a chicken eater from now on?  Of course not.  I'm certain this was a fluke.  But between Bug eating the chicken and the Grazin' Angus Acres guys...clearly, I'm not always right.

Eat, drink, and happily admit defeat.