Leftover Thursday - Lemon Roasted Vegetables

Around about Thursday is when my dinner planning stops.  There are usually some leftover ingredients in the fridge that need to be used, and caution is thrown to the wind.  And that's where I found myself this afternoon, facing a half-full (or half-empty, depending how you look at it) container of mushrooms, a lemon that was nearing the end of its prime, half a bunch of collard greens, part of a head of broccoli, and two chicken breasts.  There are probably about a million combinations of those ingredients that would result in a delicious dinner (or, you know, at least ten), but this is the one I came up with.  

And don't worry, y'all - my new found love of early American cooking is still going strong.  Early Americans had a variety of poultry and fowl available to them, and Amelia Simmons has this general advice for the homecook choosing a bird: "Having before ftated that the female in almost every inftance, is preferable to the male, and pecularily fo in the the Peacock, which, tho' beautifully plumaged, is tough, hard, ftringy and untafted, and even indelicious - while the Pea Hen is exactly otherwife, and the queen of all birds."  I'm not even going to touch that "ladies are better than gents" statement, or make a broader analogy about peacocks or anything.  Though it would certainly be easy to do...

American Cookery, the first cookbook published in America by an American. 

 And here I'll just add an off-topic note: I find the f's as s's intriguing, since I can't figure out a clear pattern between when to use an f rather than an s.  I have noticed that in words that end in a double s, like dress or truss, the first s is generally an f, but the second one never is (drefs, but never dresf, although in the past tense it's dreffed).  Matt, my resident American historian, believes it has something to do with the type-setting, since the "f" is a narrower letter than the "s" and could be used in instances where the printer was trying to conserve page space.  That makes sense, but I still see f's in place of s's in instances where the line doesn't cross the entire page (crofs the page?), thus implying that conserving page space is not such a concern.  But I do enjoy reading it out loud, although the f's really trip me up! 

Collards, juft hanging out.

Anyway, back to Amelia.  In terms of chicken, she is of the belief that "either kind are good, and the yellow leg'd the beft, and their tafte the fweeteft." Well, that's a relief.  The chicken package doesn't say whether the bird we were about to enjoy was a guy or a girl, but I can only hope it had yellow legs.  I had originally intended on using one of her recipes for the chicken, but most of her poultry recipes call for a whole bird, which I didn't have and wasn't about to go out to buy.  Kind of defeats the whole purpose of leftovers day, right?  So, what's a girl to do?

Lemons!

And Amelia's not big on vegetable recipes - although, as Matt says, "there probably weren't many vegetarians back then." She does agree with pretty much every cook ever, though, that the best vegetables are the fresh ones: "the beft cook cannot alter the firft quality, they muft be good, or the cook will be difappointed."  She then proceeds to give a bunch of recipes for all kinds of boiled vegetables - boiled cabbage, boiled broad beans, boiled green peas, boiled asparagus, boiled French beans, etc.  Not sure why so many recipes are needed for boiling, but I guess that's the British influence - to make everything as bland as possible. 

Hopefully those were yellow leg'd chickens!

I'm a big fan of roasted (not boiled) vegetables, and recently began roasting them with lemon to add a nice, citrusy tang.  Roasting sweetens the lemon a bit, so they're not so bitingly tart, and the juice makes a yummy dressing for the rest of the roasted veggies.  For the chicken, I dredged it in egg and matzo meal (since I didn't have any breadcrumbs) and cooked it in a skillet with the mushrooms and an onion. 

Nothing Early American about this meal. 

Looks like the way Amelia is really going to influence my cooking is through baking.  Her cookbook is among the first to use chemical leavening agents in her baked goods, which I'm also reading up on and will post about soon.  She also presents some uniquely American desserts that I'm anxious to try.

Lemon Roasted Vegetables

This works well with broccoli, and would also work with brussels sprouts, cauliflower, or asparagus. Although, to be honest, I would do it with just about any vegetable and it would probably be good.

1 head broccoli, cut into spears
1 lb. collards, chopped
1 clove garlic, quartered
1 lemon, sliced into 1/4 in thick slices
1 Tbsp olive oil
salt, pepper

Heat oven to 375.  Toss ingredients together, and spread on greased baking sheet.  Roast approximately 20-30 minutes, or until done.  I usually place the lemon slices on the vegetables directly to make sure they soak up the juice.