By Kim (of fUnemployment)
Whenever I visit Hawaii, I end up eating my face off. I’ve come to embrace the fact that I’ll always end up leaving the island a few pounds heavier. Le sigh. But that’s a fine tradeoff for eating breakfasts like the one I had the other day at the Four Seasons: two over-easy eggs draped atop a bed of kalua pig fried rice and Portuguese sausage, smothered in huevos rancheros sauce:
As my grandma oh-so-kindly put it: “Kim, you eat like a farmer.” If I only had cattle to herd and vegetables to harvest instead of internets to browse and TV remotes to click…I’d be set.
Thankfully, my other Hawaii friends share my obsession for food and eating well. Last Wednesday, I ended up getting together with Alex, Blake, and our friend Russ to cook at his parent’s sandwich shop in downtown Honolulu.
Although the place is bustling during lunch hours, it closes at 2 PM, which gave us free reign over the kitchen after hours. Since we’re all pretty new to cooking, we wanted this cooking session to be basic and instructive. Who better to turn to than Anthony Bourdain, light of my life, fire of my loins…
Uhh…where was I? Sorry, I think I just slipped into a NSFW daydream over here, involving duck fat, Bourdain, and a dark kitchen stockroom….
Anyway! Both Alex and I watched the episode of No Reservations where Bourdain goes over basic kitchen techniques. If you haven’t seen it, you should check it out.
The two dishes we especially wanted to try were Thomas Keller’s easiest EVER roast chicken and Scott Conant’s spaghetti from Scarpetta. Both turned out great, although the pasta could have benefitted from more tomatoes and a little less oil (our fault…we only used maybe 12 tomatoes instead of the 24 the recipe for four requires).
But the chicken, dear God, the chicken…I don’t understand how something seasoned so simply could turn out so perfectly chickeny and crisp.
[Click through for recipe…]
THOMAS KELLER’S ROAST CHICKEN
(serves 2-4)
Ingredients
1 2-to-3 lb chicken
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp minced thyme (optional)
1. To start, preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Rinse the chicken with water and make sure that all of the guts have been removed from the chest cavity. Then season the inside of the chest cavity with a healthy dose of salt and pepper.
2. Next, you’re going to want to remove the wishbone. Alex was kind enough to take control of this step. You have to reach into the breast cavity and feel around for it, cut around the bone, and pop it out. You really only do it to make the chicken easier to carve once it’s out of the oven. We ultimately ended up tearing the chicken to shreds with our hands like a pack of wild jackals, so we probably didn’t need to go through the trouble of doing this.
3. Truss your bird. This will be fun for all you BDSM’s out there, and at worst, mildly annoying for us regular folk. You basically want to tie the drumsticks together and make sure the wings are tucked in very close to the body of the bird…this is all done so the chicken cooks evenly and compactly. And it looks prettier too.
4. Season the outside of the bird liberally with salt and pepper. Alex employed a very fancy over-the-head salt sprinkling technique, but feel free to improvise. You’re gonna want a nice, even sprinkling of salt on the bird, so the skin browns and crisps up nicely. Pepper it as much or as little as you like.
5. Put the chicken in an oven-safe stainless steel saute pan and leave it there for 45-50 minutes, perhaps longer, depending on the weight of the bird. Do NOT touch it or mess around with it. Like a surly teenager it KNOWS what it’s doing and doesn’t need your help. Unlike a surly teenager, it legitimately doesn’t need your help.
6. Remove the chicken from the oven. At this point, the juices should run clear when you cut into it with a knife. Sprinkle some fresh thyme over the top of the chicken to finish it off.
Look at that thing! How did we manage to not fuck it up?! The kitchen gods must have been smiling down on us that day. Thank you, Thomas Keller for helping us understand that sometimes the best things are the simplest. And thank you Anthony Bourdain for just being you.
