“Begin at the Very Beginning” is the Advice I Will Now Ignore

It’s not yet 9pm, and I am now ready to kick off my first post following a super delicious dinner.  I actually thought for a while about what my inaugural recipe should be, but I decided to forego strategery and a calculated “voice” in favor of actually just telling you about tonight’s meal.

To do that, I’ll need to back up to Sunday, when we made one delicious stand-by and also one new (to my repertoire) thing.  The former was perfect roasted chicken, tender and flavorful, with crispy burnished skin.  There are some not-so secret tips to getting these results:

1. Choose a decent chicken.  Here we tend to get “organic by neglect.”  Somewhat smaller chickens, not jacked up with stuff to make them “buxom.”  We have a butcher shop we like, and their chickens are always delicious when roasted.  Find a reliable source of chickens that still taste good when you don’t do a lot to them.
2. Spatchcock, spatchcock, spatchcock.  Seriously.  If you’re not familiar with this term, it’s an extremely simple thing that is the work of 2-3 minutes with a good pair of kitchen shears. Take the chicken and place it on your cutting board with the breast down, ie, the legs touching the cutting board, and the open end (for stuffing) facing you.  You’ll see a round fatty bit jutting off the tailbone, sometimes called the “parson’s nose.”  Using sharp kitchen scissors, cut along the backbone, starting on one side of the parson’s nose and following the bone away from you, till you get to the end.  Do the same along the other side, and pull out the long backbone.  Set that aside (I like to cut into a couple of pieces with the shears and drop into a freezer bag for my stock collection.)  If you’d like, use the tip of the scissors to score the inside cartilage of the chicken such that you can easily spread it open like a book.
3. Now decide on your herbs and fat to make a paste/rub.  For ours on Sunday, we used jarred truffle paste and unsalted butter, mixed together.  We’ve also done a mix of parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme with olive oil, and other such combis.  Orange zest, dill, and chili flakes with oil would also be yummy.  Mix your rub items together.  Gently pull the skin up from the chicken and smear your mix onto the chicken flesh directly, as well as all over the skin.  Have time?  Marinate for a day or overnight, up to 2 days is probably fine.  Otherwise move to the next step straight away.
4. Pre-heat your oven to 375F.
5. Line a cookie sheet or baking tray with foil (only to avoid mess, not strictly necessary) and lay out your “open book” chicken with the cut side down on the foil.
6. Pop the chicken into the hot oven, and leave it in for 45-50 minutes depending on the size of the chicken.
7. When time is up, feel free to poke with a knife to check the juices are clear.  In our case, usually the leg/thigh is literally falling off the roast because it’s so juicy and tender at this point.

That will be your platonic ideal of a perfect roast chicken, trust.  So, the other thing I made on Sunday was artichoke-spinach dip.  A little old school, sure, but I was in the mood for it.  I cruised online for recipes, and settled on the following:

1. Take a can of drained artichokes and a package of frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained (colander is fine, no need to wring it out!) and put them in an oven-safe dish.
2. Add 8-10oz of cream cheese, eyeball a quarter cup-ish each of Greek yogurt and mayonnaise, and a tablespoon or so of Dijon mustard.  Add 3 or so minced garlic cloves (I used the garlic press to put these directly in), a couple of generous splashes of Worcestershire sauce, and several grinds of crushed red pepper flakes from one of those pre-fab mill things.  Add a big handful each of a couple of kinds of shredded hard cheese– I went with cheddar and grana padano.  Mix it all together.  Then add shredded cheese to the top– I used gruyere.  What can I say, we tend to have cheese around that needs using up!
3. When you’r chicken’s been going about 30 minutes or so, tuck the dip pan into the oven with it, and let it finish out its time.  When you take out the chicken, turn off the oven, but leave the dip in the hot oven while you let the chicken rest briefly and then carve it.

So, on Sunday night we ate half the chicken and about half the dip, scooping it up with paos, local fresh yeasty white flour rolls that are yumtastic.

What, you might rightly ask, does that have to do with tonight?  Let me reward your patience.  Tonight, water went on to boil.  Buccatini broken in half went in for 11 minutes, and then I grabbed a few ladles full of the starchy water into a mug before draining.  The chicken, which I’d pulled before putting in the fridge, got briefly warmed in the microwave, as did the dip.  These got placed on the hot pasta, along with some of the pasta water to loosen it.  Stirred through and heaped into bowls, it was absolutely splendid, and super minimal work for a weeknight dinner.

I had good intentions of working further ahead to get some boneless, skinless chicken thighs into an al pastor marinade, but alas, I have not managed that as yet.  No doubt I will report when I do.