My mother-in-law recently gave me a beautiful pottery to roast chicken. At the center of the dish is a cup-like structure to set the chicken on vertically, with a hollow center for liquid of your choice. For this recipe I chose Sapporo beer to place in the center of the dish, then stuffed an herb mixture under the chicken’s skin. I also sprinkled sea salt and black pepper on the outside of the chicken. My 4.5 pound organic bird roasted for two and a half hours. It came out juicy and flavorful, just as I hoped and hungered for.
On one of our trips to Napa, Ron and I ate at The Wine Bounty Hunter, where we thought it would be funny to get a similarly-cooked chicken roasted with a beer can inside it. With the gift from my mother-in-law, it dawned on us we could now recreate this Southern classic, but not have any aluminum contamination from cans. It’s a double-win!
Sapporo Roasted Organic Chicken with a side of organic beet and dill salad tossed in an orange vinaigrette. ©Reel Chow
For the weekend we headed upstate to Medusa, New York, where my sister and brother-in-law own five acres in the Catskills. They live in New York City and commute on the weekends to their country property. While continuing their building plans for a Green Home, a very cool 1955 vintage Spartan is where they sleep at this time. They have solar panels for electricity and a well for fresh water. They’ve put in a garden which grows the most amazing organic vegetables, fruits and herbs all summer and well into the fall.
I made the tomato sauce based on my 