Well, it’s a new year, and with it a slightly new approach to my diet.  I’m still eating clean, but after a few weeks of staring at that sticky dial on the scale, I had to admit that things weren’t working.

At first, I felt disheartened.  I wanted to finally stop analyzing my food in excruciating detail, and I thought clean eating could provide me that freedom.  But it turns out that mindless eating is always going to be a recipe for failure.  And, anyway, things could be worse in my life, right?

So I downloaded the Live Strong calorie counting app, MyPlate, and I’ve started tracking my calories more closely.  It’s actually not as difficult as I’d imagined.  Essentially, I’m just eating more fruits and veggies, and a bit more protein.

On that note, how about a chicken recipe or two?  I recently decided to try spatchcocking a chicken.  I figured with a name like that, what could go wrong?

The great thing about this recipe is that you can stretch one chicken into three dinners.  Roasted chicken the first night.  Chicken salad the second night.  And then you can make stock for polenta, soup or anything else you cook with chicken broth.

I first learned about spatchcocked chicken from this post over at thekitchn.  So I consulted a few more “how to” posts.  I like this one.  In short, you’re cutting out the neckbone and butterflying the chicken so it lies flat.  You need a chicken that weighs at least three pounds.

Once you’ve finished spatchcocking the chicken, mix together 1/4 cup dijon mustard, 4 chopped cloves of garlic, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt, 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper, the leaves from three sprigs of thyme (or 1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves) and the zest of one lemon.  Gently separate the skin from the chicken and rub the mixture all over the chicken meat.  Drizzle olive oil and a few squeezes of lemon juice over the chicken skin, and then quarter the lemon and tuck the quarters all over.  Toss some salt and a few grinds of pepper on the skin, and roast the chicken at 425 degrees for about an hour. 

Enjoy the chicken pieces the first night, and then pull the remaining chicken for dinner the next night.  You should have about 2 cups of chicken.  In a bowl, combine that chicken with 1/2 cup homemade or any good quality mayonaisse, one chopped Fuji apple, one chopped medium onion, and one teaspoon curry powder.  Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve in wraps or your favorite whole wheat or whole grain bread.

Finally, throw the carcass, neckbone, a whole onion (skin on), a few carrots and celery stalks and some whole peppercorns into a stockpot with as much water as you like, and simmer on low until the stock is a nice golden color.  This typically takes overnight or longer, and you won’t be disappointed.  There is nothing like homemade chicken stock.  With it, I made some polenta that I served with braised bacon and chard stems.  Amazingly fabulous.  I’ll post that recipe in a few days.

I’ve been meaning to write this recipe up for a while now, but I was still futzing about with it.  These take several hours, but your house will smell amazing in the meantime.  And the prep itself is really quite easy.

Ingredients:

1 pound northern beans; 4 slices thick-cut good quality bacon (organic, local, pastured and/or antibiotic free); 1/3 cup molasses, 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons dijon mustard, 1 cup strong brewed coffee, 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon maple syrup.

Soak the beans in water overnight and then drain them.  Place them in a saucepan and just cover with water.  Simmer for about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 325.  Drain the beans again and add them to a dutch oven.  Chop the bacon into 1 inch pieces and top the beans with them.  Whisk together the remaining ingredients (except for the tablespoon of maple syrup) and pour over the beans.  Cook for about two and half hours, or until the beans are tender.  Add a tablespoon of maple syrup.  These are absolutely amazing.  With green beans or chard and some whole grain bread, it’s a hearty and satisfying winter meal.

So Hanukkah has come and gone, but I have to share what I cooked this year.  I bragged that this was the best meal I’ve ever made for the festival of lights, but to be fair Hanukkah is usually a pretty simple affair and fried food never was my forte.

Inspired by the Italian origins of the latke, I decided to make a few traditional dishes with Italian flavors.

Our main dish was pretty simple. 

Drizzle organic chicken with olive oil, juice of two lemons, sea salt and pepper.  Stuff with lemons, garlic, rosemary, Italian parsley, thyme and oregano.

Roast at 425 for an hour, or until the skin is brown and crispy.

Isn’t that pretty?

Along with this chicken I served the winter salad described here.

I made the latkes last, because latkes are best right out of the frying pan.  Shred four yukon gold potatoes and four small zuchinnis in a food processor, along with an onion and a clove of garlic.  Hand shape into pancakes and fry in oil until crispy.  They fry best in vegetable oil, but I prefer the flavor of olive oil.

Serve these latkes with ricotta cheese and rosemary apple chutney instead of sour cream and applesauce.  The chutney can be made the day before.  Saute two chopped apples and one large onion in olive oil with a branch of rosemary, a cinammon stick, a teaspoon of dry mustard and a large, heaping tablespoon of honey (about 1/4 cup).  Cook for about a half hour, or until all of the ingredients are well combined and there is no liquid remaining.  Remove cinammon stick and rosemary prior to serving.

Are you all on Pinterest?  I’m obsessed with Pinterest, although there are some real duds on that site.  I hope no one gives me a deck of cards to tell me the 52 ways they love me, or a terrible collection of candy and puns.

On the other hand, I found this fabulous DIY for candle holders that look like mercury glass, so we had plenty of candles this year.  Aren’t they pretty?  I hope everyone who celebrated had a happy Hanukkah this year.  Now it’s back to clean and healthful eating for the last days of 2011, and looking forward to 2012. 

As holidays go, I can’t say Hanukkah is a great candidate for the clean eating diet.  You can give it the old college try, but no matter what anyone says, latkes taste better fried.  You can certainly swap whole wheat pastry flour for the all purpose, but I don’t believe you’ll be successful.  The wheat is just too heavy.  My advice is to splurge for just one night.  The other seven you can be a bit more virtuous while your Christmas celebrating friends are overindulging in butter cookies and egg nog.

Here are eight of my favorite Hanukkah recipes.  You’ll notice that I haven’t included any recipes that call for bacon, pork belly or any sort of pork lard, and for that you should feel grateful.

Starters

1.  Matzoh ball soup.  Hands down, the best Jewish chicken soup recipe is this one.  I like  Mark Bittman’s recipe for matzoh balls, but I’m not fussy about these things and haven’t taken a position on the great floater versus sinker debate.

2.  Winter salad with fennel, radicchio and apple.  Slice two or three fennel bulbs and a half of a head of radicchio.  Toss with two chopped fuji apples, olive oil, juice of one meyer lemon and a bit of sea salt and freshly ground pepper.

Better-than-Brisket Main Courses

3.  Perfect roast chicken.  The classic that never goes out of style.  Stuff a bird with garlic cloves, a lemon, and fresh herbs, then cover with olive oil, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper and roast at 425 for about an hour or until the outside is brown and crispy.

4.  Salt-Baked Leg of Lamb.  This is a show stopper.  Be sure to bake the lamb in a nice dish so you can bring it right to the table to crack open the salt crust.

5.  Roasted Cornish Hens with Pomegranate Sauce.  These are so easy and are lighter, juicy alternative to the traditional roasts typically served for Hanukkah.

Latkes: the Real Star of the Show Making multiple versions of latkes for Hanukkah can be time consuming.  Here are two that are amazing, easy and a nice contrast to each other.

6.  Latkes with creme fraiche, lox and caviar.  A sophisticated version of the classic.  It’s hard to go wrong with smoked salmon and creme fraiche.

7. Curried Sweet Potato Latkes.  Crispy.  Spicy.  Earthy.  I confess I prefer these to traditional potato pancakes.

8. Apple Chutney Applesauce. Elevated.

You might notice there are no recipes for sufganyot or doughnuts.  I pick up a dozen from Krispy Kreme and call it a night (or eight).

A final note on Hanukkah.  Many folks have difficulty grasping the cultural (not religious) experience of American Jews during this time of year.  There are many serious works I can recommend, but I bet you’ll be more likely to watch something if it’s funny.  So check out The Hebrew Hammer. You won’t be disappointed.

This granola is so good.  I imagine it would make a fabulous Christmas morning breakfast, although from the amount of Christmas morning french toast casserole recipes out there, I sense you Christmas celebrants like a heavy meal before your traditional heavy meal.  I’m not sure Hanukkah morning breakfast has quite the same ring to it.  It would make a nice pre-dim sum kind of breakfast, if that’s how you roll.

A word of caution: this granola isn’t so clumpy.  If you like a lot of clusters in your granola, add an egg white to the mix.

Ingredients

• 6 cups rolled oats
• 1 cup unsweetened flaked coconut
• 2 cups walnuts
• 1 cup olive oil
• 3/4 cup pure maple syrup
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon cinammon
• 1 teaspoon cardamom
• 1 teaspoon allspice

Preheat oven to 325.  As always, feel free to mix the dry ingredients, and then the wet, before combining in a bowl.  I’m lazy, especially on a Sunday morning, so I throw everything into a bowl and mix very, very well before spreading on a silicone mat covered cookie sheet.  Bake for forty minutes, stirring once at the halfway point.