Everyday food porn

Wasn't sure what to call this post, since it is food porn, but not game food, not exotic and basically nothing more than what is often called comfort food these days. Didn't want to call it "comfort food porn," though, because that just sounded wrong. Take out the food -- what is comfort porn? Porn involving well-padded furniture and no foreign objects? Hell, I don't know, I just didn't like the sound of it.

Anyway, Sunday night I fixed a roast chicken. Nothing weird, exotic or complicated, but food porn is food porn, and we're still a few weeks away from game food porn. Only two weeks until Labor Day food porn, though, so stay tuned.

The chicken is important, but a roast chicken  starts with the vegetables. I usually go with potatoes, carrots, onions and celery. Other people throw in garlic, mushrooms and all kinds of other stuff, but the basics are always good. In this case, the potatoes, carrots and onions all came from the home garden:

Also had celery, but had to buy that -- didn't grow celery this year. Anyway, you'll want about a half-dozen medium potatoes, a half-dozen carrots, the equivalent of two medium onions and about a half-dozen celery ribs. Peel the carrots, clean up the celery, cut the celery ribs in half and split them lengthwise:

Chop those suckers up. I usually just cut chop them all perpendicular to the long axis, so that you have nice, cute circular slices of carrot and smiley-face celery slices. However, you can cut your carrots into slices, as is most commonly seen for veggie dips. Note the carrots on the left:

Take your pick. Now, get your onions.

Quarter them.

You can peel your potatoes or not. I left the skins on. Cut them into chunks, though -- smaller than quarters, but size is up to you.

Now, get out the bird. Mine was a five-pound roaster. Put it in a roasting pan on a rack.

Salt and pepper the bird to taste, then baste it with some olive oil. Or butter. Yes, I was drinking beer at the time. It is not necessary for the recipe. Also, I had jarred some tomatoes, as you also can see. Please, don't feel as if you are not worthy to enter my kitchen simply because you do not grow and can your own vegetables. But therapy will help.

Put all those chopped-up vegetables in the roasting pan surround the chicken.

Add about 1-1/2 cups of chicken broth to the roasting pan to keep the vegetables moist. You can tent the chicken with aluminum foil, but be sure to take the tent off for long enough to brown the chicken.

 Preheat the oven to 325 F. Allow about 15 minutes per pound of bird, and don't be afraid to go 20 minutes per pound. You can make gravy -- I did from the drippings (and, of course, the chicken broth you put into the vegetables) although it is not required. Fix some kind of bread, and bon appetit.