Dinner Most Fowl

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Each week, I provide two recipes at this site. I call this week’s “Dinner Most Fowl.” It’s an homage to Agatha Christie’s Murder Most Foul. You don’t need to know that to cook these meals but I like to seem literary A comment or two:

One of the more curious remarks we make about certain foods if they're not prepared to our liking is that they tend to taste too much like themselves. This is why otherwise articulate, well-educated management professionals with leather-bound calendars and personalized pager holsters may say a particular type of fish tastes "too fishy," or a game bird "too gamy." And why, on the other hand, an exotic taste like broiled eel, barbecued rattlesnake, and even stewed rabbit can come to "taste just like chicken" if it pleasantly surprises them — which is to say, if it doesn't make them tear open their travel packs of antacid caplets while launching into a deathbed confession that involves them, your significant other and an "error of judgment" they made some years back while attending an out of town seminar on stress reduction.

On with the meals…

ROASTED CHICKEN, DUCK OR TURKEY: Serves four grownups (people who won't ask if you removed the duck's sailor suit before cooking).

Ingredients

• 1 large chicken (at least 5 lbs.), 2 ducks (at least 2 1/2 lbs. each) or turkey (any size that will fit in your oven)
• 1 cup olive oil
• salt
• pepper
• garlic powder, crushed garlic or garlic puree
• paprika
• chili powder
• parsley flakes

1. Heat the oven to 350˚ F.

2. Clean the bird in the sink: rinse it in mild warm water, remove the giblets, pat it dry and tell it a story (no, just kidding about the last part. They have a very short attention span and you'll only get frustrated).

3. Place the bird on a "V" or "Y" shaped roasting rack, with the drumsticks (legs) heading downward, inside a roasting pan wider and longer than the bird (to catch the drippings once you put it up to cook).

4. Slowly pour half the olive oil over the top of the bird, letting it drizzle down into the pan below.

5. Pour on all the herbs and spices, according to your own tastes (I tend to go heavier on the garlic than paprika, mainly because it makes the kitchen smell incredible during cooking time and because the garlic gets the skin potato-chip crisp).

6. Carefully turn the bird over on the rack and repeat steps 4 and 5. When you've finished, put the bird — on the rack, in the pan — into the oven, drumsticks "up."

7. Set the timer for 30 minutes. When it rings, that will be the first time you baste. Thereafter, do so every 15 minutes for smaller fowl, every 20 minutes for larger ones. Basting is the real key here: if you do it thoroughly each time, and you've started out with a fresh product, the chicken, duck or turkey will be juicy inside and crisp outside. (And for Heaven's sake, buy a decent, stainless-steel baster instead of those plastic things that look like they're used for putting nose drops in aardvarks, that stop siphoning smoothly after two meals and then, as a value-added feature, melt in your dishwasher. The stainless-steel jobs also look like cordless Las Vegas microphones — a real plus if you're convinced that, under the right climatic conditions, you're capable of channeling Celine Dion.)

8. Here's how you'll know when you're done: if you've allowed 20 to 25 minutes of cooking time per pound, open the oven and check the drumsticks: if they wiggle really easily (with your assistance, natch; the bird is dead), the chicken, duck or turkey is likely done. If they resist, baste and set the timer for another 15 minutes. Repeat that process until you reach a state of Wiggle Nirvana.

9. To serve, take the chicken, duck or turkey out of the oven, place it on a platter and let it cool for a few minutes. Skin fans will insist that you remove as much of that as you can and deliver it directly to their ceiling-pointed open mouths before you do anything else. After accommodating their wishes, use a sharp heavy knife to cut off the drumsticks and wings; then, use a large fork and the same or a thinner carving knife to slice the meat off as thin as possible.

Side Dishes:

Chicken: Roasted or mashed potatoes, rice or pasta seasoned with garlic, basil, oregano, parsley flakes, salt, pepper and olive oil; green salad with vinaigrette.

Duck: Roasted potatoes, rice; canned cherries or peaches, kept at room temperature; green salad with vinaigrette.

Turkey: Well, this is where I always get into trouble, not being the Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner traditionalist who automatically serves mashed potatoes with giblet gravy, stuffing, yams, cranberry sauce, green beans in mushroom soup sauce and four kinds of dinner rolls with turkey. I didn't say I don't serve them, only that I don't do it automatically.

You may have noted that in preparing turkey, I don't use a thermometer, and don't advocate wrapping the bird in aluminum foil or cooking the stuffing inside the bird. My reasons:

(1) For me, the thermometer is unnecessary and may fool you into thinking the bird still needs more cooking time than it does.

(2) Wrapping the bird for the entire cooking time dries it out; but during the last hour or so, if it's a good-sized bird, I'd recommend your creating an aluminum foil tent and placing it, not too snugly, over the turkey: it'll keep the already-crisped skin from blackening (and, of course, may spark your interest in Pragmatic Origami: the new Japanese art form that combines paper-folding with home-building).

(3) When stuffing is cooked inside the turkey, it can affect the taste of the bird but also, more to the point, can result in stuffing that tastes — yes — "too gamy."

SOUTHERN (BRONX) FRIED CHICKEN BREASTS: Serves four hungry New Yorkers who can't believe their luck at making it to your home in such good time and alive.

Ingredients

• 2 eggs or 1/4 cup of milk
• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, split into 8 pieces
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• crushed unseasoned bread or dry-cereal crumbs
• salt (seasoned or regular)
• pepper
• garlic powder
• parsley (fresh or dried)
• 1/2 cup (or less) of olive oil

1. Crack the eggs or pour the milk into a cereal or soup bowl. Stir the eggs with a fork until they're thin and liquidy.

2. Season the flour with salt, pepper and garlic powder, then do the same thing with the chicken. Roll the chicken in the flour and shake the excess flour from it. Set aside for a moment.

3. Shake the crushed bread crumbs into a large plastic food storage bag. Shake some salt, pepper and garlic powder into the bag.

4. Dip the chicken into the bowl of egg or milk, gently shake the chicken until it doesn't drip, then place it in the plastic bag with the now-seasoned bread crumbs. Seal or tie the bag for a moment.

5. Pour the olive oil into a frying pan. Warm the pan over medium heat for about a minute, during which you shake that bagful of chicken vigorously.

6. Carefully remove the chicken from the bag and slide it into the pan. Wherever you see gaps atop the chicken, lightly sprinkle on some more bread crumbs while you fry it. When you can see that the edges of the chicken are browning, gingerly turn them over with the help of a spatula or great big tongs. Sprinkle some breadcrumbs on top of the chicken again.

7. Keep repeating this process until both sides are brown and crispy and the inside is tender and white. The secret here is to never let one side of the chicken stay in high heat long enough to burn — in short, by turning it regularly, you stand a much better chance of it turning out crisp on the outside and juicy on the inside.

Your guests will be so impressed at how truly Southern this tastes, they may nickname you Bubba — for which, I believe, you're permitted in at least forty states to kill them.
Side Dishes: French fries, mashed potatoes with gravy, potato salad, macaroni salad or baked beans; a green salad with bleu cheese, ranch or Thousand Island dressing.
Cool Presentation Award: Arrange the chicken on a platter with some fresh or canned pineapple slices placed around them (but try not to let the juice from the fruit mix with the chicken; this ain't no luau, Bubba).

 

A Glossary of Useful, Common and Completely Obvious Cooking Terms with which You Can Dazzle Your Enemies and Irritate Your Friends

This Week: Defrosting to Fry

Defrosting – De last thing you puts on de cake. Also a method of thawing out frozen food which, if not done properly, can have you ordering your next meal from a helpful candy-striper named Laurie or a versatile orderly named Kevin. The best place to thaw food, particularly seafood, is in your refrigerator, overnight. If it hasn't thawed by morning, chances are it will by dinnertime. If it still hasn't, your refrigerator's too cold (ask yourself why you keep chipping your teeth on the applesauce), you're using the wrong shelf or you're leaving the meat, poultry or fish wrapped a little too much like King Tut.

Eggplant - One of the most versatile of vegetables, it can be sliced and fried or broiled as a substitute for veal, baked in a meatless casserole, steamed as an alternative to squash, and used to complete this popular pre-divorce court phrase: "Honey, you have the sexual sensitivity of an...."

Endive - Pronounced entirely differently from the way it's spelled (ondeeve), this is sometimes tossed into pretentious lettuce salads to make the jicama (hick-a-muh) seem interesting. Sometimes it's preceded by the word "Belgian," but even that doesn't help.

English - A wonderfully rich language with an exotic ancestry that, nonetheless, is considered too ordinary to use in naming otherwise accessible foods. For instance, what could be more accessible to any of us who garden than, say, snails? What's wrong with saying you enjoy snail pie instead of escargots en croute? When did a dumpling become a gnocchi (which, when pronounced correctly — "nuh-YO-key" — is awfully similar to the sound Curly Howard of The Three Stooges made when he laughed)? And why isn't that popular new word — you can't find it in any Spanish-English dictionary — "fajita" (fah-HEE-tah") ever followed by "jotty good fettow"? These are the questions that sometimes have kept me up all night — unless it was the fajitas.

Fettucine Alfredo - Macaroni 'n' cheese with social aspirations.

Finger Sandwiches - Dorky little sandwiches you usually encounter at events called soirées, high teas, or balls — so named because, at best, they'll satisfy the appetite of your fingers.

Fish - An abundant species that almost no one looks forward to eating but, if you prepare it right, almost everyone will enjoy. Fish is also a verb, meaning to catch same, though for some reason, buffalo hunters rarely say they're going out to "meat" and very few poultry farmers would proudly declaim they "chicken" for a living.

Fry - See Sauté. But when you get there, it'll just say "See Fry." This portion of the glossary was prepared by the same person who writes IRS tax form instructions.

Posted on Thursday, July 17, 2008 in Permalink