chicken – Sam’s Food Blog

How I fed 15ish people

The Occasion: I was hired by a repeat customer to cook for a dinner to feed 15 people. I don’t know if it ended up being that many or more, but the food was a hit and there was plenty of it!

The Menu included bread, 4 dishes for the meal plus dessert and I was told to keep things somewhat light, highlighting the spring season.

Salad: Arugula, Purple leaf lettuce, watercress, mesclun, pickled red onion with a scallion oil and white balsamic vinaigrette and shaved aged cheese.

For the salad option, I like to blend greens for flavor, color and texture. Pickled red onion was actually my dad’s idea, and it ended up being the perfect pop of color dotted throughout the salad. Instead of the slivered pickled onion you normally see, I diced mine and added a small handful of rhubarb to add some depth and help keep the color a deeply rosy pink color. As for the aged cheese, I used grana padana and galmasano, the spanish equivalent to Parmesan, just to keep things a little more interesting yet cost effective.

Bread: My tried and true no-knead focaccia, with a generous layer of chopped spring onions and fresh white pepper cracked over the top just before serving.

I worked on this recipe for years before finally getting it down to an easily repeatable process, and it hasn’t failed me yet! I’ve been using a Spanish blend of Picual and Hojiblanca olive oil from a brand called Zoe and it’s been giving me delicious results.

Main: Spatchcocked Roast Chicken with lemon curd piped under the skin after curing in the fridge for 2 days.

I used scissors to cut out the backbones of 4 large air chilled chickens from a supermarket near me. The choice of air chilled means there is less water surrounding the chicken and thus will season itself a little quicker in the curing process. I used a piping bag once the skin was seasoned and nicely firm to get the salted lemon curd under the skin all the way to the hard-to-reach parts. After roasting, there was nice caramelization across the skin due to the sugar and eggs in the curd. The meat came out perfectly cooked and the skin was nicely caramelized.

Starchy Side: turnips and sweet potatoes roasted in chunks under the chicken with nutritional yeast, salt and white pepper.

I cut the root veg into roughly 1″ chunks and tossed with a little salt and nutritional yeast before placing the chickens on top and roasting.

Veggie Side: Carrots and Edamame on top of Golden Herb yogurt

To help with ease of prep, I took 1 and a half bags of baby carrots and quartered them, along with 2 bags of shelled frozen edamame. I cooked them in butter, nutritional yeast, white balsamic vinegar, a pinch of sugar, a pinch of salt and a pint of richly reduced chicken stock that I made from the backs of the chickens. For the base of golden yogurt I mixed turmeric, umeboshi vinegar, chopped tarragon and dill, salt and nutritional yeast for a deeply flavorful and bright yogurt sauce. Guests were scraping the plate to make sure every bit of it got eaten!

Sauce: Caper Beurre Blanc

I reduced white balsamic, caper juice, chopped shallots and a couple stems of tarragon until the vinegar was nicely thickened and slightly syrupy. For service, I added a half cup or so of heavy cream, a few tablespoons of capers and I mounted in a half stick of butter, adjusting seasoning for taste with salt and white pepper.

Dessert: Cherry Rhubarb Compote with Cornmeal Crumble and Burnt White Chocolate Chantilly

The compote was simple, just chopped rhubarb, a frozen mix of sweet and sour cherries, sugar, agave, salt and white balsamic. I cooked it down until everything was well broken down and tender.

The cornmeal crumble really came out more like a giant soft cornmeal shortbread, which I’m not mad about. Melted butter with Jiffy corn muffin mix, spread across a glass baking dish and baked until golden brown.

For the final component, the cream, I caramelized some white chocolate in a saucepan and then cooled and beat it into some softly whipped cream with crème fraiche until everything was stiff and rich. This whipped cream balanced the whole dessert perfectly with its richness, tanginess and toasted marshmallow-esque bitterness.

All in all, the meal turned out very well. There was plenty of leftover chicken, turnips, sweet potatoes, beurre blanc and focaccia, which is how I like it. Plenty of food for everyone to have enough of. I’m glad I was given the opportunity to cook for a return client.

Seasoning Mastery: part 1

To make food truly delicious, you must master seasoning. It’s a daunting undertaking to be sure, but a necessary one if your aim is to have your guests leaving fat and happy as can be. If I have the option, I only ever use Diamond Crystal kosher salt because it’s widely available and the salt crystals themselves are nice and coarsely ground, which helps prevent over seasoning. A little goes less of a long way than other, more finely particled salts, and I like that.

The crucible for this process of proficiency must be cheap and satisfying, giving aspiring home cooks no excuse not to try and fail, at the very least, until they get consistent with their technique. To check these boxes I almost always reach for the humble chicken leg.

They’re one of the cheapest per-pound pieces of fresh meat that can be bought at all supermarkets, and they’re delicious to boot; fried, grilled, roasted, braised, confit. All take fairly little effort to reach a fantastically succulent end result. My reaction from guests is usually something along the lines of “What the hell did you put on that chicken?!” and when I say simply salt and time they gasp and feign disbelief. I get a kick out of it every time.

Getting to that point take some time and trials; you’ll probably end up over and under seasoning quite a few legs. I strongly recommend eating it no matter if it tastes perfectly seasoned, bland as cardboard or salty as the sea. It will help you internalize your results and remember for next time the mistakes you made. You’ll need a chicken leg, some cooking oil, salt, tongs, a plate, an oven-safe sauté pan, paper towels, and a meat thermometer. All of these things are equally as important as the next and will give you a great end result with enough practice,

Now for the actual process:

With washed hands, you take your chicken leg. Dry it with a paper towel until there is no residual moisture on the surface and sprinkle enough salt on the surface to lightly coat the whole thing with no spots unseasoned. Put it on a plate with paper towels underneath to absorb moisture pulled out by the salt. Now is the time to be patient. For now, leave it uncovered for 24 hours in your fridge. With time, the salt will dissolve and disperse itself throughout the meat, the skin will dry out from the cold circulating air and the flavor will concentrate.
Flash forward. It’s the next day and you’re giddy about your experiment. Take the plate with the chicken out of the fridge and let it sit on your counter for 30-45 minutes. Preheat your oven to 400℉ and preheat an oven safe pan over medium heat on a burner for a couple minutes. Once it’s nice and hot, add a tablespoon of neutral oil (I recommend peanut or canola) and use a paper towel to remove any accumulated moisture from your chicken and place it skin side down in the pan. Turn it down to medium-low and let it sit for 5 minutes. Flip it and immediately place the pan in the hot oven. Let it roast in the oven for 10 minutes and the check the temperature. You want to insert it into the thickest part of the meat and make sure to not touch the bone because it will give you an inaccurate reading. If it reads 155℉, move the chicken onto your reserved clean plate to rest for 10 minutes before digging in.
Take mental note of what you taste: the texture, flavor, seasoning, juiciness. Your end result should taste seasoned all the way down to the bone, but not salty. It should be supremely juicy and intensely satisfying. If it isn’t, there’s always next time! No matter the outcome, you just took your first step towards mastering your seasoning technique!

Now do it until you have a consistently delicious final product every time, and you’re golden! This is just the beginning of a great journey of delicious memories. Keep at it until you’re confident and it will pay off tenfold.

Lemon Curd Roast Chicken

feeds 3-4 people

1 whole spatchcocked chicken

4 hefty 5-finger pinches of salt

200 g lemon curd

1 tbsp neutral oil

1 tbsp corn starch

1 cup water (or more as needed)

2 tsp chicken better than bullion

1 tbsp cold butter

Equipment: sheet pan set with a rack (for marinating), large sauté pan, oven, sheet pan (for resting after cooking), small saucepan, small tupperware/ deli container, small mixing bowl

Season the whole chicken with the salt starting with the underside and working your way to the skin-side. Carefully pull the skin away from the meat where the backbone and head/neck were cut from the carcass. Try not to pull the skin all the way off and do your best to not tear the skin either. Make sure to get salt as far under the skin as possible so that the whole thing will be thoroughly seasoned.
Flip the chicken back over and spread half of the lemon curd onto the exposed underside surface. Once there are no more uncovered spots, flip it back over one last time and spread the rest of the curd wherever you put salt under the skin.
Set the chicken skin side up in your racked sheet pan and let it marinate on the bottom shelf of your fridge uncovered for between 24-48 hours so that the skin dries out well.
Preheat your oven to 375℉ and take the chicken out of the fridge, let it sit on the countertop while the oven comes up to temp. There should be some lemon curd accumulated in the sheet pan under your chicken, and that’s fine. Reserve this extra curd and refrigerate until ready to use. Preheat your pan over medium heat with the oil until it’s shimmering. Dry off any moisture that has formed on the skin and place your chicken skin side down in the pan. Immediately turn the heat down to medium-low.
Cook your chicken until the skin is browned and then flip it over and place the pan into the middle rack of your oven. Roast until a meat thermometer reads 155℉ in the deepest part of the breast, careful not to touch the bone. Move the chicken to your clean sheet tray to rest. Its temperature will continue to rise for the next 15-20 minutes until the chicken is perfectly cooked.
Pour your pan drippings into your saucepan along with the extra curd that was under your chicken when it was in the fridge, heat that mixture on the stove over medium heat. In your small mixing bowl, add the cornstarch and mix in the half cup of water with a fork. Once fully combined, add the bullion paste and mix again. Add the mixture to your pan of lemon curd and mix again. This is the sauce for your chicken.
Bring your sauce to a boil until thickened and remove it from the heat. Add your cold butter and keep your sauce moving with a spoon until it has melted and incorporated itself completely into your sauce. Carve your chicken and serve the sauce alongside with your favorite sides and enjoy!