Chickpea Mughlai

After watching Food, Inc. for like 5 minutes, I decided I didn't need to eat so much meat, particularly chicken and eggs. I LOVE eggs, so I'm in a bit of a moral dilemma because stopping eating them myself isn't going to change the egg industry. Anyway, I had made this dish the first time following Nigella Lawson's recipe for chicken mughlai down to the inclusion of heavy cream and it was delish. This time, I didn't have any cream, but the yogurt is creamy enough, and I went with two cans of chickpeas instead of the chicken. Still very tasty, and you can eat and ease your conscious for a night.

roast chicken

My first roast chicken - I bought the Halal version because it says it's free of antibiotics. The downside was the head was attached and the poor thing just looked so sad and pathetic, I almost became a vegetarian right there. But um... back to the recipe! I based mine off Thomas Keller's which is so simple it seems almost wrong. Making sure the chicken is very dry after washing, and not adding extra liquids or basting during roasting, he says, makes for a crispier skin. But I couldn't leave well enough alone, and threw some root vegetables in the pan, and stuffed the chicken with garlic and lemon. A weird fact, the lemon turns the garlic an unnatural bluish green! The skin still came out very cripsy the white meat very juicy and the dark meat falling off the bone. A pretty successful first try, if I do say so myself.