Back to the Basics/ Baked Chicken and Potatoes

      

When I first started this blog, I had in mind an easy cookbook which my3 daughters could refer to in order to see their grandmother's and great grandmother's recipes. It since has become a tale of how two cultures could live in harmony, ie., my New York influenced Italian American heritage and my wife's Guyana bred Indian heritage. Cooking for her has made me a better cook and possibly even a better man, but my original purpose has been somewhat obscured by the more immediate one of getting dinner on the table every night. Old readers will recall that ours is a part time marriage so to speak, with a now two day a week hiatus on Mondays and Tuesdays which allows me to eat meat and Neeta (Current Wife) to make food for her two grown up boys for the week. Well, after a discussion recently with the only daughter who actually reads my blog, I thought I would return to my original purpose and get down some of my mom's and grandma's old recipes for what consisted of our basic diet as kids. Yes, there are other family recipes in the pages of my blog, but I thought I would in the posts that follow, provide some basic Ambrosino recipes especially those that contained meat. Perhaps some day, my grandchildren, who up to now aren't even interested in eating, might be curious about what their grandfather was doing all that time in the kitchen. Perhaps. So with that next generation in mind, I give you your great grandma's recipe (slightly altered) for baked chicken and potatoes.

So first I marinated the chicken in the morning with a little sliced onion, a clove of garlic minced, 1/2 a lemon squeezed, a splash of Lemoncello  (or white wine) a little dried thyme, some olive oil and salt and pepper. I then covered the dish in plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge till about 5:00 PM

At 5:00, I preheated the oven to 375 degrees, added some baby carrots and a cut up russet potato to the baking dish, and cooked it for about an hour, stirring the vegetables and turning over the chicken every 20 minutes. For the last 15 minutes, I turned the oven up to 425 degrees. My instant read thermometer read 160 degrees to tell me the chicken was done perfectly.

Grandma's baked chicken and potatoes! With a little salad, a nice meal that my kiddies always enjoyed.