Recipe: Moroccan Roast Chicken

Yesterday was Family Day here in Ontario when everyone gets the day off to hang out with their loved ones. With yet another forecast snow storm threatening to turn what should be a laid back provincial holiday into a muscle-abusing Shovel Day, I decided to have family time Sunday night instead. Being the ever-considerate charm that I am, I chose a dish that would please everyone. My father likes Moroccan food, my mother enjoys any meal she doesn’t have to cook, Andrew’s all about the meat and I wanted something I could shove in the oven while I dashed to the gym.

As luck would have it, a copy of Weeknight Fresh + Fast: Simple, Healthy Meals for Every Night of the Week by Kristine Kidd arrived just last week. I’ve never used a Williams-Sonoma cookbook before and wasn’t sure if we’d agree on the definition of “fresh + fast.” After all, when I go to one of their stores the kid in me wants three of everything and the adult in me wonders where I would store a bulky castle-shaped bundt cakes and even bulkier  $400 cake decorating machine. But the book delivers a wide range of practical recipes using items from any well-stocked grocery store. Sure, Kid Charmian whines about the tofu, but Adult Charmian points out that only 3 recipes in the entire book use this ingredient and if there are any more complaints there’ll be no Castle Cake for dessert.

Of course, in a book with 100 recipes providing quickly-made stir fries, pastas and grilled items, I chose the one with a long cooking time. And because my bird was 50% bigger than the one in the recipe, my cook time expanded equally, but that just meant I would sweat on the elliptical, not over dinner.

When Andrew and I returned from the workout, the house smelled intoxicating, dinner was ready, and I could host a Sunday night meal looking like I’d worked all day. And the results? For a while the sunny aroma of Morocco made me forget about the impending snowfall.

Spice-rubbed Moroccan Chicken minutes before it hit the oven and I hit the gym.

With more workouts on the horizon roast chickens will be on the menu more often. How do you roast your chicken? Apples and rosemary? Old-fashioned stuffing? Or do you have other go-to dishes for when you want an uninterrupted hour or so?