Prolix chicken

[madbaker]

This week's Resolution Recipe: Poulet roti. In the words of Mr. Anthony Bourdain:

That's roast chicken, numbnuts! And if you can't properly roast a damn chicken then you are one helpless, hopeless, sorry-ass bivalve in an apron. Take that apron off, wrap it around your neck, and hang yourself. You do not deserve to wear the proud garment of generations of hardworking, dedicated cooks.

Before we begin we should talk about the chicken. Perhaps you think that a drugged-up supermarket bird that's spent its whole life jammed into a cramped pen with a bunch of similarly unhealthy specimens, eating its neighbor's droppings, is adequate for your kitchen. It is decidedly not.

1 whole chicken, about 4 lbs, giblets reserved
salt and pepper
1/2 lemon
1 onion, peeled and cut in half
1 sprig of fresh rosemary "(do not get that dried trash anywhere near my bird!)"
1 sprig of fresh thyme
2 Tbsp herb butter (we used good-quality olive oil instead)
3 Tbsp butter, softened
1 1/2 cups white wine
chopped parsley for garnish

Heat oven to 375. Cut off the wingtips, leaving the last joint only. With fingers, remove excess fat from the chicken's inside cavity (but do not remove the "pope's nose" - the ass. That's flavor.) and remove the giblets packet. Wash the inside of the chicken thoroughly with cold running water and allow to dry. Season the inside cavity with salt and pepper.

How to truss: here's a shortcut. First: lie on your back on the floor, put your knees together, and draw them both up to your chest with your arms. Press them against your chest. That's the position I want you to put your chicken in: knees up, ass out. Undignified, but effective. Take a paring knife and just below the end of the chicken's legs poke a small hole on each side and tuck the leg carefully inside, pinioning the legs in a position approximating what you just did on the floor. Try not to tear the skin. Now rub the outside of your bird with salt and pepper. Put the lemon half, half of the onion, the rosemary and the thyme inside the chicken cavity.

Carefully taking hold of the edge of the skin on each side of the chicken, lift the skin and gently push a tablespoon of herb butter underneath, prodding it along so that one lump of herb butter sits on each side of the breastboen. Rub the outside of the chicken with about half of the plain butter.

Remove the giblets from the bag and place them and the remaining half onion in the center of the roasting pan; place the chicken on top of them. Pour 1/2 cup of white wine in the pan and roast for 30 minutes, basting occasionally with the collecting fat and butter. After 30 minutes, crank the oven up to 450 and cook another 25 minutes. Remove the chicken from the oven and let rest for 15 minutes before carving.

Place the roasting pan on the stovetop over high heat. Deglaze the brown bits with the remaining wine, using a wooden spoon. Bring to a boil and reduce by half. Discard the giblets and onion and whisk in the remaining softened butter. Stir in the parsley, season with salt and pepper, and serve alongside the chicken.

What worked: This took more time to type than it did to prepare. Okay, that's an exaggeration, but it really is a very easy recipe - bonacorsi did all the work on this dish, and she doesn't really like cooking.

The chicken was moist and the skin was just about perfect - crackling and delicious when hot, stock fodder when cold. It probably would have been even better had we not substituted olive oil, but what the heck.

What didn't: Cranking the oven up to 450 kept setting off our smoke alarms. Aargh.

Will I make it again? I like roast chicken and this is a good recipe. Sure.

Comments

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

MMmmmmmm!

Alarm: I had alarms like that once. Pointing a small fan in the direction of the alarm before starting cooking, worked wonders.

Stuff under the skin: I used to put a teaspoon of that mashed garlic you can get in a tube, under the skin and squoosh it around before cooking. Very nice.

Loved the sarcastic descriptions. Lie on the floor.... Does this author write like this all the time? I know someone who I need to buy some of his books for, if so.

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

Yes, he does indeed write like that all the time. This comes from The Les Halles Cookbook, which besides being very funny has quite good basic Fronch recipes. I've cooked a number of them and been pleased.

[naadhira.livejournal.com]

I must get Mr. Bourdain's book(s) - far more entertaining than the Julia Child that was the cookbook bible for my ex-husband (who was a fine cook, I might add).

Great Recipe

[learnteach.livejournal.com]

Better instructions. He pays homage to Julia Child, who is very fun in her own way. I really like the Julia and Jacque cookbook, where they argue different ways to cook things.

[albionwood.livejournal.com]

So you rub the skin with salt & pepper first, and then rub it with butter? Seems backwards.

I thought olive oil was the secret to that crispy skin of true Poulet Roti. Interesting that Bourdain uses butter instead; is he perhaps from the North of France?

Otherwise this is quite similar to the Poulet Roti recipe Catherine has been following for some time now. She chops sage, oregano, and rosemary, mixes them into olive oil, and tucks that under the skin with her fingers. Then rubs the rest of the oil over the whole bird, trusses him up, and puts him on the rotisserie. Which out on the porch, so no smoke alarm problems. The only problem is the incredible smell given off about half an hour before the bird is ready to eat...

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

He's from the North of New York, I think. In one of his first head chef gigs at a Fronch restaurant, they publicized him as "Antoine Bourdain".

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

Also, if you rub the skin with butter and then spices, the spices stick to the butter (and possibly slide off) rather than penetrating into the skin. That's my theory, anyway.