It started with a sandwich. An idea for a sandwich, and questions about how the sandwich might be executed. I will get back to that, but first I feel I must start here:
When I think about writing a cookbook, I start with how to roast a chicken. A roast chicken is the gift that keeps on giving. You get a delicious chicken dinner (yes, winner, winner!), followed by rich, real chicken stock,1What is the difference between stock and bone broth? I think a meat stock also has vegetables in it, but that might just be me. chicken salad, chicken stew, chicken soup. You get a lot from a roast chicken.
I run a catering company that uses local food, so I buy my chickens from a local farmer. Buying local is better for the community and local economy, and you get more bang for your buck: A local chicken has been able to dig for bugs and tastes richer and more flavorful.
I like a younger chicken. Four pounds max is ideal. Bigger birds are better for skipping the chicken dinner part and going straight to the stock/soup/stew, as they are, de facto, tougher.
Head’s up that I put butter under the breast skin of the chicken, and you do this by poking a hole in the membrane between the skin and the breast meat. Too gross for you? Totally fair. Get someone else to roast a chicken for you, and skip to the next recipe. I get it.
Before you begin, unwrap your chicken and check the “cavities” for “giblets,” which are the liver, pupik2Gizzard, in yiddish, and what we called it at home., neck and heart. Set all but the liver aside for broth – the liver is bad in broth. Sauté it in butter with onions, is my suggestion. It is very good for you.
You will need an “instant read” meat thermometer. It is good to have one around. When you use it, make sure you go into the thickest part of the thigh (below the wing), without hitting a bone. Go in sideways, just sayin’.
How I do it: Roast chicken recipe
Serves two to four for dinner
Ingredients
1 chicken (under 4 pounds)
1 lemon
2 large sprigs of rosemary
1/2 stick of unsalted butter3You are going to use a lot of salt, so unsalted butter is fine here.
Salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 350.
Cut the lemon in half and push the halves into the big cavity along with the sprigs of rosemary.
Create a narrow cavity – finger length, by using your finger – in the membrane between the skin and the breast meat where the butter goes. Massage the butter between your fingers to make it soft and lay it under the skin as best you can without puncturing the skin.4Literally, do your best and do not fret if the skin gets torn. Seriously.
Salt and pepper liberally, place in a metal or glass pan big enough to hold the bird entirely, and roast in the oven for 1 hour. Check the temperature and continue to roast until the temperature of the thickest part of the thigh is 165.
Cover the chicken loosely with foil (tent) and allow to rest for at least 15 minutes before carving, to allow the juices to distribute. The inside will keep cooking a bit, too.
Chicken broth is the fastest bone broth, as the bones are porous, so save the carcass of the chicken after you carve it. Use it raw for your broth! The recipe is easy: Use bits of carrot, celery, herbs and onions plus the bones of the chicken. (You can save those veggie bits and freeze them until you need them.) Put it all in a big pot, cover with water, add salt and a couple of bay leaves and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and let it roll for at least an hour, preferably three. Top the water off as it boils off. Stock freezes well.
And now, at last, we get to the sandwich and the first question for this column.
I have long envisioned a sandwich that features Thanksgiving-style turkey breast and creamed spinach, probably on a pretzel roll. How would you do this sandwich for it to be successful? – Marc Levy, Cambridge
Okay, this sounds weird, but let’s unpack it. For this sandwich to be successful, I think it’s the spinach part that needs the most pondering, so I am going to focus on that. Marc says creamed spinach. I asked my friend, Malachi, if he had a recipe he likes for creamed spinach. He said, “I’ve never even contemplated making creamed spinach. It’s a side dish at a steakhouse.” which was inspirational to me, in addition to being a little challenging.5I am a very competitive person.
When I was a kid, HoJo6Howard Johnson’s, which was originally a motor lodge – a drive-up, low-rise hotel – was colloquially abbreviated to HoJoMoLo. Its supermarket frozen food line, derived from the Motor Lodges’ restaurants, was branded simply as Howard Johnson’s, aka HoJo. made a frozen spinach soufflé product that rose as you baked it. It wasn’t quite creamed spinach, but I feel like it would be good on this sandwich. Less drippy. Perhaps used the day after, when it has fallen and can be used like a spinach pate? Or could it be a fun day after-Thanksgiving, prelunch project?
Soufflé is, in itself, challenging – a little bit of “if at first you don’t succeed” – while creamed spinach is not. Let’s go for it.
Learn from my experience and do not try to make a soufflé in a dish bigger than 8 cups. It is hard enough as it is to not have a soupy soufflé center.
There are a few cookbooks I am absolutely dedicated to in their paper format. I will save the others for another column, so I have something to write about, but I will reveal one: “The Joy of Cooking,” written originally in 1931. My edition is from 1997. I have been through a few, and I am here to tell you: If you need a foundational recipe, you cannot do much better that the advice of the good old Rombauer/Becker family. So what I am saying here is that my recipe for spinach soufflé is pretty much lifted from the “Joy,” and here it is what it has to say about it: “A well made soufflé is a triumph of egg cooking [and has] two components – stiffly beaten egg whites and a thick, well seasoned or flavored base.”
I see the fear on your face. Stiffly beaten egg whites?? All I can say is, fear not. Nothing ventured, nothing won, and you got this. What’s the worst that can happen? There is a common myth that you have to use a copper bowl to whip egg whites, but I never have and they always get nice and peaked. What does matter is that there is not even a tiny bit of fat in the mix. That means no egg yolk and also that the bowl, whether you whisk by hand or machine, must be absolutely clean. To be extra, extra sure, wipe it with white vinegar. When you separate your eggs7There are many videos about how to do this on YouTube, etc., crack each one by one into a small bowl and combine them to be sure you do not contaminate the whole batch.
My last suggestion is to be sure you get all the extra liquid out of the spinach so it does not make the soufflé watery. Once the spinach is in a colander, I press the water out using a plate or bowl.
Since you can use any basic soufflé recipe, I suggest online readers use this one from Serious Eats, which includes some lovely science to enjoy.
Send cooking questions to JJ Gonson, a personal chef at Cuisine en Locale, at jjgonson@csindie.com.
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