The chickens have landed. I repeat, the chickens have landed at the Union Square Greenmarket. OK, maybe that’s a little misleading—the chickens aren’t exactly landing, they’re arriving in plastic bags on beds of ice. And, truth be told, they haven’t just arrived: I’ve bought a chicken most of the last four or five weeks from Mike at Tamarack Hollow Farm, who schleps down from Vermont to Union Square on Wednesdays. But Flying Pigs Farm had them for the first time this weekend, and I’m hoping that other growers will have more as the weeks go by.
I almost never buy meat from people I don’t know and who don’t, in turn, know their individual animals, and I’m fussier about the chickens I buy than almost anything else. The more I read about the way most birds are raised and slaughtered in the US the less I want to have anything to do with industrial poultry. (There’s a great, if chilling, description of the lives of “naturally-raised” chickens in Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma that’ll make your hair stand on end. The scale of cruelty makes the debate over foie gras look to me like fiddling while Rome burns.)
Birds that have lived their lives on pasture and been processed with care are profoundly delicious. This is real food, not “white meat” for the unadventurous or a vehicle for fancy sauces, and I want to let these birds express their chicken-ness as much as possible. Which leads me, of course, to a meal of roast chicken.
They say that one test of a great cook is the ability to roast a perfect chicken, but it’s a task that requires sensitivity more than technique. A great roast chicken has crispy, salty skin that resists the teeth and is juicy and flavorful throughout. I’m partial to the technique Judy Rogers describes in the Zuni Café Cookbook. Rinse the bird briefly when you bring it home, pat it dry with paper towels, then sprinkle it liberally inside and out with kosher salt and fresh-ground black pepper. Sometimes I’ll slip a few leaves of sage or springs of thyme under the skin of the beast. Then put the chicken back in the fridge for a day or two, uncovered, to let the skin dry out a little for extra crispiness.
I take the bird out about an hour before I put it in the oven, which means two hours or more before I want to serve it. When it’s time to roast I get the oven going (425 degrees or so) and put a cast iron skillet on a medium flame until it’s wicked hot. I plop the chicken in the skillet, where it sizzles like crazy, then slap that skillet in the oven until the chicken is cooked (you know, when the juices from the thigh run clear). If the bird isn’t too big (less than four pounds or so), the fast oven and preheated skillet get the legs and thighs cooked quick enough that the breast doesn’t dry out. (Pasture raised birds have more rich, deep yellow fat than battery birds, which also helps.) As with all meats, ten minutes of patient waiting after the bird comes out of the oven allows the meat to re-absorb its juices, and gives you time enough to make a pan sauce or gravy. But you may just find that a well-raised bird, cooked with care, is splendid all on its own.
Pinterest
