Date Night In: Feasting On Spring

Menu:

Rhubarb Sour

Spring Green Salad with Creamy Shallot Vinaigrette

Herb-Butter Roasted Chicken with Tarragon Aioli

Maple Coriander Roasted Carrots

Strawberry Shortcake Trifle

In short summary, this date night in was A) the most time consuming yet and B) the tastiest yet. Each of the five menu items required sub-recipes in order to complete. There were a lot of dirty dishes…

…but the kitchen was cleaner at the end of this date night in than any others too! Normally we leave the kitchen a complete disaster and deal with it in the morning. But the chicken took a full hour to cook and we had ample time to wash/load dishes while it roasted. Winning!

OK. Nitty gritties. First off, I found rhubarb! Admittedly, it was Dole and I found it in the frozen aisle, but I’ll take frozen when I’m desperate. I had to boil the rhubarb to make a syrup for the drink. Frozen rhubarb didn’t translate well into syrup. It turned into rhubarb preserves. Which, admittedly, was delicious. But not super strainable. So we had rhubarb sour-slushies. (The leftover rhubarb was excellent spread on scones the next few mornings.)

Rhubarb "syrup"

Pulpy!

The salad was the best yet. I whipped together the basic vinaigrette, which smelled, in all honesty, like a Subway restaurant, but tasted far fancier. We used butter lettuce. BUTTER LETTUCE. It’s as pretty as the name implies. Ribbony and bright and crisp but not too bitter. I loooooved it. If you’ve never used butter lettuce (also called Boston lettuce) go out and get some now. Just be sure to give it a really good rinse—ours was kind of gritty at the bottom.

We added avocado, radishes, a healthy dusting of fresh herbs, and goat cheese to the lettuce (which had been tossed in the dressing). Like I said, this was my favorite salad so far. Maybe I really am desperate for spring, but the herbs made it complex and wonderful.

Is there such a thing as too much goat cheese?

Lots of little herbs: basil, cilantro, parsley, tarragon, and dill.

The chicken was…slimy.

Every time I opened my fridge it was looking at me!

I made the herb-butter rub and then…rubbed it. Over, under, in, around…you name it, it got rubbed. <shivers> Thankfully the nasty removal of inner parts was pretty simple. The chicken cooked beautifully and was really good. We still have leftovers! Roy asked me if I would start buying whole chickens since they are pretty inexpensive. I’m not ready to give up prepackaged breasts or legs, but I would definitely consider roasting a whole chicken now and then.

 

Nice crisp brown skin and finish.

The tarragon aioli was another new cooking technique for me. It was basically like making mayonnaise or a hollandaise sauce—egg yolk, lemon juice, garlic, salt, tarragon, and oil. Roy helped dribble in oil oh so slowly as I whisked. (Half of the catastrophes on MasterChef are from things not emulsifying. I was pretty sure this was going to happen to me, as a novice. But, we made a good team and the aioli was a lovely texture. Woo!) It was kind of addicting too. Initially I was kind of “it’s pretty good” about it. But it got better after each subsequent dip.

First time using tarragon. I am learning how amazing herbs are!

We actually used the aioli more with the carrots than the chicken. The carrots were all Roy’s preparation. I thought they were wonderful. If we had a bit more patience I might have broiled them, as is suggested, just to give a little more caramelization, but they were sweet and herby and dipped like fries into the sauce. Oh man, I’m getting hungry typing this blog…

Kind of like sweet potato fries.

I basically described the shortcake in my previous anticipatory entry, so I won’t bore you with more delicious details. It was tasty though. I personally would have liked a bit more juice throughout the whole thing—it was a teensy bit dry, but the components individually were…yeah…need to find a snack now.

I had to hide the strawberries in the back of the fridge. If James or Owen had spotted them it would have been all over.

Winter held some wonderful joys for our little family, but there were also challenges, particularly with the cold season refusing to go away quietly (SNOW last Sunday…). I think we kicked winter in the pants with this Date Night In. And it felt really good to defy its polar grip. Long live spring!

Today’s 1%: It’s always a 1% to spend the day with family. When it’s sunny and mild outside and there are hamburgers from the grill—well, that’s enough icing on the cake for even my father-in-law.