Helloooo!!! How’s it going?  Have you missed me?

I’ve had a whirlwind May. My sister had her wedding at the end of the month, the kids finished up the school year (It’s just preschool, but every day it seemed like there was some party/mini-graduation/teacher appreciation event that I needed to be at). Right now we’re still in Charleston, South Carolina for a couple of weeks, and we’re loving being in hot, sunny weather surrounded by family.

Before we left town I made a quick weeknight dinner out of this roasted miso butter chicken, a recipe that I’d flagged from the New York Times several months ago. The idea of salty, earthy miso swirled with creamy butter and slathered over chicken thighs just sounded so good that I’d vowed I’d try this recipe the second I’d bookmarked it. Then, like most things in my mom-cluttered brain, I forgot all about it.

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Usually by May I make the hubby fire up the grill. He's really good at making magic on our grill, and I love tearing off the smoky charred bits that cling to our meat and vegetables and eating with my fingers. It's just what summer should be, right? The only problem was that the weather didn't know that I wanted it to be summer yet. We had cold, blustery rain nearly every day.

That's when I remembered the roasted miso butter chicken. This chicken roasts in a really hot oven, which helps seal in the juices and adds a nice caramelized miso crust on top of crispy skin. Plus, there's no need to marinate the chicken beforehand, a detail that I sometimes find really annoying on weekdays. I buy lots of our meats in advance and freeze them, but I usually don't decide what I'm making for dinner until the morning of. This means having to leave the meat on my kitchen counter to defrost, and by the time my workday is over, there's just no time left for extensive marinating. You'd think that, after years of blogging and cooking, I'd be better at planning my meals so that I'd have plenty of time for marinating, but see "scattered mom brain" reference above. I just can't keep all the marbles from rolling around all the time. SOMETHING HAS TO GIVE, PEOPLE!

I re-roasted some potatoes and seared some Napa cabbage as sides to my roasted miso butter chicken, but you'll note that I don't include them below as part of my recipe. The potatoes were leftover from our seafood boil, and I'd foolishly thought I could just pop cold, boiled potatoes in a roasting pan and that they'd come out magically crispy and perfect (the answer to that question, in case it's burning a hole in  your brain, is a definitive NO). I also thought that the leftover Napa cabbage I'd had from another recipe I'd been testing would be well-suited for searing in a pan (again, the answer is "meh"). I do think, however, that you can come up with lots of fun options for sides, like these roasted green beans or these crunchy sweet potatoes.

Do you want to know what I did do right, though? I poured two glasses of red wine, and they tasted GREAT with the roasted miso butter chicken. Just sayin'.

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