Meat and Veggies

Russ and I wanted to take advantage of the nice weather and our new patio and cook out tonight. For some reason we have several cans of beer in the fridge right now, so we decided to do Beer Can Chicken. Earlier today I had been thumbing through several of my cookbooks and landed on an asparagus recipe of Ina Garton’s that we have not tried before that looked simple and tasty. It is for Parmesan Roasted Asparagus. Russ requested black eye peas, so that with sliced fresh strawberries rounded out our meal.

For the Beer Can Chicken (also known as Drunk Chicken) Russ rubbed some of his latest spice mixture that he used with his ribs on the outside and under the skin. He then stuck several rosemary sprigs in the beer and put it on the Egg for about two hours. I know I have mentioned before how much we like cooking with whole chickens and this is another great way to use one. You can pretty much do whatever you like to the chicken as far as seasoning it. We have used salt, pepper and the beer before and it turns out flavorful and moist. I would recommend being liberal with your seasoning on and under the skin. With Russ’ spice blend we both agreed that next time it would be better to let it hang out for a couple hours with the spices on it to absorb more of the flavor. The chicken turned out very moist and tasty tonight.

We both love asparagus and despite having several recipes we love for it I am always up for a new one. This recipe is not that different from ones we have tried before, however, we have not used Parmesan cheese on it before. Thinking back on it now I am not quite sure why we haven’t because the saltiness of the Parmesan worked really well with the asparagus. For this recipe you put the asparagus on a baking sheet and drizzle them with olive oil, salt and pepper. They then roast in a 400 F oven for about 10 to 15 minutes. When you pull them out you sprinkle the Parmesan cheese over them and pop them back in the oven for another minute. The result was delicious. Russ rates the asparagus a 9.

Our kitchen has been pretty dormant this month and this week is unfortunately not going to break that trend. I am busy every night after work this week, so there won’t be much action in our kitchen for the next few days. Russ has offered to cook one night this week (as he did last week – which was yummy!), so I am looking forward to seeing and tasting what he makes.

(Cash is hanging out in the Bobcat that did some of the work on our backyard.)