My Coastal Kitchen

Herb Roasted Chicken and Braised Greens

A Presidential Recipe from the Chefs at the White House

I have never purchased a Food Network Magazine, until about 3 days ago. I couldn't help but wonder WHY have I never got this magazine before? I LOVE the Food Network. The magazine was GREAT and I will definately be subscribing to it. So many recipes caught my attention, but this one jumped out at me. I love fresh herbs, and had most of these on hand already.

These are the things you will need.

Could you see?
There is a red onion, some bacon, fresh thyme, fresh parsley, fresh rosemary, olive oil, chicken broth, 2 bunches of kale, and 3 1/2 pounds of chicken. I used leg quarters. We happen to love dark meat at my house. We are soooooo bad. You could certainly use whatever cuts of chicken you prefer. It is ideal to not remove the skin or bones prior to cooking.

Remember that rosemary from the picture?

You grab that and chop it up real nice like this. Then you throw it into a baking dish.............just like this.

I am so sure you remember the parsley and thyme. Go ahead and chop that up and toss it into the dish with the rosemary. Then add that olive oil that was in the picture. A funny thing happend to me, and I spaced out for a bit. I forgot to put the dijon mustard in the original photo of the ingredients. It just so happens that you are going to need a bit of this. A tablespoon to be exact.

Grab that old whisk and give it all a good mix. The next thing you want to do is get the chicken pieces and toss them all around in the mix. Really coat them as much as you can. When you feel that they are coated sufficiently, cover them and refrigerate for at least one hour and as much as 24 hours.

I only marinated mine for an hour. It turned out just fine.

Now you want to dice up that bacon just like this. Throw it into a hot pot/dutch oven and let the fat render. This should take about 4 minutes or so.

I also feel the need to tell y'all that this next picture is where I found the "food" setting on my camera. I am thinking my photography is improving already!!!

While that bacon is cooking

go ahead and chop that onion up. It doesn't have to be to fine. It is going to cook down with the kale anyway.

Throw that into the pot with the bacon and cook until the onion becomes translucent. This should only take 5 or 6 minutes.

While you've got that going, you can take the stems out of your Kale and tear it into pieces. I didn't get a picture of this for you because my thumb still hurt from the last time I tried to get too fancy with the chopping and picture taking.

But, this is what it looks like when the deed is done.

Just throw that into the pot with the bacon and onion. Pour the chicken stock into the pot.

Throw a lid on it, and cook over low heat and voila!!! You have a big empty pot of kale in just a few minutes. Isn't it amazing how quick they cook down and leave you with nothing.

Even more amazing is the fact that I took an awesome picture of my chicken going into the oven, which it needs to do. It needs to go into a preheated oven at 450 degrees on a foil lined baking sheet. Once it's there, it needs to cook for about 45 minutes and the skin will be sooooo nice and crispy. Wouldn't it be great if I hadn't lost the pictures? I still promise to be more organized soon. Really, really, soon. So, lets pretend that we baked the chicken that we tossed in the herb marinade. Then lets pretend that we got it out of the oven and the skin was all crispy and delicous. I think it would something like this when we plated it with the kale that we cooked.