Sadly, a non-gratifying dinner

I know we're all used to me being very enthusiastic about what I'm eating and cooking and planning... filling my posts with heaps of exclamation marks and words like "fab" and "you must try this" and that sort of thing. Not tonight.

I had a long, tiring day at work - it was absolutely dead. No customers. At all. It was excruciating. After work, I came home and made dinner.

125. Tarragon French Roast Chicken (Weekend Lunch)

Some of you may remember that I attempted to make this chicken last month, for a dinner for my friends, but was foiled by the total unavailability of tarragon. I did end up making the entire menu (leeks, rice, lemon pie), including the chicken, but without tarragon. However, earlier this week I found some tarragon in Safeway, and immediately bought it.

I decided to serve the chicken with silverbeet, as my mum's friend had given her a bunch from her garden, which was sitting on the bench. And instead of rice or potatoes, I used this Brazillian wheat thing called Farofa Pronta, which DG (aka domesticgoddess) kindly sent to me a little while ago, and which I was super-excited about using.

I'd never made silverbeet before, so treated it like spinach and stirfried the silverbeet and added olive oil, sumac and dried chilli. And for the farofa, you just have to turn it in some sizzling buter in a pan and heat it through. Too easy.




Tarragon French Roast Chicken


Farofa in front, deglazed pan juices in little bowl, silverbeet in background

Ok, so the verdict. The chicken was fine. Great, in fact. Juicy, crunchy, flavoursome, just what you'd expect from a Nigella roast chicken. But the silverbeet was FERAL. Remember how I said we don't like beetroot? Especially the feral beet greens? Well, silverbeet is evidently related to beetroot - and it has the same feral taste. The farofa is really cool too, but it was totally different to what I expected - I was expecting a comforting bland blanket of carb to offset the chicken, but it had a really strong flavour to it, which I think clashed with the chicken.

So in total it wasn't a satisfying meal - bad vegetable, and a clash between the meat and carb.

Waah. I'm almost embarassed to admit this, but I just didn't feel right after dinner. Many girls have their self-esteem tied to their appearance, their weight, their career, or their lovelife. After this dinner, I realised that my self-esteem is directly tied to the quality of what I produce in the kitchen. How terribly Bree Vandercamp! Shh...