Chicken Mechanics
Really good set of dishes — no real way to screw this one up — just one little flutter in the seasoning for the second course.
First course is really another no-brainer: Adriá has you use “cured ham” — but he relents and mentions that if you can’t find ham fat, use pancetta instead. I assumed that the fattiness of the pancetta would cover both callouts for the ham and the ham fat as well; I had some GREAT pancetta in the freezer, so I went with that.
Solid, solid, dish — just do what the book says — it kicks ass.
Second course was the chicken, pretty basic — but once again they let the kids play with the conversion calculator. Weird. The proportions for the dried spice mix are WAY out of whack, I ended up recomputing based on REscaling down the servings for 75, and using a coffee grinder that I use for spices (instead of the “small food processor” called for), and cut the serving for six in a half. Which came to:
- 9 bay leaves
- 1/3 cup dried rosmary
- 1/8 cup dried thyme
- scant teaspoon of black peppercorns
…grind the snot out of them in a spice (coffee) grinder and stick the rest in the freezer.
At any rate, the chicken cooked just fine, and I separated the drippings from the grease. After simmering the dripping a bit I added the white wine, blah, blah, blah — I ended up loosing patience with the gravy and punted with some xanthan gum. It was really good.
One note on the chicken — temper those little devils — let them get into the room temperaturish range before you cook them. Nothing will screw this recipe up faster than putting a chicken that’s barely thawed into the oven —> trying to get the internal temperture to go from the mid 40s to the 160s is going TO TAKE TOO LONG. It will dry the bird out. By no means give yourself salminela by leaving your poultry out too long, but don’t throw it in the oven hopelessly cold, either.
Third course: the pineapple was genius, just do what it says — there’s only THREE ingredients, and it ROCKS.
Great stuff.
Cooking Ferran Adriá’s The Family Meal — The Errata
