Christmas Eve Dinner

     Oh the dinner we ate last night was one of my best meals yet...in my opinion.  Awhile back I purchased Jamie Oliver's Meals in Minutes cookbook.  Besides flipping through pages and drooling on a few photographs of dishes, the book has not been used much in the way of preparing and cooking a delicious dish, until last night.  The Naked Chef's Tray Baked Chicken recipe was the one I choose to make, but I made slight changes from his version yet still created a masterpiece.  

     A couple tender chicken breasts lay on a thin bed of olive oil, a generous sprinkling of paprika and some oregano while a pat of butter rested on each breast. The brussel sprouts drizzled in olive oil and rosemary salt (yep, rosemary flavored sea salt) and pepper baking in the oven.  Red potatoes quartered and softening in the boiling water seasoned with rosemary.  Once the chicken and potatoes were done on the stove top, I stuck them into the oven on low boiler setting for ten minutes.  The chicken laid with a quartered lemon and a few bay leafs drizzled with olive oil while the potatoes in their own roasting pan were drizzled with olive oil, rosemary salt and pepper, slightly mashed yet still whole in their own quartered section.

     The chicken was tender, juicy and flavorful, the potatoes were flavorful with the right amount of softness not over done and the brussel sprouts were buttery delicious even though I didn't use butter.  In all, it probably took me 30 minutes start to finish to make this and the clean up was not bad at all.  Why, again, do I have a difficult time stepping both feet into the kitchen to create and be creative?

     I do know that I need to not only read recipes but to throughly read through them and think through all the steps needed to complete before I begin tossing ingredients together.  G is so right, it is all about the timing of the foods; you can't have the chicken over cooked while waiting for the potatoes to finish cooking.  Good thing there was no waiting on any item and each item turned out perfectly...again, in my opinion.

     Damn it, I ought to have taken a photo of my masterpiece...guess I will have to make it again to get that delicious photo and have you all drooling in your keyboard just as I drool in this tantalizing cookbook.