Roasted Chicken in Milk

 I keep seeing this chicken recipe all over the internet:  http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/chicken-recipes/chicken-in-milk

Everyone describes it as the best roast chicken you will ever eat.  When I see something like this I can't make it fast enough. I roast a lot of chickens.  Heck, I roast one for Teddy each week along with any other ones I make.  I think my roast chicken is perfect but I always think you can improve anything so I gave this a shot.

 First of all, it calls for browning the whole chicken in a bit of oil before it goes in the oven.  I never do this with my own recipe.  It's an added step and a bit tricky when it comes to flipping the bird around.  It also calls for adding heads of garlic, a handful of fresh sage, lemon zest and a cinnamon stick.

 Then you add milk and put it in the oven.

 You need something to spread the roasted garlic on so I made Italian semolina bread.  You can find this recipe here:  http://octoberfarm.blogspot.com/2011/05/italian-bread.html

Here is the chicken right out of the oven.

This bread is perfect to serve with this dish.

It has a nice tight crumb.

During the cooking, the chicken and milk form this gravy which you serve over the chicken.

So, is this the best roasted chicken in the entire world?  No.  It's good, very good in fact.  Maybe it is just me, but I did not like the cinnamon flavor.  Next time, if there is a next time, I would leave it out and rely on just the lemon and sage flavor.  Also, I don't think I would bother browning the chicken beforehand.  This chicken is exceptionally tender and falls off the bone.  The roasted garlic is delicious.  I found the gravy to be a bit on the bland side. So in the future, I would leave it in the pot and reduce it after I removed the chicken.  I would enrich the flavor too.  My family loved it and thought I was being too picky.

When we were in Amish country, we bought lot of freshly picked strawberries so I canned them.

We've been using them in smoothies and on toast.  I gave a bunch away and most of my friends have been eating them on vanilla ice cream. This is the first time I have made this using freshly picked strawberries.  You can see how much juice there is on the bottom of each jar.  What a difference from store bought.  The flavor is intense and the stems popped right off.  No more store bought for me.  Strawberry season is about over here now but I must remember next spring to can a lot more so we can have these all through the winter. And maybe not give so much of it away!