Last night I made one of the Dinnerman's favorite meals - a whole chicken with roasted potatoes. He gets positively giddy with anticipation every time someone cooks this - the smell puts him into a trance. This usually results in repetitive questioning of whomever is cooking. "How are you making out with those chickens?" he once asked the crew manning the rotisserie at a beachfront restaurant in Mexico. To me, he is a lot less formal. Sometimes it's a benign "How much longer on that chicken?"; when he's more hungry or cranky or tired it's likely to be a riff on something like, "Steph, what's taking so long with my chicken?"
The point is, the man loves all grilled or roasted chicken on the bone, but none more than the spatchcocked chicken.
I've written about this before - the only other time I attempted this maneuver. Spatchcocking a chicken involves cutting out the backbone of the bird and sort of butterflying it so it can cook more evenly. This makes grilling a viable option for the bird, a cooking method that would be harder to execute were the creature fully intact. Spatchcocking allows for the combination of the excellent flavor that comes from cooking chicken with skin and bones with almost the same ease and evenness of grilling boneless breasts. It's the best of both worlds. Well, except that with removing the backbone the tasty ass of the chicken comes off too. Next time I will save that nugget and cook it by itself!
This baby got a rub of a compound butter I made. I let a stick soften and mixed in some very finely minced garlic, shallot and jalapeno, then I added salt and pepper, fresh herbs (basil, chives, tarragon and parsley) and lemon juice. Onto the hot grill skin side down she went, until she got nice and crispy. Then I flipped her over and turned the heat down to medium, where this 3 1/2 pound bird cooked for about a half hour. Toward the end I threw on some squash, jalapeno peppers, and scallions. When the chicken came off the grill I gave it a generous squeeze of lime.
For sides, I made a salad of steamed corn which I cut off the cob, halved grape tomatoes, feta, red onion, and basil with a simple olive oil and lemon juice dressing. I had also roasted red bliss potatoes in the convection oven at 375 with olive oil, bacon fat, garlic, salt, pepper, fresh rosemary and thyme. They came out really good. I actually had taken a shortcut with the potatoes, because I didn't want to leave the oven on while we were outside grilling. I microwaved them for 6 minutes earlier in the afternoon, took them out and let them cool until I was ready to roast them. They took a lot less time to roast and they got just as crispy, if not moreso. I know it sounds like cheating, but I will do them this way again when I am cooking outside.
You can see more photos of this dinner (and others!) by clicking on the chicken pic.
Tonight we are having guests coming to town, so we will take them out - probably to Al Forno, unless they have another preference. I am temporarily relieved of cooking duty.
I am so happy that I learned how to use my camera even though I lost the software and drivers when my hard drive crashed. I have Flickr to thank for allowing me to upload photos directly from the camera, and I have my fellow bloggers and food writers - especially the local ones like Stephanie of StephanieDoes and Jen of Last Night's Dinner - to thank for the inspiration to chronicle what I cook and share it all with the world. I really, really enjoy doing this.
I am very lucky to have a willing audience too!
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