Olive Oil Poundcake with Lemon and Rosemary

 

This.
Is my new obsession.

Is it a dessert?  Is it a snack? Is it a breakfast?  Uhm... How about all of the above?  It's a little bit sweet, a little bit savory, and, like, totally healthy because it's made with olive oil.

The olive oil makes for a denser loaf, but the effect is counteracted by the light summery flavors of lemon and rosemary.  Serve it plain or with a drizzle of honey and forget all about those bland prepackaged pound cakes you can buy at the supermarket.

 

The preparation is super easy but I highly recommend making it like I did, with the help of your awesome younger sister, while tipsy on white wine, with Paul Simon's Negotiations and Love Songs album playing in the background and all the windows open to let in the warm summer breeze.

Oh yes, I love summer. 

Olive Oil Poundcake with Lemon and Rosemary
 from Dinnerlove.com

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups flour
• 2 tsp baking powder 
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup olive oil
• 1 cup sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• zest of 1 lemon
• 2 tbsp fresh rosemary, minced

 

Preheat the oven to 350˚. Grease a loaf pan, line the bottom with parchment paper, and grease the parchment paper as well.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.If you don't have a sifter, try stirring all the ingredients together with a knife (I don't know why this works, or if it does, but it's something my mom taught me to do.)

 

Beat together the sugar and the olive oil in a large bowl.  Add the eggs on at a time, beating until just incorporated. Add the vanilla, lemon zest, and rosemary.

Oh hello, vino

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until just incorporated. Pour into the pan.

 

Bake for 60 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

 

Let cool for approximately 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool on rack.  Serve with honey, butter, jam, or with absolutely nada- it will still be yummy. 

Lemon Roasted Chicken

Hello again! I'm back from another long hiatus.  In my defense, I've been quite busy lately. First of all, I GRADUATED (woowoowoo!).  Accordingly, I was kept busy with a lot of dinners, and parties, and dinner parties, and graduation parties, and let's-party-for-no-specific-reason parties, and somewhere in there I did a ton of work to ensure I actually graduated.  In addition, there was a little bedbug situation in my apartment (I <3 NYC...) that had to be dealt with.   So not much cooking has been done recently, in part because 99% of my belongings were trapped in giant plastic bags while my apartment was treated.  On a related note, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the general public for wearing the same three outfits repeatedly for the last two months. 

 

At any rate, I've finally moved out of the old apartment and will be spending the summer studying for the bar exam at my parents' house. This is horrible news for me but excellent news for this blog because I have never had such a strong motivation to procrastinate in my entire life. Also, my parents seem willing to accept home-cooked meals in lieu of rent, which fits perfectly into my (non-existent) budget.

I reverted to being vegetarian recently (my temporary dalliance with animal proteins died a sudden and painful death brought on by a late night viewing of Food, Inc.), but yesterday was my Dad's birthday and he's the sort of guy who believes if a meal doesn't have meat, it's not actually a meal.   (And if it doesn't have red meat, then it's a "healthy" meal.)  So I made an exception for him and made this lemon roasted chicken.  Since it met Dad's definition of "healthy," we were all able to eat copious amounts of birthday cake afterwards.  

The recipe calls for boneless chicken breasts with the skin still on, which I had to custom order from the butcher at our local grocery store, who somehow interpreted my request for "4 chicken breasts" as "the breasts of 4 chickens,"  meaning not days after deciding to be vegetarian I walked out of the grocery store with the single largest purchase of meat I have ever made in my entire life.  Lovely. But I'm told it was yummy. 

Lemon Roasted Chicken

 Adapted from the Barefoot Contessa

Ingredients:

• 4 chicken breasts, boneless, with skin
•  1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 small onion (the original recipe calls for 3 tbsp of minced garlic)
• 1/3 cup dry white wine
• zest of 2 lemons
• 2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1.5 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp minced fresh thyme leaves
•  kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 lemon

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Mince the onion into small pieces.  Warm the olive oil in a small saucepan over medium-low heat.  Add onion (or garlic) and cook for a couple of minutes (do NOT let it brown).

Remove saucepan from heat and add wine, oregano, thyme, lemon zest, lemon juice, and 1 tsp. kosher salt.  Stir gently until combined.

 Pour the sauce into a 9 x 12 baking dish.  

 Place the chicken, skin side up, on top of the sauce.  Brush with olive oil and sprinkle generously with salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Cut the remaining lemon into wedges and stick the wedges in with the chicken. Place the baking dish in the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes until the chicken is done.  The skin should be nicely browned- if it is not, stick the pan under the broiler for a couple of minutes.

Raw chicken.  With skin.  Eeew.

 Remove from oven and cover tightly with aluminum foil for 10 minutes to seal in the juices.

 Serve with basmati rice or couscous, drizzled with the pan juices. 

Yum Scrum!