It must be fall. Braised endive (one of my favorite things in the world, pictured left)), mushroom wild rice, and chicken for dinner. The chicken. Let me tell you about the chicken. Yes, it was spatchcocked (is there a better food word? come on–tell me what it is); that is, I cut out the backbone and then pressed the whole thing as flat as possible before smearing it with a paste of 1 Tbsp. smoked paprika, 1 tsp. ground cumin, 1 tsp. salt, a sprinkle of cayenne, and about 1 Tbsp. lime juice (lemon would have worked too) and grilling it (skin-down over high heat for about 10 minutes and then until done skin-up over indirect heat, which was about 35 minutes). And that was all fine and good, but the thing that interested me most was that it was from our first share in the Clark Summit Farm Meat CSA.
Yep, once a month we get a bunch of frozen animal parts (a.k.a. “meat”) as well as a dozen of the most beautiful, delicious, silky eggs I’ve ever cracked, eaten, or held. As I’ve said before, when you start with a good bird, cooking it and keeping it moist isn’t such an issue. That theory was born out last night. I was distracted–by work, by Ernie having a friend over, by a thousand things–and was not focused on making that chicken the best that it could be. It didn’t get the skin-drying air-chill I like to do, I barely remembered to pre-salt it, I was late on turning down the heat to avoid overcooking the poor thing. None of that mattered. The meat was–and I really hate to use this word–succulent.
Post a Comment