chapter one: roast chicken

'Many chefs claim to be able to tell everything about a prospective cook by how he or she roasts a chicken--and I can well believe it.'

- Anthony Bourdain, Les Halles Cookbook

It makes sense, on so many levels, to start with roast chicken. Roast chicken is a classic. Everyone seems to love it. Despite its simplicity, it's often trashed. Overcooked so those beautiful breasts turn try and stringy. A lot of people, too, start with a poor quality product: a bargain basement battery-raised hen.

There are so many ways to roast a chicken. Some quick and simple and some, like Thomas Keller and Heston Blumenthal's methods, time-consuming. You can rub oil or butter on the skin or underneath it. I've seen people slip thin slices of chorizo under the skin. If you're loaded, you could use the same technique with slivers of truffle. You can stuff the gut cavity with almost anything you like: herbs, garlic, lemon wedges, cheeses, forcemeats, smaller animals. You can truss the bird artfully. You can roast a chicken on the crown, reserving the legs for some other purpose.

1. Roast chicken

Larousse Gastronomique offers a simple formula for roasting a chicken: 15 minutes per 450 grams plus an extra 15 minutes. Cook at 200 degrees Celcius. Roast the bird breast down during the first half of the cooking time and then turn it over. That's all. The seasonings are kept to a minimum: salt and black pepper and a good coating of clarified butter.

I bought a 1.4 kilogram Lilydale free range chicken. I prepared it my usual way by removing the wing tips, prying out the wish bone and 'trussing' the legs using the method described in Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook ('knees up, arse out'). I seasoned it liberally, inside the cavity and all over the skin, with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Now, something new for me: clarifying butter. Clarifying butter is, according to Larousse, the process of 'rendering a turbid or cloudly substance clear.' To clarify butter, heat it gently in a saucepan until a 'raft' of scum appears on the surface. Using a spoon or skimmer, carefully get rid of this raft. Once it's gone, carefully pour the butter into another vessel, ideally through a fine strainer.

I brushed the clarified butter all over the chicken and then, as the recipe prescribed, placed it breast down in the oven for half a hour. At this point I turned the bird over and seasoned it with extra pepper. Throughout the final half hour in the oven I basted it every 10 minutes.

After removing it from the oven, I let the chicken rest, breast down, for 10 minutes while I prepared a simple gravy following Larousse's instructions: adding a few tablespoons of water (obviously if you had some nice homemade stock on hand, you could use this or, too, white wine) to the pan juices.

2. Baked potatoes with garlic

It's wrong, I think, to have roast meat without potatoes, be they roasted or baked. Larousse's roast potatoes sounded appealing: you take potatoes and cut them into slices. These are added into a flame- and oven-proof pan which already contains some softened garlic and onion. The pan is covered and cooked at 200 degrees Celcius for a hour. The potatoes are then sprinkled with chives. The process is very hands off. Once you put them in the oven you can forget about them. You don't need to turn them or anything.

3. Braised leeks

This recipe asks you to trim and wash leeks and then cook them gently for 40 minutes with butter and a little 'meat stock'. A simple way of preparing one of the humblest vegetables.

Now here I'll admit to cheating: I used chicken stock from a tetra pack. I know, I know, I know. Real stock is better. It tastes better. It's prepared, probably, from superior ingredients. It has superior setting qualities. I can trundle out a lot of excuses--the brand of commercial stock I buy is okay, I don't have a lot of freezer space, whatever--but the fact is I just don't make my own stock regularly.

The chicken was nice, although next time I'd probably ignore the provided formula and cook the chicken for 10 or 15 minutes less. It wasn't dry or totally fucked--in fact, it was surprisingly juicy--but it was a little bit past where I'd normally take it. The simple gravy was effective. I feel that clarifying butter, while more time consuming than simply rubbing olive oil or regular butter on or under the skin, was worthwhile. 

I liked the potatoes and can see myself making them again, possibly with some hardy herbs--say, rosemary or oregano or thyme--sitting in the pan as they bake. Not too much, though. The sweetness of the onion and garlic penetrated the flesh of the potatoes nicely and I wouldn't want to detract from that.

The leeks were okay. Probably they'd be better with a decent home made stock. And probably, too, they'd be better if I hadn't forgot to toss them in a bit of butter at the end. But probably my arteries wouldn't.

Three down. Hundreds more to go.