It’s starting to get cold and the fall always makes me crave comfort food.  I wanted something I could set up and leave, so I bought a 5lb whole chicken and potatoes. I made a simple slow roast, stuffing the chicken with a chopped onion, a few cloves of garlic, butter and a few springs of fresh rosemary. Then I rubbed the bird with olive oil and seasoned with salt, pepper, paprika, dried thyme, onion powder, and garlic powder. Covered with tin foil and into the oven at 275 for 4.5 hours. Then uncovered at 375 for 30 minutes.

When the chicken came out it was falling off the bone.

Then I made Gratin Dauphinoise (aka Potatoes au Gratin), pulling the recipe from the Professional Chef.  The recipe called for nutmeg, which was a little surprising, but it totally works.

The recipes in the Professional Chef are meant to be restaurant-sized, so I roughly cut their recipe in 1/5, eyeballing most of the ingredients.  I won’t post the recipe here, simply because it’s a completely standard interpretation.

Then the gravy.  I did all the usual steps.  I took the droppings and cooked them down.  I mixed a little cornstarch into some heavy cream and slowly added to the reduced liquid.  It made this wonderful gravy that had a hint of rosemary, onion and garlic from what I stuffed the bird with.  It was bubbling nicely, I tasted it, turned off the heat, then turned my back on it.

It was so good.  Maybe the best gravy ever.  Then I broke it.

In the time it took for the heat to die down, and while I wasn’t looking, it overheated and reached that very bad point where it starts separating.  When I came back to it, it was grease on top and clumps on the bottom.  I tried to save it, but it was done.

Huge lesson learned: Remove your sauces from heat immediately when they are done!  Overheating can deconstruct the whole shebang.

The upside is that we still had slow roasted chicken (which was moist enough not to need the gravy) and Gratin Dauphinoise.  Perfectly comforting.