Sunday dinner - August 15

After a week of eating and cooking in Maine with (with friends who love to cook and eat) I came back to Toronto and decided to start a blog documenting our nightly dinners. My wife and I are in Toronto temporarily (our main home is in Ottawa) and we have rented a tiny apartment (with a tiny kitchen) with a fabulous view of Lake Ontario on Queen's Quay. It is close to Toronto's two great markets - St. Lawrence Market, a traditional enclosed market, comparable to the great markets of the world, and Kensington market, a more eclectic, ethnic neigbourhood with great food stores. Most of the time, however, because of time constraints we tend to shop at Sobeys (a mainstream supermarket chain) across the street, or Loblaws, a larger mainstream supermarket a couple of blocks away. We are also lucky to have Ontario's largest liquor store a few blocks away and have access to a large wine selection.

Ok - so now tonight's dinner
We walked down to Loblaws and bought a whole chicken (not free run but claimed to not have been fed anti-biotics or animal feed), some lemons, swiss chard, a bag of yellow, white and purple mini-potatoes, a couple of large field tomatoes, and some purple tomatoes (chard, potatoes and tomatoes were all locally grown) and a selection of locally grown mushrooms.

I emersed the chicken in a big pot of brine (water, salt and sugar) for about 5 hours and then simply roasted it - a lemon squeezed over it (and the lemon halves placed in the cavity) and salt and pepper. It was roasted at 400 for ten minutes on each side and then at 325 for one and a half hours on its back (it was a 1.5kg chicken), sitting on 3 thick lemon slices. While the chicken rested, I poured off the fat, deglazed the roasting pan with white vermouth (about half a cup), strained the liquid into a small saucepan, reduced it by about half and added a handful off mixed herbs from the pots we have growing on the balcony (parsley, basil, thyme, tarragon and a little rosemary) and stirred in a couple of pats of cold butter, Meanwhile I had made a small tomato salad dressed with chopped basil leaves, sea salt and a good olive oil. My partner made a side dish of potatoes, onions, chard and mushrooms, sauteed simply and seasoned.

Here is the result:

We drank this with a bottle of light Rioja (red wine with chicken!?!)
It was deliciousl! The chicken was really moist and the gravy was lemony and velvety. A great success !