Rosemary, lemon, garlic barbecued chicken

It is only the end of March, but we are enjoying summer like weather and it is a 4 day weekend, it does not get much better than that.  Friends had just arrived home from a trip to Rome and we invited them over for kind of Italian meal on the deck.

I had some chicken legs in my freezer from Hopcott's and as it was such a beautiful day, I decided to break out the barbecue for the first time in 2013.  This I am afraid required quite a bit of cleaning as there had been critters under that cover!

Feeds 6

6 chicken legs cut in half
1 lemon cut in half
4 cloves of garlic sliced very thinly
2 sprigs of Rosemary with the leaves pulled off
4 tablespoons of olive oil
salt and pepper

Place the chicken in a container to marinate and squeeze the juice out of one half of the lemon and cut the remaining half in to small pieces.  Add the lemon juice, lemon pieces and the remaining ingredients and marinate the chicken.

Roast garlic and tomato pasta

Any one who knows me will know that I am not a lover of pasta, I am not sure why, because often when I have it, I think "oh this is not bad, maybe I like it this way" Any way if I am going to make pasta, I do not want my pasta overcooked and I do not want a jar of sauce poured over it.

Right now when all the produce is abundent and at it's best I wanted to make a pasta dish to be served as a side dish to some grilled chicken. Using all the fresh tomatoes and garlic that are available.

I harvested my tomato plants and this is what I got.

Obvoisly not enough to make a sauce for 11 people which is how many were coming for dinner, so I would have to supplement.  I had 1 jar of home canned tomato puree left from last summer, as I am now putting down for this summer this had to be used. So this is what I came up with.

This made enough as a side dish for 11 or main course for 6

• 1 whole head of garlic cut in half 
• About 3 cups of cherry tomatoes halved
• 1 can of tomato puree (home made best, but a jar of Italian tomato puree second best)
• 1/4 cup of olive oil
• 1 bunch of basil
• 1 package of linguini or pasta of choice.

Place the tomatoes and garlic on a parchment lined cookie sheet sprinkle with salt, and drizzle a little olive oil over the garlic.

You will notice I had to add some bought baby plum tomatoes, but they were very tasty too. Bake this at 350 for about 1/2 an hour until the garlic is soft and the tomatoes have concentrated down a little.

Garlic scapes

Garlic scapes are something that I have only been aware of for the last couple of years, previously I had them in a hummus that Connie made, where they were used very much like garlic.  They are in fact the tops of young garlic and are only available at this time of year.  when I arrived up at Pender Harbour for the long weekend, Nancy had already bought some and we were looking forward to experimenting with them.

On doing a little research I found that you could saute them like green beans, and so we decided to do this along with a little local spring green cabbage that Nancy had also bought.

1 tablespoon of olive oil
2 cloves of garlic thinly sliced
Bunch of garlic scapes, topped and chopped in to shorter lengths.
Bunch of beet tops, or spring greens or even spinach.

Heat the olive oil up in a large frying pan, add the garlic and just as it is starting to go golden throw in the scapes.

Garlic confit

After posting about the daring cooks challenge I checked out a few of my fellow daring cooks to see what they had produced.  It was great, so many takes on the theme at Stephfood I found garlic confit.  What a revelation, I could just imagine using this garlic in pasta sauces, soups and salad dressings and how wonderful would that oil be. I had to make some.

2 heads of garlic choose ones with large cloves
Olive oil to cover (depends on the size of your pot I needed about 1 1/2 cups)