40 Cloves of Garlic Chicken and David Sedaris

A crew of us had it in our Saturday night plan to catch An Evening with David Sedaris, just up the street from the house at the University of North Carolina's Stevens Center Theatre. That is one of the cool things about downtown living...dinner at home followed by an easy walk up to a delightful cultural event.

The event-goers totaled six people, just the right number to comfortably seat around the table in the kitchen's eating nook/bay.

I'd received as a birthday present a great new cookbook but hadn't gotten around to trying it out yet: One Big Table by Molly O'Neill. As I thumbed through it on Friday, I saw a recipe from the very famous James Beard for his Forty Cloves of Garlic Chicken over savory vegetables. Since this recipe has popped up in various cookbooks over time, and since garlic is much-loved here in the Roediger House, I zeroed in on it.

The picture on the right shows the pile-o-chicken with all the garlic cloves nestled around it. This is after it had cooked longer than the recipe called for: at least an hour and a half.

I had prepared a big pot of quinoa and some good supersweet white corn. A loaf of bread heated in the oven for the last part of the cooking time. Everything was coming together for an ontime delivery of dinner, since we also wanted to step out for a couple of drinks before Sedaris's curtain went up at 8 pm.

When I peeled back the foil of this dish, I saw that the chicken thighs were still quite pink. After an hour and a half of baking. (I think I've figured out where I went wrong, though.)

So I announced to the gathered company that we would be going out to eat, which is another awesome thing about downtown. When you royally screw up dinner, you all just gather your coats and a very decent restaurant is within minutes by foot.

After the Sedaris talk, I came home and pitched this dinner that had so much potential to be marvelous. I guess out of all the meals I've made here, I'd best just count myself lucky that this is my first critical major dinner disaster.

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"Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic," from James Beard. Published in One Big Table: A Portrait of American Cooking, by Molly O'Neill. Simon & Schuster, 2010, p. 350.