Catch Up: French Fridays: Chicken AND Pumpkin Flans. It's the Two-fer.

In an effort to stay ahead..ah, enough with the excuses. Here are Roast Chicken for Les Paresseux (the Lazy Ones Among Us) and Pumpkin Gorgonzola Flans, both from Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan. I have to keep this short and sweet in order to catch up.
The chicken? Good roast chicken. Acutally, GREAT roast chicken, the best roasted chicken I've had, maybe ever, but I think that honor is because the chicken was just processed by the folks at Red Dirt Ranch here in NC. The freshest, juiciest, nicest...everything.

Here's the thing with the recipe. I used a dutch oven, but that didn't really give me enough space for the veg to go in...next time, this is going into a roasting pan...But the veg that did get nicely roasted here...that was really good..

The flans? I loved them, but G wouldn't try them...nor would B--she doesn't like gorgonzola. Their loss. These are rich and smooth. The blue cheese is a great touch and the pecans (I prefer to walnuts) are great for texture...I didn't have great ramekins--not the right size, I'd say...I'd love these in my creme brulee dishes--very shallow with a good ratio of nutty cheese topping to pumpkin flan...And they are gorgeous...

Both recipes very simple. I'm having roast chicken (from Red Dirt) again because it tasted that good...
This week is a good one to try the cake AND the potatoes...oooh, in fact, maybe the potatoes will go nicely with the roast chicken tonight...even though there's  no one here to eat dinner with me tonight. Doesn't mean I won't cook!

Side note: I made stock with the chicken bones right in the dutch oven I used to roast the chicken. Best. Stock. Ever..Brown and rich. Now that? That I would do again.
Side SIDE note: So I made the chicken  in a shallow roasting pan? Let's just admit Dorie got it right. It did splatter everywhere. Note to self: Trust the Dorie.

Need to see other results? Check out French Fridays with Dorie.

Marie-Helene's Apple Cake for French Friday's with Dorie

Yum. Make that apple RUM cake. This ends up being chunks of apple just held together by the barest bit of buttery rummy batter.

And it works.What more can I say? The apples look like a tile mosaic in the slice of cake, they are packed together so...When I mixed the apples into the batter, I was thinking: uh oh. I did it again. Too many apples for the batter.

WRONG.

This cake is so simple and so fabulous...everyone should know how to make it.
Check out other blog posts about Marie-Helene's Apple Cake on French Fridays with Dorie while we cook our way through Around My French Table.