Saté-Spiced Roast Chicken

Honestly, I'm slightly embarrassed to post this one. I hadn't planned to--hence no photos, since I don't have my camera available--but this is the second or third time that I've posted a menu of what I'm cooking in a Facebook status update and gotten some reminder that I haven't blogged about it yet. (One of the main barriers to me posting more frequently is that I really want these posts to be illustrated, and that requires that I plan ahead a bit more than I sometimes do. It's no coincidence that I post more often around the holidays, when I have planned dishes days or weeks in advance!)


The other reason I'm slightly embarrassed to post this one is that it is ridiculously simple. Simple can be really good, though, and it certainly is more manageable on a weeknight. I can easily see adding this recipe to the rotation. It's an easy, cheap(ish) cut of meat to buy, and you do practically nothing except sprinkle seasoning on the meat and throw it in the oven for 30 minutes. Keeping the skin and bones on the meat adds flavor and juiciness to the final product, plus you get a delicious crispy skin which you can gobble down guiltily.

A word about the saté [sah-TAY] seasoning. This is usually used on chicken satay, those marinated chicken pieces skewered, grilled, and served with spicy peanut sauce as an appetizer at innumerable restaurants and parties (see right), so it's more familiar than you think. The seasoning blend is Indonesian in origin, and the version I use came from Penzeys, and is made up of salt, brown sugar, garlic, white onion, coriander, purple shallots, ginger, turmeric, sweet paprika, Ancho pepper, galangal, cayenne red pepper, and lemongrass. I added a bit more ground coriander, because, well, I like coriander. How traditional this blend is I don't know, but it is yummy. The chicken tastes even more chickeny--nutty, spicy, with a little bit of heat, even some slightly sweet herbal notes. (Image courtesy Jaakko from Wikimedia Commons, used under Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike License 3.0.)


So, now the recipe, which is based on one from America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. Here is a similar recipe from the Cook's Illustrated website.


Ingredients

• 2 split chicken breasts, skin-on, bone in
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted and (slightly) cooled
• 3-6 tablespoons saté seasoning
• kosher salt
• black pepper, freshly ground 

Hardware

• oven safe dish at least 10" wide 

(ATK/Cook's Illustrated recommends cooking the chicken on a broiler rack over a broiler pan covered in aluminum foil. I see their point--fat drips away from the meat, better heat circulation, etc.--but I was cooking just one split chicken breast, and that seemed like a lot of work for half a chicken breast. I used a 9" Pyrex pie dish, the chicken came out really well. Whatever you choose to use, make sure that the chicken you are cooking has plenty of room around it so it cooks evenly and the skin crisps, and you'll be fine.)


Directions

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position; heat oven to 450 degrees. 
2. Sprinkle underside of chicken breasts liberally with salt, pepper, and saté seasoning.
3. Loosen the skin covering each 1/2 breast with your finger, and pull away from the meat. Season meat liberally with salt, pepper, and saté seasoning. Replace skin and rub in the butter, then sprinkle skin liberally with pepper. 
4. Place split breasts in cooking dish, bone side down and skin side up. Move dish to the oven, and roast until thickest part of breast registers 160 degrees on instant-read thermometer, 25 to 35 minutes.
5. Transfer chicken to cutting board and let rest 5 minutes. Carve and serve immediately.

Serves 2-3.

A Culinary Trip to Ireland: Ballymaloe Farm

The Ballymaloe Cookery School is in the middle of an organic farm, including an herb garden, greenhouses, free range chickens, dairy and beef cattle, among many other things. Darina Allen, the head of the school, is a big proponent of the "Slow Food" movement (she is the Councillor for Ireland in that organization).

Given that background, it's no surprise that Darina supports people growing and raising their own food, including chickens. (She very generously gives people like me who live in high-rise apartment buildings with no balconies dispensation to buy instead.) One of the highlights of the 3-day course I took was jointing a whole chicken, which yields enough food for more than a week for someone like me.

As she pointed out--multiple times,in fact--a single whole chicken will yield 2 each of breasts, wings, thighs, drumsticks, as well as chicken skin (good for baking until crispy), wingtips, neck, and bones suitable for stock, and liver for pate (which I don't personally care for, but I'm sure other people like). A whole organic chicken can cost about $22-$26 (about $5.49 a pound), compared to $4-$5 (at about .99 cents a pound, sometimes it's as little as .49 cents) for a whole standard chicken. Whole chickens also tend to keep better longer, at least before you portion it out. Now that I've actually jointed a whole chicken, I can't see buying chicken breasts unless I'm pressed for time.

One thing I'm dead envious of at Ballymaloe is all the lettuce, vegetable, and herb garden space they've got. I can't help but think it would be much easier to eat better and more varied salads on a regular basis if I had access to this kind of facility in Boston. (Well, as long as I am wishing, I'd like a staff of a prep cooks like they had at Ballymaloe as well. I did try to grow some hydroponic herbs in my apartment and all I got was mice.) The salads they served with lunch at Ballymaloe were excellent, full of enough different types of lettuce and herbs for a variety of texture and flavor. I'm sure it helped that we were there in mid-July.

Ballymaloe also grows nearly a dozen different varieties of heirloom tomatoes, which I can tell you are delicious. I have some pictures of the resulting tomato salad Darina's team prepared, which I'll put up in a future post. It is prepared with all of the tomatoes dressed and served in a single layer, to avoid having to toss the tomatoes and break them up.

Ballymaloe grows enough onions, shallots, and garlic for their own use as well as distribution to some local programs. They hang them from the rafters, tops still attached, to dry in small bunches of no more than 4, to avoid bruising and rotting. The gardener--Darina's husband--contended that letting the vegetables and herbs dry with the leaves still on helps to retain nutrients and flavor in the bulb part of the plant. I won't argue--the results look and taste gorgeous.

Coming up next: more about the cooking demonstrations and lessons at Ballymaloe Cookery School (and maybe a recipe or two...)