Hamburger Helper has added a photo to the pool:
When I was in the Loire Valley a few months ago, I had lunch at Chateau Nitray, a winery. I wasn't overly impressed by the wines served with the lunch, but I did enjoy the rustically prepared meal of baked chicken thighs and drumsticks, and the accompaniments of roasted potatoes, tomatoes, and onions. Everything seemed to be simply seasoned and cooked in very hot ovens in well-worn baking dishes.
The lunch also included bread (of course), a simple green salad served after the chicken course to cleanse the palate and get it ready for a selection of cheeses. Then slices of custard tarts were served, and coffee was offered (with real cream -- it's France after all!) under a lovely big apple tree outside.
I have recreated this meal in the past, sometimes roasting some asparagus as an additional side, or making a simple green salad of my own using my house vinaigrette and lovely butter lettuce. But I never deviate from the basic chicken, potatoes, tomatoes, and onion foursome. My own take however, is more flavorful than Nitray's, only because I use more herbs and a lot of garlic, among other ingredients.
Ah, potatoes. Who doesn't like potatoes? Well, what was weird was that I normally gobble up potatoes in large quantities if they are served family style along side any dish.
But at Nitray, as good as everything else was, I found the potatoes a bit bland. I don't know how you can mess up potatoes. They weren't awful but they weren't my favorite. The potatoes they used were also a bit unusual, and not in a cool designer Red Russian fingerling sort of way. They were very white -- almost anemic looking, and very under-seasoned/flavored.
In prior versions of this meal, I've used little baby golden creamers. I cut them in half, seasoned them simply, and roasted them in a hot oven. They took almost no time to cook. I've also used regular potatoes and halved them, and another time, cooked them with the tomatoes and onions (I won't be doing that again). This time, I had these lovely organic Golden Yukons that weren't too big so I decided to leave them whole.
Ingredients:
Potatoes of your choice
Dried thyme
Fresh rosemary
Garlic cloves - I don't know how many exactly, but you can count them in the pic
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
I normally don't have fresh rosemary but since I did, I decided to use them. There is nothing more classic than roasting potatoes with rosemary. Normally, I just use a little dry thyme (be very careful when using thyme, dry or fresh -- they are deceptively strongly flavored little leaves), salt and pepper, then toss everything with some olive oil. Sometimes I include a few whole cloves of garlic, which get all soft and sticky, which I then sort of smear onto the potato pieces I'm eating.
This time, since I was leaving the potatoes whole, I gave them a head start. Normally, I put everything in together. Also, from experience, I think it's best to cook the chicken separately from the potatoes, from the tomato and onions. These guys fit snuggly into my new-ish Staub oval Dutch oven, and they went into a 350F oven. It should take, oh... I don't know, an hour or more to cook? It really depends. Just check once in a while and poke them with a knife to check for doneness. They like it when you do that.
via Recipes to Share Pool http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamburger_helper/28754088827/in/pool-34955636712@N01
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