Million Dollar chicken- Day 2 of 30.

Today is the second day of my challenge of not stepping foot inside a grocery and I failed.  I actually did step foot inside a Tesco today but that was to compare prices from Aldi. A huge difference.  I did end up buying a few items at the asian food store though.  These are just things that I can't seem to find anywhere else.  I bought sesame seed oil and good black vinegar.  If you are asian you'll know what I mean.  Sometimes you just need to have it and I'll be cooking a good share of asian food and its hard to make those things taste like home when I don't have the right ingredients.

Anyway today I made "Million Dollar Chicken" by Chef John from Food wishes.  Have you heard of food wishes, I love this blog and if you get a chance you should check it out.  Here is a link: http://foodwishes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/million-dollar-chicken-of-course-it.html

I made simple cottage fries and some boiled vegetables.  My husband really likes gravy and sauce so I made some gravy as well, though we didn't even touch it.

The cottage fries came out okay.  I bought some coarse sea salt today because I had no salt since moving in last week and thought I should probably buy some.  This was my first time buying coarse sea salt as opposed to regular granulated sea salt.  Because I didn't know really how much to use, I ended up using a little bit too much and the cottage fries came out a bit salty.  My husband really likes salt so for him it was perfect, but for me it was too salty.  The big pieces tasted fine but the small pieces were just over the top.  Here are some pictures.

The hand in the picture is of my husband reaching to eat a piece.

The chicken on the other hand was really good, although I did have a small problem again with the coarse salt. I'm pretty sure without even googling it that I just don't need that much.  Just something I have to get use to.  The salt didn't make the chicken too salty but it did make some of the bread pieces a bit salty.
The chicken tasted just right, skin was crispy and the meat was moist.  It wasn't hard to make and regarding the crème fraiche I didn't have shallots so I used regular white onion and didn't have the apellepo pepper so I just ground black pepper.  It seemed to work fine and tasted great so I imagine if I had used the right ingredients it would have tasted even better but I guess we will never know. (for now) 
The chicken was a hit and my husband had a hard time not eating the whole thing but I reminded him that this chicken needed to last us at least 3 more days so he ate some more vegetables instead.  The chicken was paired with the cottage fries, boiled veggies and gravy. 
Here are some pictures of the results.  The final product of the chicken didn't look that great but trust me it tasted really good.  

 

You should give it a try.  I'm planning on making a chicken stock with the bones and for tomorrow lunch tomorrow I'll make a sandwich and for dinner I'll make a big pot of chicken curry that will be good for the next day as well.  From there I'll see what leftovers we have and make something for Sunday.  I'll update you on how many days we got out of the chicken on Saturday.  Until then, eat well and give generously.  :)