Tonight I had big plans for dinner, oh yes oh my. I was planning to roast a chicken to golden-brown perfection and roast some nice veggies with it (broccoli!) and have salad as another vegetable. A nice, healthful meal and we would have a nice chicken carcass with which we'd make stock. Off I hied to ye olde Wegman's to purchase said chicken and broccoli and salad greens (as our salad greens from before our Christmas jaunt up North had expired disgustingly in our refrigerator)... and other healthful options for us to nosh on this week.
Would you believe, that of ALL grocery stores in all of the world, WEGMANS would not have any plain whole chickens?! I just about died! Granted, I was at one of their smaller stores, not the usual flagship store in DeWitt that I normally patronize. But still! No whole chickens!
Upon further inspection I did see a little chicken "kit" that contained a whole chicken, seasoned with lemons and herbs, all tied up in an oven bag and in its own foil pan. For an extra $3, of course. Well, since there were no plain whole chickens and I wanted to roast this bad boy myself (not get one of those oh-so-tasty rotisserie chickens they sell pre-cooked), I bit the bullet and bought the chicken kit.
I am not a fan of oven bags. It left the skin slimy, and it stuck to the skin on top so that I didn't even get my nice piece of seasoned chicken skin to go with my breast meat. Not to mention it must have been a puny chicken, because once hubby took his (sizable) portion, there was only enough meat left on the bones for carcass-boiling. Needless to say, I'm miffed and plan to go only to the DeWitt store from now on so I can always get my whole, big chickens that will render more than a carcass boil out of them.
I like saying "carcass."
On to the broccoli bit.
I wanted to make something a little more exciting than steamed broccoli to go with dinner, because I know that if I eat steamed broccoli, I will slather it in butter to make it palatable. Not good for a FussyFoodie who wants to lose 50 pounds in the next year. I asked a friend of extremely Italian heritage what she does to make her broccoli so delicious (she always has tasty broccoli) and she said "salt, pepper, and a bit of cheese." Well, I had these ingredients. I also had the idea to go a little hog wild and really make special broccoli.
So I took the frozen broccoli cuts and threw them in an 8x8 pan and drizzled them with about a tablespoon of olive oil.
Salt and pepper = seasoned salt and freshly ground pepper. I did that. I'd guess about a teaspoon of seasoned salt and an equal amount of pepper.
Parmesan cheese. I sprinkled enough of this stuff (from the green can - I know, I'm a Philistine) on top of the broccoli to make it appear to have a meager crumb coating. A mere dusting. You could see that it was broccoli, but it was white-colored broccoli.
Stir.
Then I added about a tablespoon of chicken stock to lubricate things better. It helped disperse the spices and cheese evenly.
Into the oven it went for just over 25 minutes. Maybe 27. I put it in at about 6:35 and took it out about 7ish, but I know it was a couple minutes after.
It was still crisp. It was flavorful. It wasn't sulfurous at all. I told FussyHubby that even *he* would like this broccoli. He still staunchly refused, but he did admit that he would consume zucchini with a similar treatment.
I'm not going to Wegman's tomorrow though. Not even for zucchini.
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