Chicken Stuffed With Sun-Dried Tomatoes: Shopping in Your Own Pantry

The same so-called financial experts who tell you to shop with a list also tell you to shop your own pantry before heading out to the store.

If you are a list maker, too, this is not a bad idea because it keeps you from buying a duplicate of something you already have. My husband declines to do this, usually, with is why we have so many jars of mustard and pickles in our fridge.

For the past several months, we've been cooking a whole chicken every Sunday, eating chicken salads for Monday and Tuesday, and making a fabulous chicken stock for the freezer.

Surverying the cupboard and the refrigerator, I found a large sweet onion, plenty of garlic and a half bag of sun-dried tomatoes. I bought fresh rosemary and thyme at the store and we had a moist and tangy chicken with a layered taste that hinted of a sunny slope in the Vaucluse, perhaps.

The tomatoes, garlic and onions were stuffed inside the chicken; the herbs were placed under the skin and under the chicken. Then I rubbed the skin with a garlic-tomato bread spread and seasoned it with herbes de provence and pepper. Sel de fleuer from the Carmargue was added near the end of the roasting cycle.

We served it with roasted red and green peppers, a staple at our house, and Kalamata olives. We paired it with a Johannesburg Riesling left over from the lemon-baked salmon we had the night before.

In our eagerness to eat, I neglected to take photos, but both meals were excellent.

Do you shop your pantry first? If you did that right now, what would you find that could be stuffed into a chicken for a dish that was uniquely yours?