Psycho Chicken

Something funny happened in the past week or so... I got back into touch with an old friend. It's not really so strange that we got back in touch; it's more the manner in which it happened that threw me off. I'd just finished conceptualizing the text for this posting (which just happens to talk about Gail's influence on my cooking). And, when I logged onto Facebook, there she was! Like I'd conjured her somehow with my words.

Gail and I met each other in the late nineties, and we were dedicated email pals for years. We wrote, exchanged cooking tips, and talked about life. For the past few years we'd fallen out of touch. And it made me pretty sad. I missed her wit. Her way with words. Above all, I missed her recipes.

We may have differed in our opinions about food (she preferred rice where I favored potatoes), but I think we shared an appreciation for "the good stuff." I'd brief her on my day's events and tip her off to the recipe for duck that I'd made for Thanksgiving dinner -- the one with the seriously crisp skin and the meltingly tender breast meat. She'd amuse me with stories of her Aunt Gerda, who entertained with gusto, and share recipes for mango bread, empanadas, and ginger cookies (a staple around the holidays... one of those fantastic cookies that seriously gets better with age).

Gail taught me a great deal about cooking. She taught me how to make a killer clam sauce with canned clams. She reminded me that planning large events is a snap -- as long as you keep a list of what to do when. Most of all, she gave me an appreciation for the little things that go into a dish that make the final product truly outstanding. One of my favorite "Gail recipes" is a simple, roasted chicken. It's not fussy. But, it's seriously fabulous. And it never fails to make me smile when I make it.

It starts out innocently enough. With an ordinary chicken. A big knife. A bit of garlic. You'd never really suspect that violence would ensue.
But it does. At first, you're a little bit uncomfortable stabbing that poor chicken. But, eventually, you kinda get into it. And the soundtrack to the movie "Psycho" starts playing in your head. You might start feeling the tension of the day wearing off. And you might end up going a little bit overboard with your hacking. But, somehow, that's alright. Becuase you know it's going to pay off in the end.
You mix together a bit of apple cider vinegar with a healthy dose of garlic and some thyme leaves.
And you rub it all over the chicken -- being sure to get it on the inside of the carcas and into all those little nooks and crannies that you made with your knife. I like to stuff a half of a spent lemon into the cavity if I have one; but, everything turns out just fine without it.
When you're ready to put the chicken in the oven, you'll want to open a nice bottle of dry white wine. Yeah -- some of it is for drinking; but, you also want to baste the chicken with a bit of the wine every 20 or 30 minutes while it's in the oven.
When the chicken comes out, it will be lovely and browned, and it will smell so incredible that you'll be just dying to taste it. But, be patient.
I like to rest my chicken for a bit after he comes out of the oven. Cover him up with a nice piece of foil, if you like. He'll stay plenty warm.
Gail would always say that the most important part of the recipe is in the carving. If the chicken is cooked properly, it should flow with fantastic, flavorful juices as you carve. Dredge each slice of meat in the juices before you serve the chicken -- that's where all the lovely garlicky flavor is. And if you miss this step, you've missed the point.
Best chicken ever. We served this particular bird with some sauteed kale and a bit of red wehani rice pilaf.
Psycho Chicken is less about ingredients than it is a technique-- it is about a slashing and slathering method of infusing flavor into the chicken, then dredging the meat in the juices after cooking. Thanks to Gail, I learned that early on.

Psycho Chicken

We all have people like Gail in our lives -- who inspire us and leave us with a little something that expands our repertoire and improves our cooking. Who's your "Gail"?


©BURP! Where Food Happens

Pâté de Canard en Croûte Part 3: That's Just Fowl! And Other French Delicacies

...continued from Part 2: You're Gonna Bone What??!! and Part 1: In Creativity We Truss

Our Saturday morning started out like many others. We got up, we had breakfast, I puttered on the computer for a while, Peef dallied with a few minor household chores, and eventually we got up the energy to get moving. We knew we wanted to get to the farmer's market for our weekly produce. And, while we were there, we decided to pick up a few things to serve as side dishes with our duck.

Peas, we determined, would be perfect. And how about some baked cucumbers?? We'd never even HEARD of baked cucumbers before paging through MtAoFC; but, they sounded intriguing. And so, baked cucumbers it would be! We pranced off to the market and gathered our wares. When we got back home, it was time to get down to business.

Saturday: 3:25 p.m.
"I'm really dreading this pastry," I said to Peef as we unloaded our vegetables.

"I know," he replied, "but how bad could it be?"

Somehow, Peef always manages to keep a stiff upper lip when it comes to things like dubious pastry dough... which could have something to do with the fact that he wasn't the one planning on rolling it out.

We took the stuffed duck out of the fridge, dried it off with paper towels, and carefully browned it on all sides in a bit of oil.
While the duck was cooling, I cautiously unwrapped the cold, hard blob of pastry dough. I placed it on our marble pastry board, and we both stared at it for a while before I worked up the courage to make the first move.

I started off by pounding it liberally with the rolling pin. As the dough softened and flattened, I shaped it into two relatively flat discs -- one larger, and one smaller. These would form the top and bottom of the crust.
I applied slow, even pressure to each mass of dough until it formed a roughly oblong shape. Despite, my fears, the pastry turned out to be far easier to deal with than we imagined.

"Peef, it's working," I gurgled in half-giddy disbelief. Things were definitely looking up.
Saturday: 4:30 p.m.
We took the larger pastry round and placed it on a baking sheet lined with a silpat. When the dough was adequately centered, Peef placed the duck on top.
I brought the edges of the dough up over the top of the duck, and Peef smoothed out the dough and patted it into place.
I cut an oval out of the second, smaller piece of dough, just large enough to cover the top of the duck. Peef painted the edge of the bottom crust with egg wash, and I placed the oval on top, crimping the edges as needed to get it to adhere to the lower piece of dough.
Peef cut some ovals out of the remaining crust for decoration, and I pressed fan-shaped lines into them with the back of a knife, just as Julia instructed. Then we placed them around the perimeter of the pastry, brushed it with more egg-wash, and prepped it for the oven.
"Wow," I commented to Peef as he was finishing up the egg wash, "it's actually kind of pretty."

He agreed. I sighed -- almost as if relieved -- but held back a bit of anticipatory breath. It wasn't time to celebrate yet. Victory, after all, was still a few hours away.

Julia suggested inserting a brown paper or foil funnel through a 1/8 inch hole in the top of the pate to allow the cooking steam to escape. We did this, and then inserted our oven's temperature probe into the top of the pate. We crossed our fingers and placed it into the oven.
While the pate was baking, we shelled our fresh peas...
... and prepped the cucumbers for baking.
While we were waiting, we called a few of our friends and invited them to come over for an impromptu feast.

Nearly two hours later, the oven beeped. The probe had reached 180º and our pate was finished. We held our breath as we opened the oven door. Inside, we saw a glorious sight. Perfectly browned and bubbling, the Pate De Canard En Croute was almost too good to be true.
Sitting around the table that evening, surrounded by friends, we took our first bites of the dish we'd spent the past two days working on, and we smiled. The dish wasn't quite a revelation. Truthfully, it was more like a glorified meatloaf pie than anything. But, the dish -- redolent with the richness of the duck and buttery pastry -- was so very much more than we could have hoped.
I remembered reading something Julia Child was quoted as saying in her memoir, My Life in France -- "...nothing is too much trouble if it turns out the way it should." And I nodded my head.

It was true. It was really true.


©BURP! Where Food Happens