Potatoes
marriage proposals. Prince Harry
even proposed to Meghan Markle
while they were cooking roast
chicken together in 2017.
I began dating my now-husband,
Kenny, in the fall of 2011. We met-cute
at our college newspaper, The Dolphin,
and it was love at first laugh. Within a
few years, we knew we wanted to get
married.
Perhaps this defeated the purpose
of the magical meal, but I told Kenny
about Engagement Chicken. I had
always wanted to make it for the
person I would marry, and Kenny will
eat just about anything that doesn’t
eat him first.
Often, when we’re cooking, Kenny
is the sous chef in charge of washing,
chopping, and prepping — all the
menial tasks I hate doing. He even does
dishes. (Okay, now I’m just bragging
about my perfect husband.)
This time, though, I felt having
Kenny’s help would interfere with
Engagement Chicken’s enchantment.
So when I decided to make
the dish one evening in July
2015, I insisted I would
need no assistance in
the kitchen.
Oh, how wrong I
was.
Engagement
Chicken was a disaster
from start to finish.
Ever the procrastinator, I
spent the afternoon dashing
between Wegmans and my
parents’ farm to gather the required
lemons, herbs and vegetables. When
Kenny got home from work, he found
me trying to cram lemons up the halffrozen
carcass of the chicken, which
I had carefully selected from a freerange
local farm.
He waited patiently as I panicked in
the kitchen. I had to cover a town board
meeting that evening, so the clock was
ticking.
Finally, I popped my head out into
the living room.
“I know I said I didn’t need your help,
but … can you help me finish dinner?” I
pleaded.
Kenny obliged, and I set him to work
scrubbing potatoes and chopping
cipollini onions.
When we finished, we had an
Instagram-worthy meal. I even took a
picture for posterity.
Famished, we dug in. Kenny politely
chewed as I pushed the poultry around
my plate.
“This chicken is terrible,” I
announced, disgusted.
Glamour had let us down. The
vaguely lemon-flavored chicken was
bland and forgettable at best.
The potatoes, on the other hand … I’ll
let Kenny describe them.
“Oh my God! They tasted as if they
were handed down from Heaven itself,”
he recalled.
It wasn’t like he had never had these
potatoes before. The only remotely
fancy thing about them was the addition
of cipollini onions, which caramelized
beautifully alongside the potatoes. I
made these potatoes the way I make
most food: I drizzled them in olive oil,
garlic, salt and pepper and hoped for
the best.
Incidentally, that’s what we did with
the failed Engagement Chicken. We
doused the half-frozen bird in olive oil
and garlic and shoved it back in the
oven so it could think about how it
had wronged us. We ended up making
chicken wing dip with the leftovers.
After dinner, we took a stroll around
the swan pond in Manlius. Kenny
proposed to me in a gazebo overlooking
the pond. Of course, I said yes, and we
were married just over a year later.
We still laugh about the unfortunate
Engagement Chicken, but even
better, we still fondly reminisce about
cooking dinner together. “Engagement
Potatoes,” as Kenny dubbed them
henceforth, is still his favorite among my
recipes.
I realized that getting married wasn’t
about the perfect proposal or perfectly
filtered photos for Instagram. Kenny and
I still would have gotten married even if
I hadn’t decided to make Engagement
Chicken. Our relationship was — and still
is — so much more. I learned it’s okay to
ask for help, and life turns out just fine
with the right person by your side.
LISA ROSSI PHOTOGRAPHY
l FROM PAGE 8
Adapted from a recipe by Giada De Laurentiis
of The Food Network.
Ingredients:
1 pound small red, white, blue and/or fingerling
potatoes (about 1 3/4-inch diameter)
1/2 pound cipollini onions, peeled and
quartered
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for
drizzling
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Directions
1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Toss potatoes and onions
in olive oil, garlic, salt and
pepper. Place the mixture
in a baking dish and cover
with aluminum foil.
3. Roast until potatoes are
tender and golden and the
onions are caramelized, about 1
hour. Stir occasionally. Uncover to let
excess oil cook off, 15-20 minutes.
ENGAGEMENT POTATOES
Published by Eagle News 2020 • Exquisite Bridal Guide | 9