Roast Chicken is the Story

Roast chicken has, over the last several years, become one of my favorite foods. I'm not sure if it's because I've been doing a lot more reading about food -- seems like EVERYONE has something to say about roast chicken and omelettes -- or if I'm just appreciating simpler preparations. Regardless, I frequently find myself searching for an excuse to roast a chicken.

When I was younger, everyday I would ask "what's for dinner?". A couple of meals excited me, a couple disgusted me, but most responses just did nothing for me. Put roast chicken in the third category. My mom would buy big, old Purdue hens. These chickens suffer from the turkey paradox: they're just too big for an even-cooking roast. It's virtually impossible to have perfectly cooked breasts AND thighs. Also, I think Purdue chicken smells. I used to think all chicken, when raw, just kind of stank, but after going through several Murray's and Bell & Evans birds, I know that good quality, fresh chicken, much like fresh seafood, should have no smell at all. It also shouldn't be slimy and ooze its moisture just coming to room temperature. It was not roast chicken that I didn't like, but a certain brand of chicken. Sorry Purdue, I am not a fan.

In my market, Bell & Evans and Murray's chickens never go on sale, but I have found that they cost about the same as Purdue birds when those birds are not on sale. Still, I can get a 3-4 lb quality chicken for about $8-$10 and feed a family of four. Add in some potatoes and vegetables and I'm still well under $20 for the meal. Therefore, when it's up to me, I buy Murray's or Bell & Evans (Murray's slightly preferred -- not sure why!).

I've also recently subscribed to Ina Garten's roast chicken breast technique for all kinds of chicken preparations. The other day, I roasted several bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts for chicken chili and they were great: juicy and tender. I roasted the pieces for 40 minutes at 450F (not convection) with just a little oil, salt, and pepper. A few days later, I roasted some split breasts for my mom for soup -- much better than boiled chicken. Then, I roasted some again for a pasta dish. The chicken turns out with great texture and flavor, although you do lose an opportunity to create flavor via browning. I think that it's worth it anyway.

Food & Films 2009

January 16, 2009 marked the first annual Food & Films day at G//P headquarters. Tackle was heading back to college on the 19th and we wanted to celebrate the things we love most...both food and films. Planning for the occasion was relatively poor -- as usual. However, it came together nicely. I plan to post details and recipes separately, since there was a lot happening that fateful, frigid Friday (it was 7F, people. Seriously.).

Tackle rolled over to HQ at about 10AM. By that point, I already had a biga going for some rustic white bread. The first order of business was determining how to watch movies AND cook AND eat at the same time. Since we're very smart, we realized we needed to display the films in the kitchen.  This runs contrary to my idealized plan: I'd hoped we'd get everything going on the stove, simmering away, and then slip into the living room to catch a couple of flicks. I don't know if we were overly ambitious or just plain slow, but there was no time to slip away. Instead, we set up Cotton's MacBook and Bose speakers and turned on a very serious film -- My Cousin Vinny.  I decided her screen was too small, so we hooked my Toshiba laptop to the TV in the kitchen. We could see my desktop and windows just fine, but for some reason, the DVD image would not display on the TV. Finally, we just set my computer atop several cases of soda with the nice speakers attached and never looked back.

It was probably about 11AM or so by this point, so we got to work on the cooking. There were three of us -- Cotton, Tackle, and myself (Bizzy stopped by for dinner). Tackle got to work on the bread. I chopped lots of onions and carrots for Cotton and Tackle, and they started cooking. We were working on some braised short ribs and a pork ragu. Those were to be eaten side-by-side at dinner. Some snacks were also in the works to sustain us throughout the day.

In the end, we turned out some homemade bread, homemade tagliatelle, and two different condiments (short ribs and pork ragu) for said tagliatelle. And that was just dinner.  We also deep-fried some frozen poppers, made a chili-cream cheese-cheddar dip, and some pretty amazing Buffalo wings (subscription required) for intra-day nourishment. And did I mention the carnitas and pork rinds? We played My Cousin Vinny and Billy Madison while cooking, and closed the night with a viewing of The Departed and a couple of rounds of Mario Kart on the Wii. It was ridiculously fun and a day I'll never forget. It's awesome cooking and hanging out with Cotton and Tackle (and Bizzy!), doing the things we all love. We gotta do this again next year!

Stayed tuned for more to come on the details of this day.

College Student's Flavor Aider

When you're in college, the food in the cafeteria...well, it kind of sucks. It's bland and tasteless and it needs some livening up. So in my quest for flavor, I came up with a minor solution, at least when it comes to boring sandwiches and bland burgers: a special sauce of sorts that makes campus dining almost tolerable. I liked the sauce so much that when I came home for winter break it was like something was missing from my diet (no, I don't mean the carb-rich selection for digestion). I wanted to try and mimic the sauce for home consumption. For the most part, the sauce is pretty basic. At school, it was simply a mix of Parmesan Peppercorn dressing and Franks Hot Sauce (it sounds a little gross, but is surprisingly delicious). But at home, it got a little more complicated. The ingredients didn't all line up perfectly, so it took some modification but I came up with a suitable substitute.

The first thing I did to produce the sauce at home was to make sure that we had a supply of Frank's Hot Sauce, arguably the most important ingredient because of its distinct flavor, color and spice. Next I had to find the second key ingredient, a suitable dressing. Now, I looked high and low in my local grocery store and I could not find a great parmesan peppercorn dressing that I liked, so I needed to improvise the recipe. I ended up using plain old Cardini's Caeser dressing and some ground black pepper, to taste. However, I found that to be a little thin for a sandwich spread so I added a spoonful of Hellman's Light Mayo and stirred that in with a fork until the mixture was blended completely. I should mention that I normally eyeball the ingredients for this recipe, but I would say that the ratio for the sauce is one part Frank's to two parts salad dressing, and then fresh ground black pepper and mayo to taste. I like the sauce on burgers and on turkey sandwiches, but you can eat it any way you want to.

Enjoy!

Breakthrough

This may seem like a really small thing, but I've perfected cooking rice.  It doesn't involve a special steamer and is not done on the stove top.  Rather, I follow Cook's Illustrated's recipe for oven-baked brown rice [subscription required -- sorry!].  It comes out perfectly fluffy and flavorful and not at all mushy.  I also cooked my steel cut oats using the same technique and it worked great.  I just need to reduce the amount of water from a 4:1 ratio to more like a 3:1 or even 2.5:1.  This will take some tinkering, but the rice alone is a major success.

Photo credits: Mr. Kris