New in the sense of taking old favorites and tweaking them, moving old faves forward, keeping them fresh and new.
The first meal, Symon roasted chicken with down-and-dirty salsa verde and a tomato-corn-arugula salad, has become new with the weekly visits to the Lincoln Square Farmers' Market. Where roasted chicken used to reach such great heights with a simple roasting of the bird and tossing down some Fancy French cheese with good bread to slather with said cheese and sop up bird juice (that phrase sounds weird), the newness of the new comes in the impeccably fresh salad ingredients in various forms that become more than just side salad.
To wit. Here, the tomatoes were stupid-ripe and bursting with proper tomato flavor. Take advantage now. Not much time left in that realm. And it's corn season, folks. Use it and abuse it until you're sick of it. Predicted to be the worst crop in 17 years (news that piques an Iowan's interest, like me, because that was the de facto, 'the sky is falling,' grocery store-coffee shop-Casey's conversation everyday growing up), here was delicious corn complementing the tomato in great ways.
So...Michael Symon roasted chicken (chronicled many times on this here blog), this time an enormous Whole Foods five-pounder with a shimmering golden skin and juicy (even the breast) meat. One of the better ones of late. Tomato and corn salad with an arugula bed which was more about the tomato and corn than the arugula. Salsa verde, It's salsa verde in a different form, loaded with dirty delicious anchovy-caper flavor that's cleaned up in such a new, lifty way by the parsley-mint-olive oil driver (plagarized myself there). It's the thing on the side that sits there, saying, "Use me how you like. I don't care. Salad? Sure! Taste that! Chicken? Yep! Told ya. All of it together? That's what I'm about." Whole Foods Seeduction bread with butter to round things out.
