By Elizabeth Johnson

Long before I was a newspaper editor, I was just Elizabeth, navigating my slightly dysfunctional kitchen and taking photographs of whatever I had just cooked. With an iPad. It was 2013. Instagram was still the sort of place where people posted what they were actually eating, wearing and doing, often through a Valencia filter. The social media posts chronicling a seemingly perfect life would come later.

I was regularly posting photographs of whatever I had cooked and pairing it alongside clever wording. Cocktail parties, Sunday suppers, Super Bowl Sunday spreads, birthday celebrations and beyond.

One evening, a dear friend from my time at Hockaday in Dallas( with whom I would later reconnect while living in New York City), pointed out what apparently had not occurred to me.“ You should start a cooking Instagram account,” she said.“ Your incredible posts make me hungry. You are enticing me to cook and for the record, I don’ t cook. People should see this!” She was a PR savant living in a two-story brownstone on Charles Street in the West Village, so who was I to argue?

Beets and Bratwurst was born out of equal parts curiosity, food photography and an obsessive love of food. It was a place where gastronomy, travel and personal stories met. And the name made perfect sense to me. Bratwurst was a nod to the seven years I spent living and working in Düsseldorf.

And Beets because who doesn’ t love alliteration? I loved beets long before they became fashionable enough to be artfully arranged over goat cheese foam and scattered with toasted pistachios. But mostly, because, upon tasting them for the first time, Matthew decided they were his favorite vegetable.

Beets and Bratwurst began as a warm invitation into my kitchen. No culinary degree. No professional photography or expensive lighting. Just a deeply held belief that feeding people is one of life’ s great pleasures. What started as a playful experiment turned into an archive of dishes, discoveries and personal stories that made me and, surprisingly, others hungry for more.

One afternoon, I roasted a chicken. I wondered if posting about it would seem too pedestrian, but I threw caution to the wind and did it. And you know what? People noticed. The post and ultimately my account was liked, followed and shared so many times, I lost count.

Strangers began preparing my recipe in their own kitchens and telling me about it. There is something wonderfully surreal about realizing a person you have never met has stood in their own kitchen, following instructions

I typed in mine.

Beets and Bratwurst eventually evolved into a food blog, which caught the attention of Food Network UK. I still find that sentence slightly ridiculous. What had started with an iPad and a friend’ s encouragement had somehow traveled far beyond my kitchen to places like London, Auckland, Singapore and beyond. More than a decade later, I still roast a chicken nearly every Sunday. I have always been a comfort food person. Give me the bubbling casserole, the braised meat, the crispiest french fries, the bowl that requires a spoon and preferably a piece of bread slathered in room temperature butter. Note, we have a mantra in our house that goes“ everything tastes better with butter.” I hear Lucy telling her friends this and I think to myself, oh you make me so proud, dear little girl.

I start with an organic Bell & Evans chicken from Whole Foods Market. Cook’ s note: Never wash a chicken, it isn’ t necessary. But do be sure to remove the small bag of organs from the cavity. The morning of, I remove the packaging, pat the chicken dry, liberally salt it and leave it uncovered in the refrigerator. About 30 minutes before roasting, I take it out and let it sit on the counter.

When it is time to roast, logistics become slightly less virtuous. I put it on a standing grate over my All Clad roasting pan. I melt a stick of butter( my mother always says too much and I quickly retort, not enough) and drizzle it over the chicken. Yes, the whole stick though you can use half a stick if you insist.

Next, I add ground pepper, fennel seeds and red pepper flakes, though this is where I encourage a little kitchen autonomy. Meaning, use the spices you love. Roast chicken does not need a personality imposed upon it. I stuff the cavity with half a lemon, half a head of garlic and a bunch of fresh thyme.

Into a 425-degree oven it goes. Thirty minutes later, Alexa, who has become an indispensable member of my kitchen staff, informs me it is time for phase two. I remove it from the oven and place the vegetables beneath the chicken. My favorite vegetable medley of the moment is fennel, carrots and sweet potatoes. Sometimes it is just potatoes. Other times, carrots. This is Sunday dinner, not a Michelin star tasting menu. Work with what you have.

Then the dish returns to the oven for another hour. In this time, the chicken roasts to irresistibly crisp-skinned perfection while the vegetables caramelize beneath it, thanks to a glorious situation involving melted butter and chicken drippings.

I think that is why I chose this recipe to revisit now. Food has a

funny way of keeping our former selves within reach. I can roast this chicken and remember the woman behind that first Instagram account. The one holding an iPad over dinner, moving the plate three inches toward the window because the light was better. The one who had no idea where Beets and Bratwurst would lead, only that she loved to cook, explore the world and had something to say.

But every Sunday morning, like clockwork, I pull a chicken from the refrigerator. More than a decade later, the ritual remains remarkably uncomplicated. And perhaps that is exactly why it started everything.

Elizabeth’ s Roast Chicken( serves four)

Ingredients

• 1( 4- to 5-pound) organic whole chicken

• Kosher salt

• 8 tablespoons( 1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

• Freshly ground black pepper

• Red pepper flakes

• Fennel seeds or rosemary

• 1 lemon, halved

• 1 head garlic, halved crosswise

• 1 bunch fresh thyme

• 4 to 6 cups chopped vegetables or potatoes, such as fennel, carrots, sweet potatoes or Yukon Gold potatoes

• Maldon sea salt, for finishing

Directions Dry-brine the chicken.

The morning you plan to roast the chicken, remove it from its packaging and discard the giblets. Pat the chicken thoroughly dry with paper towels and season generously with kosher salt. Place the chicken in a roasting pan and refrigerate, uncovered, until ready to cook. Bring the chicken out of the refrigerator.

About 30 minutes before roasting, remove the chicken from the refrigerator and let it sit, uncovered, at room temperature. Prepare the chicken.

Preheat the oven to 425 F. Drizzle the melted butter generously over the chicken. Season with black pepper, red pepper flakes and fennel seeds, adjusting the spices to your taste. Tuck half the lemon, half the garlic head and the thyme into the cavity. Begin roasting.

Roast the chicken for 30 minutes. Remove the roasting pan from the oven and arrange the vegetables beneath the chicken, tossing them lightly in the butter and chicken drippings. Finish roasting.

Return the pan to the oven and continue roasting until the skin is deeply golden and crisp and the chicken reaches an internal temperature of 165 F. For me, this is one hour or more, depending on the size of the bird. Rest the chicken.

Remove the chicken from the oven and let it rest, uncovered,

for 10 to 15 minutes before carving. Finish the vegetables.

Remove the roasted lemon and garlic from the chicken cavity. Squeeze the lemon over the vegetables, followed by the softened roasted garlic cloves. Toss everything together directly in the roasting pan, allowing the vegetables to soak up the pan juices. Transfer to a serving bowl. Bon Appetit!

Carve the chicken and serve alongside the roasted vegetables. Finish with a pinch of Maldon sea salt.

What are your favorite summer dishes? The recipes that appear once the plums are finally good, the watermelon is sweet enough to eat standing over the sink, and dinner somehow stretches long past sunset. I would love to hear what finds its way to your table this time of year. Shoot me an email to elizabeth. johnson @ jewishcharlotte. org