Last night turned into “sand the cabinets” night.  Scott did a great job, which quickly turned our kitchen into the land of wood dust.  Yuck.  (And by “yuck,” I mean “Thanks, Scott!”)

Fortunately, he made awesome progress right after we ate dinner, so the dirty pots were dust-filled, and the tasty food was safe in our stomachs.  What tasty food?  This tasty food plus some fresh veggies:

I love that picture, too.  It’s beautiful, and the skin of the chicken looks so crispy.  Mmm.

The recipe is from Mad Hungry: Feeding Men and Boys, by Lucinda Scala Quinn, and you can find more of her awesome recipes on her blog.  A few of our favorite recipes are from her book, and every one is hearty and flavorful.  Spaghetti bolognese that tastes like a dream, for example.  Unfortunately, I can’t eat spaghetti bolognese every day and stay alive.  So sometimes we pick roasted chicken instead.

The Flat Roast Chicken recipe scared me away for a while, mostly because it involves cutting out the backbone of the chicken.  I’m not great at that sort of thing, especially when sharp objects are required to achieve the goal.  I can vouch for the recipe though.  It was pretty easy to take out the backbone, actually.  And once I did that step, the rest was a breeze.  The best part was the taste.

I usually go with salt and pepper on chicken, and the addition of the butter-browned skin and the lemon and red pepper flake sauce on top at the end made it better than the standard roast chicken.  Taking out the backbone at the start also made it really easy to cut the chicken apart after it was cooked.

Now all I have to do is try to imagine cooking again in our dust-ridden kitchen.  Or paint it and clean.  One of the two.