Blue Apron meal #2: Roasted Chicken with Jalapeño-Herb Salsa

[thistlechaser]

Recipe here.
Cooking time: 45 minutes (Blue Apron claims all can be made in 30 minutes, but I'm cooking challenged, so.)
Fire alarms set off: Almost one!
New foods tried: pistachios, wheat berries, shallot?

While I've never had wheat berries before, I wasn't worried about trying them -- I was actually looking forward to it. Turns out they're harmless, seemingly no different than steel-cut oatmeal.

I was kind of worried about trying pistachios; I've never had them before, but they're a green nut and that just didn't seem right. Turns out they're good!

I've seen shallots used on cooking shows, but as far as I know, I've never held one or eaten one.

Everything came out fine. My oven smoked like heck (maybe I used too much olive oil? I wish they'd say "drizzle a tablespoon..." instead of just "drizzle").

The salsa (can you call it that if I left out the jalapeno?) tasted outstanding in the bowl but too vinegary on the wheat berries. It was interesting having all that citrus mixed in with the berries, though I only ate about half the serving.

All in all, it was an okay meal. Not great, not horrible. I'm glad I got to try wheat berries, and I'm happy to discover I like pistachios.

Comments

Smoking oven

[doxxxicle.livejournal.com]

450F is pretty high. Extra virgin olive oil's smoke point is about 375F.

Re: Smoking oven

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ah! Well that explains it then. It was regular olive oil, not extra virgin, but my oven runs a little cooler so I usually set the temp as 10 degrees higher than instructed. Regular olive oil has a smoke point of 460. It seems maybe I'm wrong about my oven being a little cooler!