Media Noche –last meal of the year, eaten near midnight (hence the name)– is a meal full of both surprises and traditions here in our household. Every year you can expect some nice salad (fruit salad, macaroni salad and/or potato salad), pasta, queso de bola (edam cheese) and jamon de bola (ham) on our table.

This year we had some roast chicken to spice it up (last year I think we had some mexican type food). Normally I wouldn’t make a whole post to feature our Media Noche menu, but the roast chicken deserves some extra love and attention (because I did most of the prep for it. I swear.)

Media Noche Menu, and some notes

Starters
Natural hunger
The labor of cooking the whole day

Main Dishes
Carbonara Pasta
Not so secretly made from pre-made sauce (thanks Clara Ole) and some crumbly bacon bits
Roast Chicken with Lemongrass Butter
Thanks to the ridiculously large mutant chicken my sister brought home (thanks San Miguel Corp)
Jamon de Bola
Duh.
Queso de Bola and White Bread
Which I didn’t eat at all, because I don’t like the taste of salty cheese

Sides and Desserts
Macaroni salad
My favorite-ish
Fruit salad
Which I don’t eat
Two baskets of fruits
Because we’re the kind of family who believes in fruit-based superstition

Drinks
Apple-flavored HealthTea
With an obnoxious amount of lemon slices

Roast Chicken with Lemongrass Butter

We adopted the recipe from this Garlic & Lemongrass Roast Chicken Recipe by supernanny, using homemade lemongrass paste following this Spice Blend by Sybaritica. :)

Overall the roast chicken came out well; you could really taste the lemongrass and hints of rosemary down to the meat. But the flavor wasn’t that consistent all throughout the chicken, and we should have probably added more salt inside the cavity and on the skin to leave a stronger taste.

Steps for a 2 kilo chicken:

1. Dry the chicken, make sure even the inside of the cavity is dry.
2. Make the lemongrass paste. We used two lemongrass (“tanglad“, Tagalog) stalks (without the harder leaves), finely chopped then ground with less than a tsp of salt, even less sugar, and 1 tsp vegetable oil and water.
3. Mix the lemongrass paste with 4 cloves of garlic (minced), 1 tsp rosemary, a pinch of salt and pepper and 4 tbsp garlic. We thought we didn’t have rosemary, but thanks to McCormick we did.
4. Salt and pepper the chicken cavity. :D
5. Stuff the butter under the skin, all around. Massage gently and coat evenly.
6. Salt and pepper over the skin.
7. Stuff the cavity with the leftover lemongrass leaves and with some slices of lemon.
8. Tuck in the legs and wings.
9. Truss the chicken. We used crochet yarn as a substitute for store-bought kitchen twine.
10. Roast at 200 celsius for 80-90 minutes. We used turbo, because we don’t like using the oven.

EAT AND ENJOY AND BE HAPPYYYYY.

xxx

New Year’s greetings from the family! This is probably the first of many new year-related posts.

Probably asleep as this is being posted. <3