Weekend Challenge, Part #2

After making the calzones, it was on to Saturday. Susan had bought regular chicken thighs, not the boneless, skinless kind, but no matter; those are awesome, too. At first, I thought about cooking them in a bunch of liquid, and throwing rice in the pot with the chicken to cook, but that really didn't sound all that hot to me. So I started thinking about something with pasta instead.

I wanted to go simple, with few ingredients, so I heated up some olive oil in my La Crueset dutch oven, and browned the chicken thighs with plenty of salt and pepper. Once those were done, I added about 3 tablespoons of butter to the oil and let that cook and brown a little bit. To that I added 4 medium onions, chopped, and 2 red peppers, also chopped. I stirred to coat them in the oil/chicken fat/butter, and then put the lid on the pot. I cooked the onions and peppers until they were nicely caramelized, taking the lid off towards the end to reduce the liquid. I put the chicken thighs back in, and then added a 28-oz can of diced tomatoes. That didn't look like quite enough, so I threw in another 14-oz can. I let the simmer for about 3 hours, and then served it over penne with copious amounts of parmesan.

On Sunday, I had a smallish pork roast to contend with. I initially considered cubing the meat and braising with rice and beans in a southwesterny sort of way, but then it turned out that Susan had forgotten to get me any chiles. Plus, after braising the chicken, I kind of wanted something different. So, I took the pork roast (a 2.6 pound bone-in picnic roast), rubbed him all over with olive oil, and then salt and pepper, and let it sit out to come up to room temperature.

After a couple hours, I pre-heated my grill and threw the roast on high heat to sear it on all sides. As that was going, I started my potatoes. I took about a 1.5 lbs of red potatoes, diced them (about a 1 inch dice), and tossed them with olive oil and two cans of artichoke hearts in a large meat roasting pan. I slid that into a 350F degree oven.

Once the roast was seared nicely, I turned off the right side burner, and slid him over, intending to cook the roast over indirect heat, like I do with ribs. The roast was a bit fatty, and I didn't want flareups. Unfortunately, when I stuck in my instant read thermometer about 45 minutes later, I got nada. Since the potatoes were rapidly reaching readiness, I turned the right side burner back on, turned all the burners to med-low, and put the roast over direct heat.

Once the potatoes were fork tender, I liberally coated them in parmesan cheese, and slid them back into the oven. I took the roast off the grill, and let it rest while the potatoes were cooking. It had a very nice crust from the grill, and looked really good.

In the end, the roast turned out very flavorful, although there wasn't as much meat on it as I had thought. No matter, the left overs and bone are going to become part of some navy bean soup this week. The potatoes were good, although both Susan and I agreed that the artichoke hearts didn't really add anything. They tasted fine, but the potatoes would have been just as good without them. So, they are going to get combined with some ground lamb, sauteed with a bit of cinnamon and cumin, along with a can of diced tomatoes, and make some sort of Greekish/lambish potato thing.