Friends with Strangers

I’m pretty devoted to my chicken recipes, especially a roast chicken.  I normally do roast chicken the Thomas Keller way with a Jaques Pepin twist.  Which simply means I use TK’s recipe but I don’t truss the bird, it is hands down the easiest thing to make, tasty too.  But that all changed last week.  

I am a member of a couple online food ‘communities’.  And like all online communities you make ‘friends’ with people in other cities.  Ignoring your parents and talking to strangers.  For all you know they could have different political opinions and plastic on their couches.

While commenting/chatting, whatever you call electric banter, with one of my total stranger ‘friends’ we discovered that she not only lives 3 blocks from my childhood home but she also happens to be real life friends with my very best friend.  Small world indeed.  Anyhow, we did what any normal electronic friends who have never met before would do, we became Facebook friends.

It’s been a week of blog related mishaps. So it’s a good thing my virtual friend posted that she was roasting an herb stuffed chicken with seasonal vegetables.  Somehow that just sounded like perfection to me and so I resolved to make one.  I knew it was a total winner when our pre-teen son took a bite, his eyes popped open and said ’Mmmm, wow, that’s really good! What did you do differently to the chicken?‘ YES!  I served it with a squash, zucchini, leek casserole the first time, which was also gobbled up, hopefully I can remember what went in to that.  It was so good we made it again the other night.  So thanks to my friend Linda, who I don’t actually know, for changing my chicken gears.  Hopefully one day we can actually meet, in the meantime, we will be enjoying this chicken. 

Herb Stuffed Roast Chicken - Serves 4

1 - 4.5 pound chicken

4 cups herbs on stems, use at least 4 kinds, I used

Rosemary

Tarragon

Globe Basil

Purple Basil

Bee Balm

Oregano

Thyme

Lavender

1 lemon, sliced then cut in half

3-4 cloves garlic, sliced in half lengthwise

Kosher or sea salt

Rinse and pat dry the bird, very well. Dry bird = crispy bird.  Salt and pepper the cavity.  Stuff the bird with the lemons, garlic and herbs, alternating to get a good distribution of flavors.  Truss the bird.  Place the bird breast side up on a roasting pan.  Sprinkle liberally with salt all over.  Place in a 425 oven for 40 minutes or until a thermometer reads 165.  Let rest 5-10 minutes.  Carve and serve.

Note:  As usual chicken doesn't photograph so sexy, my apologies.

The apology continues...

Yes, the bird again. I am really starting to appreciate it’s versatility, it’s tofu like qualities to take on other flavors. It’s cheap too and it just makes people happy. I had chicken and dumplings for the first time the other day at my neighbors Kevin and Lisa’s restaurant. Gobbled it up. And so the new love affair continues. I saw this in this month’s Food & Wine: ‘Tea Smoked Chicken’. Sounded exotic. The picture was beautiful and so was the chef that created it and the recipe came with a pedigree. Now, outside of Thanksgiving, I usually don’t spend multiple days preparing a dish and certainly rarely go through the numerous steps called for to create this recipe; I’m impatient and such recipes seem fussy. But I was intrigued and the chef, Andrea Reusing, promised it would deliver and for some reason I trusted her, she looked trustworthy and she used the word ‘doozy’. The reality is I don’t know why this woman has not yet published a cookbook. Andrea - I would buy it and I’d buy copies for my friends. Please publish a cookbook. Until then I will use all the recipes in this month’s Food and Wine again and again.

When I rolled out my first try at this Jim and Jayme decimated the bird, picked it clean, n o t h i n g for the dogs, at all. Jayme declared it the best thing I’ve ever made her and Jim said he thought it was damn good and not to change a thing. Jayme then went on to boldly state it was better than the Thomas Keller chicken I constantly make. Take that TK. Girls rule. We had it again last night and I could not wait to get home for lunch today to eat the leftovers. It is a total home run.

I served it, as Andrea recommended, with green beans with her XO sauce. Perhaps that’s another blog, but let me say that the XO sauce was awesome. The blog momofukufortwo.com recommends giving XO as a gift; I’d be happy to have it as a gift. And if I know you and you’re reading this - you might be getting it for Christmas because I know have a lot of tiny dried shrimp in my fridge and not a whole heck of a lot of recipes that call for them. I also served jasmine rice and the ginger scallion dressing Andrea recommends for the chicken. The sauce was baffling to me, vegetable oil, scallions and ginger, that’s it, not heated up, just vegetable oil, ginger and scallions; I was very confused. It actually went great in/on our rice but that chicken is so special it did not need the addition of any sauce, so I say skip it.

Andrea calls for two birds, I used (1) 31/2 lb. bird both times, I did not reduce the amount of brine or smoking ingredients she recommends for both birds. For some reason I could not find loose black tea, so I cut open 10-12 Tazo teabags to create the needed quantity of loose tea. Obviously the type of tea you select will effect the chicken. I found a 50/50 combination of Earl Gray and a less pungent black tea worked the best.

My advice would be to do this on a weekend, make it a Sunday night dinner and start the brining Saturday. Be patient, read all the directions about 7 times before embarking; I know I did. The result is a stunner. I plan to tea smoke a whole bunch of things. Next up, Andrea's Carmel Lacquered Pork Belly.

Tea Smoked Chicken - From Andrea Reusing

Brine

2 quarts water

6 garlic cloves - smashed

5 dried red chiles

4 star anise pods

3 tablespoons honey

(1) 2-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced

zest of an orange removed with a vegetable peeler

1 cinnamon stick

1 cup soy sauce

1 small yellow onion, quartered

1 tablespoon sugar

Combine everything in a pot and bring to boil, allow to simmer for 10 minutes, let cool. While the brine is cooking I gather the smoking ingredients and but in a container for use the next day.

Smoking Mixture

1/2 cup jasmine rice

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons loose black tea

4 star anise pods, broken into pieces

4 dried red chiles, broken into pieces

Chicken

(1) 3.3-3.7 lb. chicken

salt

vegetable oil

1 Tsp. crushed Sichuan peppercorns, crushed

When the brine has cooled to room temperature place the chicken in the pot, making sure it is covered in brine and place in fridge for 24 hours.

Remove chicken from brine and pat dry, coat with vegetable oil and sprinkle with salt and peppercorns. For the smoking I used a broiler pan on my stove top. Wrap the bottom portion of the broiler pan 2x in heavy aluminum foil, spread the smoking mixture on the half of the pan over the burner, put the broiler rack on top and the bird on the broiler rack. Tent with foil making sure there is a good seal all around. Turn your kitchen vent fan on now and preheat oven to 375. Turn up the burner to high for 2 minutes, reduce to medium for 3 minutes, turn off heat and keep bird covered for 5 more minutes, uncover and let rest for 10 minutes. Andrea then recommends you cook the bird at 375 for 35 minutes and then at 425 for another 35. I found after turning up the heat I only needed another 15 minutes until the bird was completely cooked. Let rest for 10 minutes prior to carving.

The Dirty Word...

People are chicken crazy. I don’t know about your town but chicken wings are on the menu of almost every pub and sandwich shop in this town. With the recession dumbing down our finer dining options and essentially turning them into gourmet burger joints I half expect to find a chicken wing fancied up with some harissa or teetering on a slab of foie gras plopped on the menu between the duck rillettes and the Wagyu sliders. Then there are the ubiquitous chicken fingers. Made out of, of course, real chicken fingers. If chicken fingers were the Kool-Aid several generations have already drunk it and we should all be scared. Clearly, like any prejudice, I have an unfounded disdain for chicken. Quite possibly it comes from these milquetoasty food stuffs I suspect of brain-washing or rather palette-washing the masses. This is only my ‘impression’; I was a vegetarian for 23 years so I don’t have much experience with chicken except for some rather unmemorable childhood memories.

The roast or rotisserie chicken runs the gamut of down and dirty fast food masquerading as dinner to the sublime. Grocery stores have built monuments to it. When I go out of town, Jim heads straight to the Kroger for the bird in a bag and a container of macaroni salad. If there is a roasted chicken on the menu of any restaurant I’m dining in with my father I’ve got $1,000 that says my dad is going to order it. He will then, if it’s good, talk under his breath the whole time while eating it about how much he likes roast chicken. He might even get in a ‘man oh man‘ and start to sweat if it’s exceptional. I felt that this classic, the apple pie of poultry, needed to be faced so I could find out what all the hullabaloo is about. As the saying goes ‘If ten people tell you you are drunk, it’s time to sit down.’

I had read somewhere that one of Thomas Keller’s favorite meals is roasted chicken. That seemed like a solid place to start. Now, I have prepared a few TK items before, mainly from the Bouchon cookbook, including a quiche that took about three days to assemble and cook and a fourth day to finish eating. I Googled ‘Thomas Keller + Roast Chicken’ and got back another Bouchon recipe. It was shockingly direct; it said ‘Take bird, put in oven, come back in 50 minutes, enjoy the most delicious roasted chicken ever’. I exaggerate, but not by much. The chicken is everything a chicken should be, crispy skin, juicy meat and full of subtle flavor; you will pick the bones clean and you will lick your fingers. And I owe the bird an apology.

The TK recipe calls for a 2 – 3 lb. bird and serves two to three people with a side dish perfectly. However, what if there are more than two of you? Or what if you cannot find this oddly shaped bird? I have only been able to find that size bird at Whole Foods. The smallest chicken, not including the game hen, at most grocery stores and farmers’ markets in Atlanta is going to be just over 4 lbs. So if you don’t have access to the smaller organic chickens I have adapted the recipe for a standard commercially raised larger chicken below.

Roast Chicken with Thyme (or Rosemary) adapted from Thomas Keller - Serves 6

(1) 5lb. chicken

salt and pepper

2 tablespoons thyme or rosemary or both

Remove the giblet pack from inside the chicken, discard or save for another purpose, wash the chicken and pat it dry. Salt and pepper the cavity, truss the bird. TK directs that you ‘rain salt’ all over the bird and for this size bird I use about 1 1/2-2 tablespoons. Pepper the bird as desired. Place in a roasting pan and into a 450 degree oven, come back in an hour and fifteen minutes +/-, remove the bird from the oven, cut off the kitchen twine, sprinkle with the thyme and baste with it’s own juices and the herbs then let it rest for 15 minutes prior to carving.

Notes : I have cooked this dish in 4 different ovens and in half of the ovens 3/4 of the way through cooking chicken juice spatters all over the inside of the oven, making a smoky mess of the house and a disaster of the inside of the oven. It’s worth it you’re willing to suffer through it. Or when this happens to us, we (and by we I mean Jim) literally just places a piece of aluminum foil on top of the bird, so it is as ventilated as possible and the foil is just to redirect the grease in to the pan. Keep the bird uncovered as long as you can.

Please wash your hands well after touching the raw bird prior to touching anything else.

**I recently found 3lb. birds at Trader Joe's; they were labeled 'broiler chicken'.