All Trussed Up and Ready to Go

Seems to me that this blog used to be a lot sexier, and I’m not just referring to the wiener jokes.  You already know that I love me a big slab of meat that just lasts and lasts.

            The passion went out of my cooking when the passion went out of my life.  Making food is romantic to me; a lot of love goes into what I make.  It is a very intimate experience, creating something that fills a void and satisfies an insatiable craving. 

            A little of that romance seems to have faded. 

The flame has died down. 

I got lazy—cooking crock pot meals every week, falling back on old favorites—stopped challenging myself.  When my Green Bean Delivery arrives, sometimes I just make a salad and steam some vegetables; I don’t even take the time to look up a recipe.  I don’t even bother mixing up any salad dressing even though I have the ingredients for it and know how to from memory; I just splash a little balsamic over the lettuce and heirloom tomatoes.   

It’s been long enough. 

I think it’s time to bring the passion back into my life.

Time to relight the fire.

Every once in a while I have the uncontrollable urge to roast a chicken; I think it’s the chef’s equivalent of a biological clock.  I read once that how well a cook roasts a chicken determines whether or not she’s worth her salt in the kitchen.  Also, it takes me back to my first time—the first time I had my hands inside a carcass and fell in love with the concept of meat processing. 

The recipe I go off of is called Engagement Roast Chicken, so named because Ina Garten used to share the recipe with her coworkers and anytime someone cooked it for a significant other, they would soon after be engaged.  Well I call shenanigans on that bullshit because I’ve made it for every boyfriend I had in the last four years (all three of them) and all I’ve gotten is dumped and cheated on and dumped and lied to and . . . oh yeah dumped.  (Making myself sound really appealing right now, aren’t I?  Well last time I checked this isn’t match.com—and neither is Facebook so dudes stop propositioning me on there!  You call someone if you want a date.  Oh you don’t have my phone number?  Exactly.) 

The recipe calls for dry white wine so your first stop is the liquor store.  Get yourself a box of the finest chardonnay that money can buy.  Crack that baby open and pour yourself a glass so we can get started. 

Make sure your chicken is fresh and plump with nice firm skin.  The first thing you do is pat the whole body dry with a paper towel.  Then you have to get it wet.  Extra virgin olive oil is the standard lube but everyone has their preferences; just do what feels right.  Rub it in slowly . . . in a circular motion.  Then sprinkle salt and pepper all over it—inside and out, under the skin—and gently massage it into every slot, hole, and crevice you can find.  Get all up in that bird.  Have another drink of that wine while you’re at it.

Slice an entire head of garlic in half lengthwise, quarter two lemons, and do a large chop of two onions.  Now it’s time to stuff that thing until it’s bursting . . . with flavor.  All the garlic and two of the lemon quarters:  give it to that chicken . . . right up the butt.  It might be hard to get inside the body cavity at first, but she’ll quickly loosen up so you can really ram it on in there.  You’re definitely going to need a drink after that.  Maybe a smoke break, too.

I really need an actual roasting pan.  Add it to the list of crap I need but don’t have, like a purse that’s not held together by safety pins, a shower curtain that’s not a thousand years old, new exhaust for my motorcycle, and a bigger apartment (notice the word “boyfriend” is conspicuously absent from that list okay I’m done now promise). 

So after the sensual rub-down and stuffing I construct a makeshift roasting pan using a baking sheet and a cooling rack which probably has no business being in the oven, so the chicken doesn’t sit in its own juices and the skin can get crispy.  This causes the onions and lemons to cook too quickly though, and I have to remove them early on so they don’t set off my smoke alarm, which is on the complete opposite side of my apartment—i.e., ten and a half feet away. 

Sometimes I use a glass baking pan instead, which keeps the veggies and skin moist and everything comes out saturated and saucy; nothing wrong with that, I just wanted crispy skin this time.

Now lay that bird out on her back and arrange the rest of the veggies around her in the pan.  Actually I lay my bird breast-down so I can tuck the wings underneath so they don’t burn, because I can’t be bothered to buy (or even swipe from the shop) silly things like butcher’s twine in order to properly truss poultry.  It also keeps all the moisture in the breasts, so they come out supple and succulent.

 

Pop her in the dark gaping hole that is your oven and pour yourself another glass of wine to drink while you read Primal Cuts for an hour and fifteen minutes, because you don’t have television anymore since all the newbies in your building started getting cable legitimately and Charter finally caught on to the fact that your unit was not supposed to be hooked up for the past four years.  No more “Duck Dynasty” for you. 

 

Check on her every fifteen, twenty minutes or so to make sure the veggies aren’t burning and drizzle on a little extra lubrication.  Gotta keep things . . . moist.

Get started on the smashed potatoes as well; they need to be boiled, then roasted with shallots, then mashed up with cream, butter, and garlic.  That creamy goodness hits your tongue with a wave of bewilderment at your own dexterity. 

When your bird comes . . . out . . . of the oven, she’ll be hot and dripping with her own fluids, so let her rest.  Take all the veggies and any liquids she might have expelled and put them in a sauce pan over medium-high heat.  (If you are rich and actually have a roasting pan, number one I hate you, number two you just put the roasting pan on the stove top and use it to make the sauce.)  Add half a cup of that wine you’ve been gulping down (seriously, it’s only half a cup, you can spare it), half a cup of chicken broth, and a tablespoon of flour.  Let things heat up to a simmer so it can get thicker and thicker—takes about sixty seconds, not as long as you might think (it never is). 

So that’s Ina Garten’s Engagement Roast Chicken, and I know you’re all just itching to know who I made it for.  First of all, you might want to put some Monistat on that itch, and secondly I cooked it for the person I will be spending the rest of my life with—someone charming, witty, devilishly good-looking, and hilarious who hasn’t had a haircut since January:  myself. 

 

Let’s face it, this hot moist slab of flesh and bone is way more gratifying and delectable than a cold hard colorless piece of rock and metal that just weighs your finger down.  You could be doing much more . . . enterprising things with that finger, anyways. 

(That corn on the cob is cooked this time, so HA!)