Russian Potato Croquettes...or whatever

Welcome to my blog. Let me start by saying that I am feeling queasy writing those words (though not because of the Russian croquette's*, 'cause those were delicious.) My roommate suggested I start a blog, and then there was badgering, and then she followed me around the kitchen taking pictures of me and I feared she would ghost write a blog in my name attributing boxed mashed potatoes to my culinary credit and I couldn't let that stand.

Anyway, tonight I decided on roast chicken and Russian potato croquettes. This is my second roast chicken, which was a big step for me as roasting something as big as a chicken felt really Martha Stewarty. With help from my mom and my sister-in-law the way I settled on to roast a chicken is as follows: take out giblets (ew), rinse chicken, pat dry inside and out and salt and pepper inside and out. After that it is pretty much a preference situation. I take a few tablespoons of butter and mash it up with herbs (whatever you have handy, dried or fresh) and spread over and under the skin (again, ew.) I also chop an onion into quarters and crack some garlic and fill the cavity (OK, my last ew.)


Stick in the oven at 350 until the thing pops up...yeah, I go by the thing.



As for the Russian croquette's, it is from a recipe I found on salon.com: http://tiny.cc/y1m3C

I'm not going to go through the whole thing because, well, its on the link and there is even an instructional video, but there are a couple of notes I would like to make:

1. My lord that is a lot of oil. As I sit here typing this I find it coming out of my pores. I feel like i'm one step closer to understanding the fall of the USSR - I mean how can you function with that much oil in your system.

2. I don't think I've ever "sweat" an onion before, but be advised that this whole thing takes awhile, like a long while.

3. You may note from the pictures that I added cheese. I like cheese, and it turns out I do not regret the decision. If anything I regret not adding more cheese to this already artery clogging meal. I shredded cheddar on the filling mixture, but any hard cheese would probably be great.

4. While the instructional video is really very lovely, the potato is harder to handle then it looks; especially when you realize that the chicken is done and you want to get a move on, so needless to say my croquette's were comically larger than pictured on Salon. Note: this did not effect the deliciousness.



5. I didn't feel the need to cook this in the oven. It was hot all the way through after the deep frying bit.





*Just as a totally ridiculous side note, you may notice that Salon calls them cutlets. That makes me mildly uncomfortable for no reason, so I have changed the name.




Anyway those are my notes for your consideration. As Bridgett joked tonight I really only make roast chicken to make chicken stock, which will be my next post if you are still interested in my New Year's resolution gone blog.