Jalapeño Poppers and Roasted Chicken

Jalapeño poppers are so delicious. The combination of spice and the creamy, cheesy filling all encased in a crispy shell is such a wonderful contrast of textures and flavors. Unfortunately, a number of our poppers sprung a leak while they were frying and ended up being just empty tubes of crusted pepper. That's not to say that we didn't enjoy them; even though we only had five pepper halves each, by the time the chicken was ready neither of us was that hungry.

Previously, I had butterflied the chicken and slathered it with the fabulous Romesco sauce from earlier in the week. After the chicken marinated in the fridge for an hour or so, I scraped off most of the sauce and sautéed it for about 10 minutes in a hot pan then into a hot oven to finish it off. The method calls for a brick to weight down the chicken so that it gets a good even browning. My "brick" was a heavy pot with a couple of smaller lids in it. It was rather unwieldy and probably should have been heavier.

The main problem with the dish was that the sauce that remained on the bird was basically charred in the end. In retrospect, it would have been better to put the sauce under the skin of the chicken. However, the remaining sauce that wasn't charred was very good on top of the chicken.