Sunday Dinner - Roast lemon chicken with veggies, Tarte Normand aux Pommes (apple tart with custard)

I've always wanted to have long, relaxing family dinners at the table.  I'm starting now and hopefully the boys will come home on weekends from college to have dinner (at least occasionally).

Roast chicken is an easy Sunday dinner and looks like it took a lot of work.  I've made lots of different kinds, but decided to try this version after hearing that famed Italian chef Marcella Hazan passed away- this is her chicken with lemons: Roast Chicken

I pretty much followed her directions on the chicken- except I added vegetables to my roasting pan. I added two russet potatoes, cut into large chunks, a Walla Walla sweet onion also in large chunks, several cloves of garlic, and about 1/4 inch slices of delicata squash (if you haven't had it- it tastes a lot like butternut, but you can eat the outer skin).  I drizzled some olive oil on my veggies- and seasoned with salt and pepper.

Chicken and Veg

My guy carves a mean chicken

The chicken was fantastic.  The lemons inside of it give it this awesome lemon flavor and keep everything moist.  So good.  I repeat...sooooo gooooood.  I highly recommend this recipe.

I made a quick pan sauce to go with the chicken- whisked flour, chardonnay, lemon juice, and rosemary into the drippings after removing some of the fat.  It was a delicious sauce, but the guys didn't even eat it- the chicken didn't need anything.  Seriously, make this chicken.



For dessert (which I confess, we ate at 3:30 pm well before dinner), I made the Tarte Normade aux Pommes from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  You can get the recipe here:  Tarte Normand aux Pommes

I'll admit, this one was a lot of work.  You make a dough which is close to a pie crust and let it rest for an hour.  The recipe in the book suggest that instead of a pastry blender, you use your fingers to mix the fat into the flour so you can get used to how the dough is supposed to come together.  Scary- but I tried it and I'm glad I did.  At a certain point of mixing it just sort of makes sense...you can feel the elements of the dough becoming cohesive.  You need to be careful to work quickly and use your fingers and not your whole hand, though- you don't want the butter to melt.  Also...I'm opposed to vegetable shortening (hydrogenated oils) so I substituted butter for the shortening making for an all-butter crust which was very good.  I didn't miss the shortening one bit.

After that, you roll the dough into a spring-form pan and bake until the sides are sturdy.  Then you remove the spring-form and bake a little longer. Then peel, core, and slice apples, and combine with cinnamon and sugar.  I arranged these in three spirals in the tart shell and baked again for 20 minutes.

Then custard...oh the custard.  It's really easy to whisk up and is so creamy, with a hint of brandy.  You pour the custard over the apples in the tart shell and bake again.  Add some powdered sugar (I wasn't sure I wanted it, but it did add something to the end product) and bake a bit more until the custard is brown and a fork comes out clean.  There's no vanilla in this recipe, but I swear my house smelled like vanilla and apples and awesome.  It's one of those desserts that everyone eats and stops talking.  They just sigh these long contented sighs.  You cannot buy this kind of awesome in a store.

Tarte Normande aux Pommes

Happy cooking!