Check out that crispy golden crust.
The next chapter was on salads. I went ahead and skipped the standard vinagrette recipe for now and went onto the caesar salad. The salad seemed like a good accompaniment to the following chapter: B&B Chicken. This gave me the excuse to finally purchase the roasting pan we’ve been talking about picking up for years. In the past, every time we needed one, we would either get the cheap disposable ones or just use a baking dish and prop things up.
Caesar Salad
Reading the chapter on caesar salads was surprising and enlightening. I had always understood them to have anchovies in them, and had never heard of them having eggs or lemon juice in them.
Knowing that I would need the oven for the chicken later, I started the croutons at lunchtime. The croutons were simple enough to make, though I probably cooked them too long. The directions were to bake them for 10-12 minutes – long enough to dry them but not brown them. At 10 minutes, they were already slightly browned – but not so much that I felt like I needed to start over. I put the toasted bread aside for later.
Garlic-ish croutons
Since Emily doesn’t like croutons, I figured I would probably get away with using less oil in the pan to brown the croutons. Either I made more croutons than were really intended (the recipe just said “a loaf of bread”, I used maybe 4 slices), or the bread soaked up more oil than it was meant to. Either way, I ended up having to add more oil to get the croutons properly coated and browned.
I'd probably skip the lemon juice next time
The rest of the salad was fairly simple, though the part about the egg was a little confusing. The recipe directs you to put the eggs into the boiling water. It doesn’t mention whether or not they should be cracked, stirred or left in shell. The only real clue is that the next step is to remove the eggs from the boiling water and put them into an ice-water bath to stop them from cooking further. Checking the video of the episode explains that you place the un-cracked egg into the boiling water. The book should probably be a bit clearer on this. After that, it’s just mixing all the ingredients together to make the salad.
I initially seasoned the salad as directed, but upon tasting found it still lacked and added some more. Even with the extra seasoning, Emily and I agreed that there was something bitey about the salad that just didn’t taste right. We’re thinking it was the lemon juice and will probably skip that next time. The croutons were supposed to be “garlic croutons”, but I found them to be lacking in garlic flavor. Granted, I love garlic (and salt).
Caesar Salad Rating: 
B&B Chicken
It could use a little more garlic I still don’t know what “B&B” stands for. I guess maybe “butterflied & broiled”? I’ve only cooked whole chickens a few times, but this was by far the most successful method. The only real difficult part was the butterflying of the chicken. I’ve never done this before, and the book’s instructions were a little vague. The photos were small and hard to make out. I watched a couple of videos on doing it, but was still confused when it came to removing the keel bone. I’m still not sure I did it right, but it opened up and laid flat as was necessary. The gremolata was a new thing for me. It felt like I didn’t really have enough when I was rubbing it under the skin. I was a little unsure of the lemon zest in it. I love lemon flavor, but it seemed a little strange in this recipe. After cooking the chicken, I was supposed to turn the remaining jus into a gravy, but I decided to skip it as I don’t usually like gravy on chicken. Golden, crispy and maybe a little dry The chicken came out of the oven with a beautifully crispy skin. The leg and thigh was moist and delicious. The breast, however, was pretty dry. I cooked the chicken for less time than the recipe directed, but I’d probably still reduce the cooking time further the next time. The gremolata imparted a great flavor into the chicken. Had I made the gravy to use as a dipping sauce as the recipe had directed, it probably would have made it all work out right. A couple tweaks and this recipe could be really great. B&B Chicken Rating: 
Alton’s episode about making fried chicken covers how to get the keel bone out, but by this point you probably already know that…