Chix
So, after being distracted by a month or two of actually doing what I am paid to do (NB: I did, in fact, send a book merrily off to the publisher), I can now get to what actually matters most in life: Philaphood. And more specifically, I can turn my attention to what matters most to D. and P. Chicken! I’ve been thinking about doing this entry for a while. But yesterday, D. told me that she was planning on sharing my patented poultry methodology with her best friend, A. So I figured I’d provide her with a blog entry to post on K.’s Facebook page.
True confessions: my approach derives from a combination of two Jacques Pepin recipes: the “poulet rotî” in Jacques Pepin’s Table and the “split roasted chicken” in Jacques and Julia Cooking at Home. More specifically, the approach to roasting is from the former, while the spice rub is from the latter. After ten years of my own kitchen evolution (or devolution…) it was useful to look back at those recipes. At this point, I use about five times more spice rub than Jacques, and the spice rub itself is a bit … middle-eastier; I sear the chicken for longer than he does—love that crustiness; and I roast for longer than he recommends (maybe because I do two birds, crammed into a single pan, and they need more time to get up to temperature?).
So let’s get to it. The most important question is: what chicken to roast. Free-range, naturally raised chickens taste good. Besides, eating those industrially raised chickens is like taking your karma out back and burning it. I recently saw Food, Inc., and it confirmed me in my view that the industrial production of cheap chicken (and cheap meat in general) is morally indefensible. If we, as a society, can’t afford to produce meat humanely, then we should cut down on our meat consumption until we can. (Although, about the film, I have to say that the scenes of slaughtering free-range chickens seemed a little too happy and lyrical—as if the birds were enjoying the process and ultimately grateful.)
Enough preaching. For a long time, I cooked the Bell and Evans chickens pretty much on a weekly basis. (Now you’ll say, “So what he really means is that in his world only people who can afford Bell and Evans get to eat chicken at all.” I say: “Time to discover your inner bourgeois.”) But now we are living out of close Whole Foods range, in West Philadelphia, and we have to depend on Fresh Grocer. They stock D’Artagnan organic chickens, Harvestland naturally raised chickens, and Empire Kosher chickens as well as some sort of evil Tysons or other. I’ve cooked all three of the former, and they’re all acceptable. I prefer the D’Artagnan chickens—fine chicken flavor—but they weren’t available yesterday. So I got Empire Kosher—juicy and tasty, but I do find the meat a little sweet and a tiny bit rubbery. And the salt makes the drippings, and therefore the pan sauce, saltier than I like. I’m making this sound like this chicken is substandard, I know—it’s not. They cook up fine. Just not perfectly, to my mind.
I always make two, since they fit exactly in my pan, which used to be non-stick and now is incredibly well seasoned. When I first started cooking, I would clean things obsessively, but at some point I realized that not only is the patina of use functional (a different and better non-stick surface, really), but it’s also a badge of honor. A well used pan, blackened on the bottom and with unremovable grease stains is an object of great beauty. I’m convinced that the fit of the birds in the pan is essential to the results—adds to the reflective heat or something.
So what do I do with the birds? First: preheat the oven to 425°. Then the spice rub: caraway seeds, mustard seeds (or Coleman’s ground mustard), sweet paprika, peppercorns, cumin, kosher salt. I use about a table spoon of everything except the paprika and the salt—two tablespoons of the former and a teaspoon of the latter. A teaspoon of cayenne is a good addition. Jacques calls for grinding everything up in a spice grinder, but the first time I did this recipe I didn’t have one, and so I made do with the mortar and pestle. The caraway doesn’t grind down much at all, and I leave the mustard seed and the pepper coarsely ground. I know some people are nervous that caraway sticks in the teeth, but I swear no one has ever had a tooth-hygiene malfunction as a result of this recipe.
Next I wash them (even though the latest Cooks Illustrated advises against washing in order not to splatter salmonella all over the sink). Then I dry them on my dedicated raw meat cutting board—a leftover chunk of Dad and N.’s butcherblock counter. Rub with the spices inside and out. Then sear on one side on the stove on the highest heat that the stovetop can manage for about 7 min., flip them and sear the other sides for the same length of time. Leave them on their sides and put them in the oven.
At this point, you are basically done with your work. Clean up the counter and pour yourself a glass of wine, if you haven’t done so already. Go and read the paper or read a book with the kids. Or think about side dishes, if you want—throw some potatoes or asparagus into the oven. Twenty minutes later flip the birds to the other side. And then another twenty minutes later flip them onto their backs and cook for 15-20 minutes, until they hit 175° or so at the thigh joint, pull them out and put them on a board to cool before carving. All the flipping gets an evenly crispy skin and keeps the juices from flowing out the breast.
The pan sauce: I don’t make this with every chicken, but D. begged for it this time, so I went ahead and made it. Get the fat out of the pan (one of the easiest ways is just to cook the pan down until the juices are almost solidified, and then pour out the fat). Then deglaze with chicken stock and wine, throwing in a little butter when it’s thickened up nicely and cooling off. Lots of little bits in there–caraway seeds and so forth. But as has been established already, this doesn’t bother me.
But where to get the stock to make the sauce with? If you’re not too busy while the birds are roasting, it’s generally pretty convenient to spend a few minutes throwing a pot of stock together on the stovetop while roasting the chicken. This way, you can free up all that space in the freezer for more bones, giblets, necks and so on. My stock is pretty simple—chicken bones of all sorts, raw and roasted, yellow onion, carrots, parsley, dill, bay leaf, pan drippings from evenings when I forego a pan sauce. Let it simmer for a few hours and then strain out the bones immediately. In reference to this approach, my mother in law once pronounced, scandalously, “that’s not stock” (“это не бульён”)—she does a classic Jewish clear broth from raw chicken. That was a rough bit in our family life, but we’ve all gotten past it now. I prefer the dark and well-seasoned stuff that I cook up, personally.
In my review of those foundational recipes, I noticed that Jacques lets the birds rest on their breasts—to maintain breast juiciness, I assume. I’ll try that next time I roast chickens, but resting on the back works for me. All that’s left is to carve and serve. I like just about every part of the chicken, in different ways, but everyone else on the team has their favs. K. is only interested in dark meat. P. likes the skin, most of all, and can sometimes be convinced to eat breast meat. D., in her inimitable way, likes to pick carcasses. The closer the bone, the sweeter the meat, as my great-granny used to say.
