Cooking with Rosemary again

During my recent trip to the San Francisco bay area, I brought home a bunch of home grown fresh rosemary. I was just trying my luck to see whether they would survive the long journey back. I wrapped them with kitchen paper towel before sealing them in a ziplock bag. I was glad that they made it...they even managed to stay fresh for more than 3 weeks. I planted a few sprigs into a pot of soil, I just hope they will root someday.


This first thing I made with the rosemary was a loaf of Wholemeal Rosemary Focaccia. I used the same focaccia recipe that I made previously. The only change I made was to replace half of the bread flour with wholemeal flour. This flat bread turned out to be very tasty especially with the enhanced texture from the wholemeal flour.


The next dish I tried was pan-fried Lemon & Rosemary Fillets. I seasoned the catfish fillets with some lemon juice, finely chopped garlic and rosemary, some salt and freshly grounded lemon pepper. It was my first attempt at pan-frying a fish fillet. I was real lucky that day, as the fillets didn't break into thousand pieces since I didn't use a non-stick pan, and on top of that I just couldn't kick the bad habit of turning a pan-fried fish several times while it is in the wok ;)


Another of my first attempt with the rosemary...roasting a whole chicken. It was the first time I have ever bought a whole chicken, and that is after 2 years of cooking at home. I find it such a gruesome task having to clean the cavity of the chicken!



I followed some of the steps as written in Jamie Oliver's Roast chicken and potatoes recipe, however I didn't use exactly the same ingredients to marinate the chicken. Instead I rubbed the whole chicken with a combination of finely chopped rosemary, salt, ground pepper, lemon zest and some mixed herbs. I thoroughly enjoyed the rich aroma from the chicken while it was roasting away...the lovely fragrance of the rosemary and lemon combo was simply awesome. The chicken meat was very flavourful and juicy, even the chicken breast was passable, not too dry as I would expect.

The next thing I will love to try my hands on would be a rosemary potato pizza!