As a starter why not grill some nice fat garlicky prawns, some coquille St Jacques alongside some slices of courgette and aubergine for those Who don't like fish? Perhaps some chorizo too. I think lots of'people do love fish and it's very springy - with a lovely glass of rose wine. Big bowl of fruit salad to finish.
I would finish your potatoes in the duck fat, or even better for the work load, forget the duck fat.......the meal sounds lovely.

A really nice green salad and a plate of fruit--strawberries, sliced apples...whatever. Your carrots sounds amazing.
Bread and olive oil and vinegar. (I really do not care for chicken but yours sounds good and I would eat a small portion).

"----Even though rain is forecast. ---"

Sounds like an enjoyable meal. Rosemary bacon BBQ'd chickens, duck fat string fries with truffle salt ----.

I can see the clouds will part and angels will sing. :-)

Regarding duck fat, I am not sure about frying string fries twice. That may dry out the fries and at the same time making them too greasy.

dcarch

This post was edited by dcarch on Sat, Apr 20, 13 at 8:33

Sounds good to me. How about oven baked fries? Cooks illustrated has a good method which takes just 5 tbsp for three russets. Recipe works well, but it'd be steak fries. I can post it if you're interested.

I'd like to see the oven fries recipe, if possible.

Salad, grilled prawns, chorizo, and chilled rose to start. Cool. (Though I may not be able to find the right kind of chorizo, I only ever see the runny kind.).

I'm told couple #2, who know couple #3, will bring a "flourless chocolate cake." Not sure I've had one of those. Maybe it is a clue? I'm speculating there could be some anti-gluten tendencies.

I have a further idea for the spatchcocked chicken. It is easier to portion, serve, and eat if it is boneless, but grilling the chicken bone side down is important for flavor and insulation during cooking. I wonder if I can debone the whole bird, slip the meat back onto the skeleton for cooking, then easily slide the bones out of the cooked bird before serving.

I don't see why not. I probably wouldn't bone the whole thing, just the main carcass and the thigh bone.

I wouldn't read too much into the flourless chocolate cake. It's good, that's why they're making it. I'm sure you'd be told if there were any important dietary restrictions.

Here's the recipe for the fries. Now I'm wondering if the duck fat will burn and smoke up your house at those temps though. Maybe use it just for the potato coating and use peanut oil for coating the pan?

Oven Fries
Cooks Illustrated

Serves 3 to 4
Take care to cut the potatoes into evenly sized wedges so that all of the pieces will cook at about the same rate. Although it isn't required, a nonstick baking sheet works particularly well for this recipe. It not only keeps the fries from sticking to the pan but, because of its dark color, encourages deep and even browning. Whether you choose a nonstick baking sheet or a regular baking sheet, make sure that it is heavy duty. The intense heat of the oven may cause lighter pans to warp.

Ingredients
3 russet potatoes (about 8 ounces each), peeled, each potato cut lengthwise into 10 to 12 evenly sized wedges
5 tablespoons vegetable oil or peanut oil
Salt and ground black pepper
Instructions
1. Adjust oven rack to lowest position; heat oven to 475 degrees. Place potatoes in large bowl and cover with hot tap water; soak 10 minutes. Meanwhile, coat 18 by 12-inch heavy-duty rimmed baking sheet (see note) with 4 tablespoons oil and sprinkle evenly with 3/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper; set aside.

2. Drain potatoes. Spread potatoes out on triple layer of paper towels and thoroughly pat dry with additional paper towels. Rinse and wipe out now-empty bowl; return potatoes to bowl and toss with remaining 1 tablespoon oil. Arrange potatoes in single layer on prepared baking sheet; cover tightly with foil and bake 5 minutes. Remove foil and continue to bake until bottoms of potatoes are spotty golden brown, 15 to 20 minutes, rotating baking sheet after 10 minutes. Using metal spatula and tongs, scrape to loosen potatoes from pan, then flip each wedge, keeping potatoes in single layer. Continue baking until fries are golden and crisp, 5 to 15 minutes longer, rotating pan as needed if fries are browning unevenly.

3. Transfer fries to second baking sheet lined with paper towels to drain. Season with additional salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Eh, no prawns at the market I went to. But dry large scallops, flying fish roe, and real wasabi. I think we can make something up. Not sure if I'll cook the scallops, or serve as sashimi.

Purple potatoes! I got those, and red potatoes, for rainbow - or at least bi-color - fries.

Lazed out and got Pedro's pico de gallo instead of the stuff to make my own. I will just add some Anjou pears. Pedro is a guy who works at the market. He's started making p de g and selling it there, and it is excellent. I see he's branched out to tamales now. I tried a chicken & green salsa tamale. Also excellent. All his stuff is handmade, right there, that day.

SWMBO and I rode bikes for the shopping. She needs to start training for the Seattle to Portland ride in July, so I don't feel bad that it is her bike that is loaded up w/ 20 lb of groceries for the ride home :-)

Real wasabi + dry scallops = great sashimi

Wabi-sabi?!

dcarch :-)

John, you're being selfish. Stop hogging all that rain, and please send it down to CA where we need it badly.

LOL!!!

Seriously, your dinner sounds great. We just got back from two days in the Napa Valley, and your menu sounds as good as anything we got up there. Yum!

SWMBO vetoed scallop sashimi. Sadness.

When we were courting, one of our first dates was for sushi. Remember back in the late 1980s, when sushi was kind of a newer thing for girls who hadn't grown up on the coasts. So she moved to Los Angeles, joined a big law firm, and a boy took her to sushi, and she seemed to enjoy it. So the boy believed that she liked sushi, and proposed, and they were married . . . leaving out a few steps for brevity's sake, but that's the essentials. Well, after several years, it turned out that she didn't actually like raw fish after all. And let that be a cautionary tale to all you boys out there, who will be forever thwarted from serving scallop sashimi whenever the whim strikes them.

However, I have a counter-measure. I will deploy the smoking hot cast iron pan and sear the scallops so that they look cooked, but are in fact largely raw. Disguised with flying fish roe, veritable wasabi, and this pear-serrano chile relish that I'm trying out, and I sure hope it mellows in the next hour, because it is currently toe-curling!, the fundamentally raw scallops will pass undetected by the guards and reach the table. These aren't the droids you're looking for.

Oh, turns out we have three kids at the table too, so I'm making them the juvenile crowd pleaser, mashed potatoes. Except that these will be mashed rutabagas with plenty of cream, butter and nutmeg. I just enjoy torturing small children.

John, I like the raw fish but don't care as much for raw scallops. I like them best cooked until just opaque, with that seared crust from the hot pan but I'll eat them rare. Yum, it sounds delicious to me.

I also love rutabaga in nearly any incarnation, but my favorite way to eat them is mashed. However, if the kids don't like them, you can serve them the purple potatoes!

Have fun, and eat well. I'm a wuss, so I'll have to pass on that relish.

Annie

Scary scallop relish will definitely be "on the side".

Chickens have been hanging out in the refrigerator, now they are on the counter coming to room temp. They are boneless except for the drumstick and wings, have been rubbed with mesquite stuff (Costco = more laziness) all over the inside, and their skeletons will be inserted back into their bodies for grilling. Sort of gruesome looking.

I enjoy spatchcocking chicken, in a Dr. Evil sort of way. Remember that cinema classic, Predator? And the scene where the Predator rips the spine and skull from Billy's corpse, and swings it in triumph, roaring high in the moonlit jungle canopy? Brings a tear to my eye. In homage, I may have wiggled a chicken backbone once or twice myself.

Here is a link that might be useful: Predator Spine Rip

Well, I hope it was a success! I can't bring myself to open your link........still on morning coffee no 1 :-) :-) :-) :-)

I know I'm late to the party but I just wanted to say hello and suggest another method of cutting your chicken. This method allows for the cooking of the back and ribs instead of removing as with spatchcocked.

Here's a link to the method:
http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2009/06/leaping-frog-chicken

Hello bethk, welcome to the Cooking Forum.

Are you the same bethk from the other place?

dcarch

yes, sir, thanks for the welcome.

I saw the post about the chicken and just couldn't resist sharing Ms. Squirrel's chicken!

I like your friends - I don't think I'm anywhere close to their caliber but have loved lurking and looking and stealing ideas.....er, I mean borrowing such wonderful information.

Bethk, you are too humble.

Tell Barbara to join up too. There are lot's of fun members here, such as John, the OP of this thread.

dcarch

Barb gave me the link here. Imelda want's to come as well. I just needed to take a break. I'll go back sometime.

But I have to say, your friends and you take the BEST pics. One of these days I've got to get a different camera and actually attempt to make my food look like I did more than just drop it on the plate from 30 inches....

thanks again for the warm welcome!

I think the Predator did the "leaping frog" thing to another man. Imagine that - perhaps he (it?) was simply an alien chef preparing humans for the grill. I suppose to chickens we look like Predators too.

The other cool man-killing alien of '80s movie fame was the Alien, of Alien, Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien Ressurection. He (she?) wasn't a griller, preferring to bind live and melodramatic humans in gooey sacks stuck to the steamy cavern wall. More of a slow-cooking, sous-vide approach. dcarch would approve.

There have recently been a couple of movies featuring Aliens and Predators together. A fetching pairing, sort of like Julia and Jacques, if Julia were trying to eat Jacques' head while Jacques attempts to off her with an explosive spear. You'd think they would come together for a man meal - a little homo with your sapiens? some Grey Poupon? - but there must be not enough of us to go around.

Dinner turned out fine. We started out with tumblers of scotch to celebrate the end of winter. Then the scallops, nicely raw. I had cheated even further by dipping one face in a mixture of flour, salt, and paprika so that deceiving SWMBO required merely browning flour, rather than actual flesh-cooking.

Mashed rutabaga with cream, butter, and nutmeg was popular, even with kids who'd thought they were spooning up mashed potatoes. "I've never had cooked radishes, but these are good!" I didn't mention the trick of simmering the trimmed radishes in boullion; let them think radishes naturally taste like pork. Roasted carrots are good dipped in melted semi-sweet chocolate, it turns out, but drizzling would have been easier, just as effective, and more attractive.

I made a mistake with the purple and red potato string fries, salting them between layers of paper towels before deep-frying. This worked to draw out more moisture, but left the 1/8" strips limp and curly. After a few minutes frying they were crisp, but still curly. I'd wanted a pile of straight little crunchy sticks, but instead lifted from the oil a crispy tangled bird's nest thing. There is no doubt a pretty thing to do with that someday, probably involving a roast quail and eggs, but last night I brought to table what looked like a salt and pepper Afro.

The boneless roasted chicken was fun. It lends itself to a little prank. You set what looks like a whole bird on a platter, skin side up, cut it up at the table as guests watch, and dish out the pieces. As your guests eat, they exclaim "where are the bones?" Then you get to wave a chicken backbone at them, howling in the moonlight. There may have, ahem, been a little backbone waving at the table. I was pretty toasted by then.

The special daylight-simulating, depression-combating, wallet-draining light bulbs in my kitchen burned out during dinner, so most of the plating was done in darkness or at least dimness. Hence, picture taking was minimal. Dommage.

Uncooked scallops. Scary relish on the side.

"Uncooked scallops. Scary relish on the side."

Uncooked scallops? or Coquilles Saint-Jacques Au Bleu A Point?

dcarch

John, you do make your dinners interesting, LOL, even without the Aliens/Predators reflections.

Of course, we really are the Predators, so you're pretty close. And I remember chasing my sister around with the chicken feet. (grin) Not exactly a backbone, but still....

The potatoes sound interesting, now those I would have liked to have seen.

Bethk, I'm assuming you are not talking about me when you talk about those wonderful pictures, LOL. I do make up in quantity what I lack in quality though, I think.

Annie

Barbara checking in.I agree the food pics are top notch.If I where ever to be sitting at Arch table I would never put fork to food .lol lol.
The other pics here are wonderful. clean,fresh,quality.

I am having a hard time finding my way around this HUGE HUGE forum. Not to mention the format is not what I am used to in a forum.at
good to see no one is drunk hehehehe

Barbara, not to hijack this thread, I started a new thread.

dcarch

Here is a link that might be useful: Welcome

John, the sushi story is so cute! Bones--like the new KFC commercial--I ATE THE BONES!!

Your guests must have been crazy impressed, but I'm sure they expect that from you.