Stove-n Chicken

Why is it that the day after I wash my long, curly locks I decide to make the one chicken dinner that perfumes the house for days with minute particles of tasty chicken fat that cling to everything including my hair which only this morning smelled of mangoes and now with only the addition of some curry,  might tempt someone to eat off my head?

That block of chicken flesh that defrosted overnight on the counter (I know, I know, you shouldn’t defrost at room temperature but it’s so cold in the house that it’s as good as a fridge),  sat patiently and wanly on the counter awaiting its final, final fate (Is that your final answer? Roasted or panfried?).

All day long I had walked around work wrestling with the weighty decision of another Friday night roast chicken, roast vegetables and predictable salad, or my world famous chicken and bread salad varied with the spiced pears that were poached in red wine and pomegranate syrup a few days ago, or the boned chicken recipe from Red Cat cookbook? As people asked for help to solve their problems, find products; as I replied to emails and wrote a few snarky ones, the back of my mind was simmering the question down to a final clarity: thinking about the golden brown, crispy skin of the Red Cat chicken set the decision.

But, like childbirth, one soon forgets the pain, although in this case the “pain” isn’t in the cooking but in the cleaning. Recipes that work well in restaurants where there are cleaning brigades, not to mention heavy duty ventilation systems, tend to frazzle the home cook; and not because they are difficult per se but because they are very messy.

The Red Cat’s chicken is a case in point. First you have to bone the damn thing. Make sure your knife is a real boning knife and that it’s sharp: the chicken is very slippery when cold and the more you handle it the warmer and  slimier it gets.

After you’ve accomplished this no small feat in about 10 minutes, you heat a pan with some hot oil and place the chicken in skin side down. If it doesn’t immediately make so much noise that you can no longer hear the evening news in the background, turn up the heat, until the only thing audible is the sound of sizzling, frying chicken.

It’s at this point that you must turn on the vent, perhaps consider putting on a bathing cap to keep your hair from smelling like you’ve spent the night in a KFC, and keep a damp cloth handy to wipe down the splatters from the pan that cover the stove and all surrounding areas.

After about 8 minutes, when the skin is a deep golden brown, you pop the pan into a 450F oven for exactly 20 minutes. It’s that easy. And that messy.  You’ve spent about 10 minutes actually handling the chicken, 8 watching it cook, and then another 20 waiting for it to bake. Ideally, you want it to sit for an addition 5-10 minutes after coming out of the oven.

That’s a good thing since you’re also probably going to want to open all the windows and doors (never mind it’s -19C outside)because as soon as the oven door opens up, a billow of chicken smoke emerges the size of Casper the Friendly Ghost, and if not given an outlet will   set off your smoke alarm,  and hang in the air like smog for several days. Trust me, open your windows and doors or else every piece of clothing in the house will tell the story of Red Cat chicken. And by the time all the windows and doors are open, and you’re now freezing your ass off, the chicken will be ready to eat. Incidentally, while it’s been cooking in the oven, you’ve been whipping up some mashed potatoes and simmering some leftover chunky tomato sauce.

You may be shivering by the time you sit down to dinner (unless you make it in the summer in which case you might be cursing) , nevertheless, the technique  produces a very fine specimen: beautifully juicy and tender on the inside, deliciously crisp and tasty on the outside.

This time it was served surrounded by the simmering chunky tomato sauce beneath a mound of red bliss potatoes, parsnip, celeriac and a matzoh ball puree. That got your attention! Yes, this is now the second time I have added matzoh balls to my mashed potatoes.

Why?   Because I am lazy; because I am convinced when I portion out the matzoh ball soup, I will know exactly what’s in the container 6 months later and therefore do not label anything. Never mind that blond chicken stock with a matzoh ball frozen in its centre looks exactly like chicken stock without a matzoh ball!

But back to the stove: the  melting chicken stock (for de-glazing the pan and smoothing out the potatoes) suddenly ceased to melt, or so it seemed. There was a stubborn center that wouldn’t melt: looking closer I recognized a fluffy matzoh ball from Rosh Hashanah. Oh well, as you know, nothing goes to waste in my house, so in it went into the mashed potatoes (it is starch after all). My SO watched with a kind of morbid fascination; actually, I don’t think he realized what I was doing so dumbstruck was he, but that didn’t stop him from second and third helpings.

The meal took 45 minutes to make, perhaps a half an hour to consume if you include our brownies for dessert, but the cleanup itself took an hour. The stove had to be completely disassembled and wiped down as did the back splash and side counters. The oven? I had to use my blade scraper and a scrubber to make sure the interior  was clean. The sink was slick with fat. The saute pan was a basket case (is that mixing metaphors?) or in this case, a mess of baked on fat that needed real and commercial elbow grease to clean its surface. And my hair? I’m too tired now to wash it. And that’s a good thing: the aroma will no doubt cling long enough to remind me that this is a great recipe…for my next restaurant.

Stove-n Chicken

1 chicken

vegetable oil

chicken stock, white wine or Madeira

chunky tomato sauce

mashed potatoes/polenta

Preheat oven to 450F

1. Bone the chicken. Better yet, get it cut in half and boned for you, keeping the wing bones but removing all other bones. If you’re doing it yourself, remove the back, cut down the center of the breast and work your way from the leg and thigh bones, scraping the flesh off the bone, to the breast where it’s fairly easy to do.

2. Reform the leg which in all likelihood will be turned inside out so that you can reshape the chicken half into more or less its original shape, only sans bones. Season with salt and pepper

3. Heat an oven proof saute pan large enough to accommodate both halves over high heat and add about 2 Tbsp of vegetable oil. When it shimmers, carefully lay the chicken halves skin side down. Turn on your ventilation. It will sizzle and pop vigourously.

4. From time to time, after about 6 minutes, lift the chicken up using tongs to see how brown the skin is. It should be a deep, golden brown.

5. Place the pan in the oven and bake for an additional 20 minutes. Through the window you will see lots of smoke swirling around. It’s okay, as long as you get the windows and door ready to open.

6. While the chicken is in the oven, heat your tomato puree and make your mashed potatoes or polenta, both are great.

7. Remove the chicken from the oven and let sit for about 5-10 minutes.

8. Pour the fat out of the pan, making sure you use a dishcloth to hold the handle since it’s HOT from the oven. Deglaze it with some chicken stock, white wine or Madeira, scraping up the crispy bits. Bring to a boil and simmer down until it’s thickenend.

9. You can either swirl it into the mashed potatoes/polenta, or reserve it and pour over the chicken. In either case, spoon some tomato sauce in the bottom of a plate and make a large circle. In the center place a mound of potatoews/polenta and top with a chicken half. Serve immediately.