Date Chicken with Olives

It may be almost sacrilegious to say at this time of the year, but a turkey is not right for everyone. While the big bird (sorry Sesame Street fans) parked on your dinner table, roasted to perfection looks great, if you're having an intimate gathering it can just be too much.

A beautifully roasted chicken is a completely reasonable option, and I've shared one today that uses a sumptuous combination of Medjool dates, date syrup, date molasses and green olives. If you follow the instructions carefully, your chicken will turn out moist and succulent, and more important, won't have you pining for what Benjamin Franklin suggested as our national bird. You can thank my citizenship test prep for that reference! 

Plum Chicken (Roasted Chicken Recipe)

This year, we've been fortunate that the gophers and squirrels haven't made off with our fruits and veggies. All our trees have produced prolific crops of fruit, but the plum trees really stand out. We were able to gather large baskets of Santa Rosa plums, Red Raven plums and pluots.

I made a coffee cake with some of the plums and used the rest in this roast chicken dish. The acidity of the plums is an effective tenderizer for the meat, and the sweetness provides contrast. In the past I've used other fruits such as Asian pears and the plums worked wonderfully as well. I also added whole peeled plums at the end of the cooking as a garnish and as a reminder of the flavors that permeate the chicken and as the garnish.

I butterflied a whole chicken and placed it in a roasting pan on a bed of celery stalks so the chicken didn't burn and remains moist. I basted the meat several times; this extra step really makes a difference in ensuring that the final product is moist and delicious. Yum!