Family style dinner

I always buy roast chickens on Wednesday but I've never made one.  I make a turkey every year so I know it can't be that different right?  So last week I decided to roast my own chicken and make a meal out of it. Our friend Kevin's wife had been out of town for a while so we invited him to dinner as well.  Then I went to lunch with my friend Whitney and so decided to invite her and her boyfriend over too!  Our simple chicken dinner for 2 turned into a family dinner which was awesome.

I decided to make dessert since the feast had grown and decided to make a gluten free cheesecake.  This is basically cheesecake minus the crust.  I love the crust...but the cheesecake goodness part is pretty awesome too.  For the cake, I used:

cream cheese

ricotta cheese

eggs

cream

sugar

vanilla

Everything basically got mixed in an electric mixer until whipped together and then put into a pan.  The pan was put into a baking dish with some water and put in the oven. I also made a strawberry topping which consisted of strawberries and sugar.  This was cooked down in a pan on the stove until it was topping-like. 

For the chicken, I used Julia Child's recipe from Food and Wine this month.  This consisted of:

whole chicken

salt

celery

onion

carrots

oregano

thyme

pepper

lemon

All the veggies were put into a pan and cooked for a bit and the chicken was washed, dried, and then trussed.  To truss a chicken, you just take kitchen string and tie the legs together and around the bird.  Usually, if you get a roasted chicken at the store, it's already trussed.  

The cavity of the bird was salted and the veggies were placed inside the chicken.  The lemon slices were also stuffed into the bird and then more carrots, onion, and celery as placed around the pan outside the bird and the whole thing was put in the oven and cooked to 165 F.

Unfortunately, I didn't take any more pics that night.  I kinda just forgot.  But you can probably put everything together.  The chicken came out wonderfully.  It was so juicy and had really good flavor.  The veggies were great too.  The cheesecake was delicious!! It wasn't too thick and almost fluffy due to the addition of ricotta to sub some cream cheese.  

I love family dinners.  I wish we could have them more often but they always take so much effort and I've gotten bad about planning dinner beforehand.