Tastes like chicken?

That's the line you hear about all kinds of unfamiliar proteins. The cliche even gets its own Wikipedia entry. Its not like that's saying much since chicken is relatively bland and pretty much a canvas for whatever you're seasoning it with. Still, in my time in Holland where my main meal of the day was lunch in the canteen, I ate tons of it. They served it alot, and even in the canteen (not the pinnacle of cuisine by any means) it was normally pretty good. Always a vehicle for the seasoning, it still tasted...distinctively..."chickeny".

It's said you can judge the quality of a French bistro by their roast chicken. I've had some pretty amazing roast chicken in France, usually with no sauce at all - just basically seasoned and perfectly roasted and somehow on the plate its far more than the sum of its parts. And I'm usually pretty happy with the chickens I make, although I don't roast them - I either smoke them, or "smoke grill" them on the Weber kettle which I think is the ultimate cooking method for chicken. In less than 2 hours the chickens get infused with perfect smoky flavor, fabulously crisp skin, and come out incredibly juicy.

The other day I was relatively rushed for wall clock time to make dinner. I had the 2 hours to cook it, but not the 4-6 hours to brine it. I've always brined chickens and turkeys regardless of how I cook them - got in the habit early on and its just hard wired into my preparation. But I didn't have the time, and I figured no biggie - won't be the best bird I ever make, but should be fine. Particularly since I was using what I usually do - a Purdue Oven Stuffer (don't see the point in bothering to cook a scrawny 3 pound bird). An 8 pounder gets 2 full hours on the grill, which imparts lots of smoke. And I spatchcoc them, so there's also plenty of surface area to season.

It was gorgeous and perrectly cooked as it always seems to be with smoke grilling - somehow there's a ton of margin for error there. Plenty of smoke flavor. Nice notes from the garlic and herbs I rubbed the skin with. But once you got past the seasoned surfaces, the chicken tasted approximately what I'd imagine Soylent Green tastes like. It didn't taste like chicken. It tasted like nothing.

I've always scoffed at the idea of free range chicken at 2-4x the price of the generic stuff. Even though I'm usually fanatic about ingredients chicken was one where it seemed the generic market stuff was just fine. But I guess its not fine. Its the brine.

So now I'm off to find a chicken that tastes like chicken.

Back Quackin

After my hiatus in Europe (with lots of eating and drinking, but no cooking to speak of), its back stateside and back to at least an occasional update.

My first venture back in the kitchen: smoked peking style duck, with a chicken on the side. I've had mixed experiences with how much edible duck you can actually get from a duck, even a big 6 pounder like this one. Plus Simone refuses - on grounds of general cuteness - to eat duck. So I figured tossing a chicken in the smoker would provide both food for the squirt and a hedge on the duck.

This turned out to be nothing less than a stroke of brilliance. Smoking is a fabulous way to cook duck, since the long slow heat both renders out lots of fat and infuses the fat that's left with fabulous smokey goodness. And what happens to that tasty fat when it renders out of the duck? Usually, not much. However, put a chicken on the rack underneath the duck, and Voila! The chicken gets constantly basted with a delicious stream of smokey duck fat. The end result: the moistest chicken I've ever cooked, even though I smoked it past the temperature I prefer to because of the squirts general aversion to pinkish chicken meat.

Both birds wer brined in basic brine for about 6 hours. They were both about 6 pounds; the chicken just a bit more. About 5 hours over a combination of oak, pear and cherry. The duck was mopped over the last 2 hours with a mixture of honey, port and soy sauce. The chicken was untouched save for the fatty baste from the duck and whatever mop might have dripped onto it. The results on both sides were magnificent - really didn't need a thing. But a side saiuce of 1/3 Siricha and 2/3 Kewpie mayo gilded the lily.

For a side, a mix of quinoa and kasha with madiera, tamari, fresh basil and cilantro and fresh sesame leaves. I didn't even know there was such a thing as sesame leaves but after trying them I thought they'd be a perfect addition. Sort of a cross between basil, mint and tarragon.

The salad is spinach, arugula, avocado, scallion, strawberries and red pepper queso fresco in a peach vinigrette. The dressing was pretty good but not close to the stuff American Flatbread dressed their spinach salad with the night before at their beer tasting dinner. I got lazy on the salad ingredients - they were from H-Mart. AF doesn't do that, and it shows.