Fire & Knives

I’m sitting, alone, in the kitchen at 1.13 in the morning. When I say alone, I’m only being partially accurate. There is, of course, the chicken.

I admit this is not normal behaviour. A man doesn’t usually leave his bed, his slumbering wife and child and nip down to the kitchen for silent contemplation of dead poultry. On the other hand, this is no ordinary chicken. It’s a Gauloise, the same breed as the legendary poulet de Bresse but from an English farm. It’s organic and unlike the authentic French version which is ‘hand finished’ on a diet of corn soaked in milk, entirely free-range.

It weighs just over 2.2 Kg and cost me £26.29, an hour-long, round trip to pick up and £3.00 in parking charges. A phone call to my butcher tells me that for the same amount I could have a kilo of organic filet aged for up to four weeks – the most expensive piece of beef in the shop.

The piece of steak would serve four, is cooked in three minutes and eaten in six. I learned from my Mum that a roast chicken is just the start of a process that can contribute to a family’s meals for over a week. I plan to use this chicken as carefully as I can to prove that the expense of the free-range organic bird is at least as justifiable as the steak. Which is why I’m sitting in the kitchen staring at it. This kind of thing takes planning.

The Gauloise is a spectacular bird with unusually long and slender legs. It smells absolutely fresh and shows no sign of bruising or other damage pre or post-mortem. In fact, once you’ve been staring at it for twenty minutes, its skin is really very beautiful. Of consistent, creamy colour, dry, supple and with well distributed subcutaneous fat that’s still firm at room temperature. I don’t think this chicken was plucked so much as charmed into disrobing by an elderly roué.

Buying Chicken
Any tyro can march into an organic butchers and demand their most splendid poultry but they’ll just walk out with the bird. If you’ve spent time and effort developing a relationship with your butcher, he’ll certainly appreciate the effort you’ve making and, most likely, reward you with a few ‘extras’ if asked politely.

Without plunging too deeply into veterinary arcana it is fair to say that every fully functioning bird comes with a complete set of giblets. Fortunately not everyone wants them, this means your butcher may well throw in a few extra sets for a special customer who asks nicely. Many buyers will want their bird professionally reduced to breasts or legs, leaving spare carcasses and wings. Some butchers sell these for stock but the smart ones give them to favoured customers.

My bird came with six extra wings, two full carcasses and a spare set of giblets. Even the ‘special’ ones they breed in gene labs for KFC don’t usually come that over-equipped. It was time for the first phase of the experiment.

Roast Chicken
I’m obviously getting spoiled but, with London butchers and restaurants improving, seemingly daily, it’s no longer such a challenge to find excellent beef. A great roast chicken, though, is an altogether rarer treat. I find myself agreeing with the immortal Lucius Beebe who felt that “…a hot bird and a cold bottle” were essential preconditions for a civilised night on the town.

Any cookery book will give you a foolproof recipe for roasting. Most recommend around 20 mins per 500g plus an extra 20 at around 200C. This works well as a rule of thumb. I check the internal temperature at the thickest part of the thigh with a probe thermometer. 75C is supposed to be properly cooked but I err short of that as the vital 15-20 minute rest allows the meat to continue to cook. The long rest also solves the problem of the thighs being undercooked while the breast is already drying out. To be completely honest, I’m happiest when the meat is still slightly pink at the bone but I realise I’m probably alone in this and, now I’ve made the admission publicly, I’ll never get a job as a cook at an old folks home.

Recipes differ on stuffing. I use a couple of onions but avoid lemons or garlic. These are fine for occasions when a dull bird needs brightening up but are death to a good stock. Finally, detach the breast skin by working your hand up inside it. Get all the obvious jokes and innuendi out of the way then pack in a good 50g of butter.

People love to slather butter and oil over the outside of the bird but whenever I try it, it ends up in the bottom of the pan. I find that by packing the butter under the skin, roasting the bird dry and lightly seasoned and allowing a 20min rest, almost all the juice is retained. That which escapes usually collects in the cavity.

Finally, I put the chicken on a rack in a roasting tin and strew stock vegetables underneath before placing in the pre-heated oven.

For the purposes of this experiment the chicken was tested on my parents: my mother, an All-Star, World-Class chicken-stretcher and my father, a man who feels that money spent on other than red meat is entirely wasted. Some of the juices that poured out of the cavity after resting were whipped into a sauce with reduced vermouth and cream. It was served, with potatoes roasted in duck fat and steamed broccoli.

It was Dad, arch-traditionalist and the kind of chap who still notices such things, who remarked that leg and breast meat were more similar in texture, colour and flavour than he was used to. Indeed, dammit, he was right. The Gauloise displayed none of the usual poultry polarisation wherein the breast tastes like overcooked white fish while the legs taste like a greasy confit de vulture. Though I hate to use the phrase so unimaginatively applied to everything from alligator to human flesh, the whole bird, unmistakeably and triumphantly, ‘tasted just like chicken’.

Chicken Stock
There was plenty of meat left on the carcase. Large and identifiable pieces were reserved for sandwich use. Next, a careful picking-over of the carcase yielded two further qualities of meat; dark, fatty, flavourful morsels to enhance a cream of chicken soup and stringy, tendon laden, cartilaginous material which went straight into a large stockpot. In honour of the battery farming and ready meal industry, I refer to this as ‘Manually Recovered Meat’.

I am a hopeless spendthrift with a complex surgical bypass of his organ of moderation. In no other area could I be described as prudent or measured but I admit, I’m obsessed with stocks.

Stock making has gained a bad rep over the years for which Mrs Beeton must take a lot of the blame. She recommended an eternally boiling stockpot into which everything from fishbones to breadcrusts could be thrown and the resulting ‘sustaining broth’ used to extend other revoltingly self-denying and joyless pap.

Making a good stock is not a begrudging duty of household economy, it’s a rampant act of creation. While Mrs Beeton was wringing the last vestiges of edible material out of the tea towels, Escoffier would spend days reducing enormous quantities of flavourful meat into tarry concentrations. This is not the humiliating extension of leftovers; it is the manly craft of getting an entire ox into a demitasse.

The French have an expression for the last treats of the chicken, the oysters, the winglets and so on… “les, sots l’y laissent” which translates as “the bits the idiots leave”. That sums up beautifully the contempt I have for those who ignore the potential of stock.

The pan in which the chicken was roasted should be deglazed into the stockpot. The plates on which it was carved and the knife can all be rinsed into the pot too. The carcase is torn apart and added along with the roasted stock veg from the pan, freshly chopped onions, leeks, carrots and celery (neither peeled nor trimmed). Any extra wings or carcases should be added here for maximum gelatinousness, along with the giblets. Separate and reserve the liver. Add about four litres of water and bring to a gentle simmer.

I’ve got to confess, I just don’t get the thing about skimming stock. Who needs a perfectly clarified consommé in a modern household kitchen? Were I Jewish or Japanese, crystal clarity would matter. If I were creating limpid aspics in a 1930’s hotel kitchen, scum would be my enemy but most of that stuff floating to the surface looks like a healthy chicken product and, in my kitchen, gets guiltlessly stirred back in.

After about 45 minutes of simmering the stock can be strained off. There should be around two litres but if there’s substantially more it can be reduced. It should by now be straw yellow, slightly cloudy, full of clean chicken and vegetable flavours but without the fowly ghastliness of overcooking. It should also be partially jellied on cooling enabling the fat to be removed as a single piece. The exhausted remains of chicken and veg should be discarded though Mrs Beeton would, of course, reuse them for another gallon of decreasingly entertaining gruel.

Leftovers: The Chicken Sandwich
A chicken sandwich is an essentially leftover dish. It is usually constructed from the leavings of a feast and is often consumed with a stinking hangover. It is, therefore, a serious and medically important comfort food and should not be messed with.

The heaviest, moistest wholemeal bread is vital. One, thin slice should be smeared with mayonnaise the other with unsalted butter then strewn with a thick layer of the best leftover chicken. Finally a dressing of Maldon salt, left in large crystals rather than crushed in the fingers to create an enlivening crunch.

Neat Stock: Cream of Chicken Soup

With two litres of well-flavoured and jellied chicken stock there is a tough choice to make. I have several ice trays that will each take a litre in forty cubes. Four cubes, made up with a litre of water create the base for a couple of servings of any soup. This would give the option of producing twenty double helpings of soup from our one original chicken - impressive, but perhaps too thrifty.

As a child I was always fed Campbell’s cream of chicken soup whenever I was feeling a little under the weather. A luxury take on a comfort food, it’s worth turning over a whole half litre of our neat stock to its manufacture.

In one pan, heat the 500ml of stock and 250ml of thick cream. A clove of garlic and a bay leaf are optional but splendid additions. Hold at an incredibly gentle simmer for five minutes then remove from the heat. In a second pan melt 40g of butter and stir in a 40g of plain flour to make a roux. Cook through for a few minutes to remove any floury taste then whisk in the warm stock and cream mixture a little at a time. Bring back to just below the boil and simmer for five minutes. Start tasting and seasoning with Maldon salt, fresh-ground white pepper, extra cream or butter and a subliminal hint of grated nutmeg. Chop and shred the second grade of picked chicken meat and stir in to finish.

I’m usually all in favour of medical advances but I nurture a quiet regret that our children’s generation will never know the pleasure of drinking cream of chicken soup while sitting in bed, watching afternoon telly and recovering from mumps.

The Joy of Stocks
I live in mortal terror of the ‘mixed vegetable’ soup. Boiling up the chopped remains of the week’s veg with a stock cube should never take place outside of a student flat. Call me finicky but I have real problems with food where it’s not immediately apparent that it hasn’t been previously eaten. The real beauty of having a reserve of great stock is that any vegetable available can be honoured with proper soup. A proper soup has two main ingredients, one bland, one flavourful, united by a beautifully balanced but diffident stock and ennobled with cream, cheese or some other luxurious drizzling.

Leek and potato, carrot and yellow lentil, potato and onion, chorizo and chickpea, pea and ham: all of these can be yours to command with but four cubes of frozen stock and 20 mins work with pans and blender. I won’t embarrass you with recipes. This sort of soupmaking is a calling rather than a transferable skill. Plan soup for lunch for the next two weeks, start simple and build. Order a home delivery organic veg box and in a fortnight you’ll be able to write your own recipe book.

On days when you tire of soup experimentation or seriously need to impress a date, the carefully husbanded cache of cubes can be turned to impromptu risottos and as a bonus, a single cube can be dropped into any deglazing sauce to its ultimate benefit.

Les, sots l’y laissent
Remember the liver? There’s only one with each set of giblets but they are too distinctive in flavour to use in the stock. Trim away the tough ducts and put it straight into a pot in the freezer. Each new chicken adds another layer of liver and once you have six it’s time for a parfait or to flash fry in butter as a garnish to a summer salad.

Finally, any recovered fat can be rendered and kept in a jar as a refrigerator staple.

Conclusion
I’m not suggesting that anyone really follow this regime step by step. It requires more time and effort than most people are prepared to put in and, frankly, one can only take so much chicken. On the other hand, it does illustrate some important fundamentals.

1. It’s hard to find free range and organic chickens in the UK because people refuse to pay such a high price for them, yet a good bird, though it costs as much per serving as the best filet, will produce more good food and ultimately more pleasure.
2. Chicken is too often used as a conveniently bland canvas for other flavours. A good bird doesn’t need to be tricked out with clever flavourings.
3. Avoiding assertive flavourings means a quality stock.
4. …Which, when used neat and with subtle accompaniment is an unadulterated distillation of chicken flavour.
5. It has a meaty, filling quality but, as it’s cooked quickly and gently, there’s no overwhelming fowliness. This is the traditional classic stock, rich yet neutral. This increases the variety of uses when diluted in soups and sauces.
6. The high quality of the meat means that a greater proportion is pleasant to eat. More meat per bird, more leftovers, better sandwiches.