Nikas Culinaria

While shopping at my membership shop-o-world-a-ramma, I could NOT restrain myself from buying some truly massive cuts of meat. I got this pork loin that was as tall as my 3 year old, no kidding. As a consequence, when I strolled past the cookbook isle, pushing my straining cart and skipping over the trail of popcorn dropped by said three year old, the “Essentials of Roasting” by Williams and Sonoma caught my eye.

Look at the cover of this hefty book, could you resist? Pure eye candy.

The eye candy is all over the book, glistening roasted morsels of all kinds adorn the pages. There are plenty of useful photo series too of how to truss a bird or roll up a roulade, etc. The photography in this beautiful book was done by Noel Barnhurst. Mr. Barnhurst’s portfolio site reveals more of his delicious images and that he has worked for some of the best food magazines like Bon Appettit, other Williams and Sonoma titles, Williams and Sonoma catalogs, Eat + Drink, etc. I have a whole lot to learn from him.

When I got home, I portioned out all the hunk-o-meats but had some chicken breasts that had to be cooked or else poultry mutiny was a certainty. Chicken breasts always bore me and I fear their dryness. For these two reasons I decided to marinate them in the following mix: Worcestershire sauce, whole black pepper corns, rubbed sage, cracked pepper, sea salt, olive oil, mushrooms, and quartered shallots and thats about it. I WANTED to put in the wine but forgot. After a few hours, I put the mushrooms and shallots on the rack you see below, put the chicken over it, poured some of the wine over that, and layered bacon over each chicken breast.

even closer!

I popped the tray into a 350 oven along with some squash for roasting.

40 minutes later, these chicken breasts were perfectly cooked and very delicious.

I was not able to show you the nice crisped up bacon in the photos below because those were scavenged almost immediately. I do not cook in a vacuum, many scavenging gremlins inhabit my kitchen.

and closer still

Additional Resources:

“Essentials of Roasting” by Williams and Sonoma

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