Started off the weekend with a drink with some zumba friends. We went over to Rapture which is one of my favorite spots to chill on a couch, have a martini and chat it up with friends. The boy was out of town Friday night so it was nice to be out with some friends to keep me company.
Saturday, I spent the day making a fantastic meal for a friend of mine.
Menu
Artichokes with lemon butter sauce
Roasted Garlic Chicken with root vegetables
Chocolate buttermilk cupcakes with coffee and cinnamon butter cream
I started by marinating a few pieces of chicken with garlic, lemon, rosemary and more. (recipe to follow)
I then prepared the cake for my chocolate buttermilk cupcakes(recipe to follow). The original recipe was designed for an actual cake but I decided to try and perfect my cupcake recipe. I had a C level experience when I tried to create gluten free cupcakes. They turned out okay but not at all what I expected. Once my friend arrived, I was in the middle of boiling the artichokes and creating the lemon butter dip. After our fulfilling meal, we both curled up on the couch, enjoyed some cupcakes and watched "Let the Right One In," which has been recreated and entitled "Let me In." What a fun girls night in!
Sunday, another fun girls day-this time with grandma and aunt. We attended a Spanish performance on East 4th street. The play was called Sabina y Lucrecia. Sabina y Lucrecia is about two women who escape an insane asylum and hide away in Lucrecia's old house. The characters seems to be normal at times but they seems to provoke the craziness in each other. I tried to figure out if these women could possible live in "normal" society, but it seems the only place safe for them would be in a hospital. They are not able to tackle the simple things in life such as walking. There is a scene where Sabina wakes up and is distressed because she cannot recall how to walk, when we previously saw her doing so. Sabina ties random pieces of string to her feet in hopes that this will cushion her feet while she hops around. As the play progressed and their craziness increased, the tension started to build. They became hostile and abusive towards each other. We hope they will become long time friends, but in the end, we are fully aware that they are psychiatric patients. After such a tragic story, grams, aunt and I decided to head to dinner at Yerba Buena. The finance met up with us and we all enjoyed a nice family meal.
Recipes:
ROASTED GARLIC CHICKEN WITH ROOT VEGETABLES
Chef Andrew Carmellini cooks his fire-roasted garlic chicken for two (above) in a wood-burning oven at Locanda Verde ($21 per person; Greenwich Hotel, 379 Greenwich St.; 212-925-3797). The recipe below, adapted from Carmellini’s “Urban Italian” cookbook (Bloomsbury), can be made using a run-of-the-mill oven. Serves four.
For the marinade:
2 tbsp. chopped garlic
½ cup rice vinegar or white wine vinegar
½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
¼ cup grapeseed oil or corn oil
2 tbsp. dried oregano, preferably on the branch
2 tbsp. chopped rosemary
1 lemon, thinly sliced
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
2 tbsp. salt
1 tsp. course-ground black pepper
1 tbsp. sugar
For the chicken:
2 whole chickens, halved
½ tsp. each of salt and coarse-ground black pepper
For the vegetables:
¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
¼ lb. each of four types of seasonal vegetables such as cauliflower florets, fingerling potatoes, celery root and seeded delicata squash, all cut into small pieces of roughly equal size (about 1 inch)
1. Combine all the marinade ingredients in a bowl and mix well.
2. Place chicken halves in large container and pour marinade over the top. Cover with plastic wrap and marinate in fridge for at least eight hours, or overnight.
3. Preheat broiler.
4. Remove chicken from marinade (but don’t wipe the herbs off). Season with salt and pepper.
5. Place chickens on a roasting rack and broil them until the skins are crisp, about five minutes.
6. While the chicken is broiling, combine all the vegetables in a large roasting pan and toss with oil. Spread in a single layer and season to taste with salt and pepper.
7. Reduce the heat to 425 degrees and put the vegetables on a separate oven rack.
8. Bake the chicken until the juice runs clear when you stick a leg with a knife, about 20 minutes. Remove from oven.
9. Increase the heat to 475 degrees. While the chicken rests, continue to cook the vegetables until fork-tender.
Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/lifestyle/food/salt_of_the_hearth_9ReQqhx2zqTAFzt4TejUsK#ixzz0d4dgCBsk
Chocolate Buttermilk Cupcakes:
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
1/2 cup (1 stick or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup (6 7/8 ounces) firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup (4 ounces) granulated sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups (6 3/4 ounces) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (2 5/8 ounces) non-Dutch cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
Preheat the oven to 325°F. Butter and lightly flour a cupcake pan. In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugars and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the egg and beat well, then the buttermilk and vanilla. Don’t worry if the batter looks a little uneven. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt together right into your wet ingredients. Stir together with a spoon until well-blended but do not overmix. Scrape down the batter in the bowl, making sure the ingredients are well blended.
Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cupcake comes out clean. Cool on rack for about an hour, at which point you make the butter cream.
Coffee and Cinnamon Butter Cream
4 cups of confectioners sugar
1 stick of butter (room temperature)
1 egg (room temperature)
1 tablespoon of heavy cream
1 teaspoon of ground coffee
1 teaspoon of coffee
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
Cream butter until fluffy. Add confectioner's sugar and continue creaming until well blended. Then add the egg and blend well.
Add the rest of the ingredients and blend on low speed until moistened. Beat at high speed until frosting is fluffy.
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