Chicken Something-er-Other

It would seem that we live in the kitchen around here (well, we kind of do actually....) ANYway, we had chicken the other night. And this is good chicken, no matter what you do with it. Because it was raised on a green pasture, and allowed to scratch around and eat bugs. Sadly, we don't have any pasture here in the city so we had to find someone who did and actually had chickens on it. We did, and we are so glad , because raising broilers in the swimming pool was , ummm, interesting and a heck of a lot of work . (No , the water wasn't in it..) At least I knew what went into my bird and I knew how it was killed and how clean it was,(because we did it). Anyhow, we've had to outsource, which is okay, it supports a local (ha ha ha... yeah well, local for us, sort of ) farmer. Okay, back to the chicken. It had to be dismembered. Elly May is really good at that. I used to be really good at that but then I taught her and now she does all the dismembering. She can do it really fast too. She has the whole thing cut up and ready in 2 minutes. You can see Mr. Gramaphone over there on the left keeping an eye on things...

I'm the seasoning mistress (meaning I have to come up with the ideas, Elly May gets to do most of the work now, part of home ec ;-) ). We had sage , rosemary and thyme growing and I love them , so we used that. First off though, you need to dry brine your chicken. Basically, that is just salting it well and leaving it to sit for at least an hour (you can put it back in the fridge ) . The salt pulls all the juices to the surface, then because the equilibrium or pressure has become uneven, all the liquid then goes back in but it pulls the salt with it into the rest of the meat, thus seasoning it through and through instead of just on the surface.

There was fresh black pepper too , and red pepper flakes , because they are pretty. The person dumping those seasonings on is rather sensitive to spicy things and didn't realize what I was having her put on and she was a little over exuberant in her application. Fine by me . But this time she couldn't blame me for the spicyness.. I used to (and still do when I can catch him) love to watch Jacques Pepin and he was always saying add black paper to things and I was trying to figure out what the heck you'd want black paper for , on anything. I don't know how long it took me to realize he was saying black pepper. Duh. I knew that.

This all gets placed in a very hot heavy bottomed pan (this here is my favorite favorite pan, I love it to pieces , I'd say I want to be buried with it but then it couldn't cook anything and I already promised it to Elly May in my will....) with olive oil . You could add some butter if you were feeling adventurous and didn't mind dairy. Wait until the oil is just smoking to add meat to the pan. It browns on contact and you'll have less trouble with sticking. Of course it would work brilliantly in a nonstick pan but who wants to cook with that poison? Death to all teflon!!!

Okay, it doesn't look too appetizing , (I should have added something green like parsley) but you just can't smell it, thats all. After browing the chicken on both sides, add sliced onions on top, cover , turn down to medium and let it sweat out juices and finish cooking. It this case , unlike what Felix Ungar said, the gravy does sort of come with the meat. Remove chicken pieces, thicken with arrowroot powder, test seasoning , add some broth if too salty (or water) , some wine. I used plum vinegar . The acidity combined with the fat from the chicken was really really nice. And bon appetite!