KITCHEN MAGIC

ROAST CHICKEN AND BREAD SAUCE

By DAVID SPITZER
Special to the Saipan Tribune

This is the classic English way with a bird. The same method can be used for game birds—pheasant, grouse, and partridges. Today’s battery farmers produce table birds so cheaply that roast chicken has overtaken beef in popularity as the British Sunday dinner. The frugal barnyard-tending housewife would not have wasted her future laying hens on such a dish, and only the young roosters would be taken at tender enough age for roasting. A dish this pure and simple is really only good prepared with free-range bird. Try and buy the best you can find. The sauce is a recipe that dates back to the bread-thickened sauces of the Middle Ages. It has the peasant virtue of making the meat go further, as well as being an excellent complement to all roast birds.

Yield: A 3-pound bird serves 5 to 6
Time: 40 minutes plus 1 hour cooking

The Chicken:
1 roasting chicken
1⁄2 onion and a few fresh herbs: thyme, rosemary, and Italian parsley
2 ounces (4 tbsps) butter
3 to 4 thin slices of smoked bacon
peppercorns

The Sauce:
3 cloves (a luxury for those who could afford this expensive spice; wartime recipes usually instruct readers to rinse them off and reuse them)
1 cup milk
2 ounces (1⁄4 cup) fresh bread crumbs
1 onion (or the other half of the one that went into the bird)
salt & pepper
1 ounce (2 tbsps) butter and little cream

You will need a roasting pan for the chicken and a small saucepan for the bread sauce. Preheat the oven to 375°F.

Truss the chicken if this has not already been done for you. Spread half the butter over the bird and cover it with the bacon. Put the onion, herbs, and the rest of he butter inside with the liver (well wiped and with any bitter green bits trimmed off). A hollow bird must be stuffed, or it will dry out in the roasting oven.

Put the chicken into a roasting pan. Roast it for 1 hour and 15 minutes, allowing 25 minutes to the pound at 375°F. Start the cooking with the bird lying first on one side and then on the other-leaving it breast side up for the last half hour. Baste frequently. Remove the bacon fat from the breast 10 minutes before the end of the cooking time to allow the skin to crisp. Test by piercing the leg with a skewer-the juices should run clear. If they run pink, it is not yet done, and the chickens, particularly battery chickens, must be well cooked. If no juice runs at all, the chicken is still raw.

While the chicken cooks, put the gizzard, neck and heart, and some peppercorns to simmer in a little water so that you have a stock for the gravy.

Meanwhile, prepare the sauce. Stick the cloves into the onion, and put it with the milk and the bread crumbs into a small saucepan to infuse while the bird is roasting.

Ten minutes before you are ready to serve, heat the sauce gently. Allow it one big belch and then turn down the heat. Simmer gently for 10 minutes. Stir in a few more bread crumbs if it is not thick enough—bread sauce should not be too runny. Add salt and plenty of pepper, and stir in the butter and cream. Pass separately and very hot, with the roast bird.

When the bird is cooked to a turn, transfer it to a serving dish and put it to rest in the barely warm oven while you make gravy. Strain 1 cup of giblet stock into the brown juices in the roasting pan. Boil together fiercely, scraping all the sticky little well-flavored bits into the gravy. Tip in the juices that have meanwhile run from the chicken. Taste, and adjust the seasoning. Serve in a separate gravy boat.

Accompany the roast chicken with the bread sauce, roast potatoes and a dish of young peas or little fava beans, or green beans or carrots lightly boiled and tossed with butter.

Suggestions:

Instead of the onion and herbs, stuff the chicken with a delicate forcemeat made with 2 ounces (1⁄4 cup) of bread crumbs mixed with 1 ounce (2 tbsps) of melted butter, plenty of chopped herbs—shallot, parsley, thyme-and the chopped chicken liver, salt and pepper.

Feathered game such as pheasant, partridge, and grouse can be cooked in the same way and with the same accompaniments, but with the addition of fried bread crumbs and a sharp clear fruit jelly—rowan jelly is particularly good with grouse.

David Spitzer is the executive chef of the Fiesta Resort & Spa Saipan.