ROASTED CHICKEN

“WHY,” I ASKED MY DAUGHTER KIM, “DOES THAT DOG WALK LIKE THAT?” Kim, my wife, Maureen, and I were walking across a mission compound in northern Namibia, hard against the Angola border and I was referring to a dog that was moving toward us in what looked more like a poorly choreographed series of tremors than a walk.

“Oh,” she replied matter-of-factly, “he was bit by a cobra that was trying to bite me.”

My wife’s shriek and mine brought several of the mission nuns scurrying towards us in their immaculately starched outfits, wondering why Miss Kim’s parents had turned whiter than we normally were. We were accustomed to protecting our children from the perils of urban life, but Kim’s blasé remark made us realize (with no little guilt) that we had no idea of how to protect her from poisonous snakes, crocodiles, and swarming bugs, which were at once rich sources of protein and instruments of death and disease.

We were visiting our daughter at about the mid-point of her yearlong volunteer stint in the recently liberated country of Namibia, which had declared English to be its official language but where few people spoke it. Kim’s job was to help teach the kids who attended the mission school and their families who lived in nearby villages how to communicate with their anti-Afrikaans government. At that point in our visit (actually one of several “this isn’t Kansas” moments), it was all I could do to keep my wife from throwing Kim in the backseat of our car and forcibly returning her to civilization.

As it was, she returned in due course with enough stories to write a book; but since this book is about food, I’ll just tell one that relates to eating. We took our meals in the main dining room with Fathers Rossmalen and Marek. Father Rossmalen—a Dutch priest who spoke three languages in one sentence, one of then heavily accented English—had arrived in this stretch of the Kavanga region of Namibia on horseback sometime in the 20s and had proceeded to build the mission with its church and school, an extensive and well irrigated fruit and vegetable garden and even a museum housing locally produced works of art. Father Marek was a Polish priest who had arrived more recently. His English was much better and he and my daughter became great friends.

Dinner, during our week’s visit, was usually cubed beef in a watery, greasy sauce or pieces of cut-up pigeon, both accompanied by mahangu, or pearl millet, the all-present starch that plays the roles of potatoes or rice at dinner and grits or cream of wheat at breakfast for Namibians.

Father Rossmalen explained how the beef was from mission-raised cattle that he butchered as needed. I tried to find out what he did with the steaks and roasts, but could never quite get my meaning across. I think he just cubed the whole cow.

By the end of the week, like our daughter, we were pining for more familiar food and eating a lot of peanut butter. Not having potatoes—particularly mashed potatoes— was probably the most grueling deprivation my daughter faced besides no hot water, no electricity and limited access to a party-line, hand cranked phone.

That’s why, when she finally arrived home, we served her roasted chicken, one of two dinners for which mashed potatoes and gravy were designed. (The other being a bone-in pork roast, the recipe for which is simply to put the pork roast in the oven with a sprinkling of salt and pepper; bake until done; deglaze the pan with some chicken or beef broth; add flour and water to thicken; and enjoy.

The roasted chicken recipe is a bit more complex. It has its roots in one I found years ago in a four-page pamphlet named “What Every Cook Must Know.” Once we tried it, my wife promptly declared it to be the official family roasted chicken.

Despite the fact that I lost the original recipe and had to reconstruct it from memory (an easier and more rewarding journey then than it is today), it remains a family favorite. Over the years, I’ve added a few embellishments—like using fresh thyme and putting the chicken on a bed of mirepoix—and the “roast” chicken has actually become a “braised” chicken; albeit a fantastically good braised chicken at that. I should probably send it to the mission cook in Africa. It could even help perk up those pigeons she served us more than once.

You’ll need at least a five-pound roaster to serve four people. I normally look for the biggest roaster I can find—usually about seven to eight pounds—so we can have some leftovers. If you’re having more than four people at dinner, cook two five pounders and adjust the cooking time. Two, five-pound roasters will fit side-by-side in most roasting pans. Make sure you have a roasting pan with a rack.

And do not use a non-stick pan if you want great gravy.

Roasted Chicken: The Recipe

For four people

Ingredients

One five pound roaster, bigger if you want leftovers. Use two if you have company

FOR THE STUFFING

1 small lemon

¼ teaspoon Lawry’s seasoned salt

2 shallots, coarsely choped

2 cloves of garlic, ditto

1 celery stalk, from the inner core with the leaves

2 sprigs of Italian parsley

4 or 5 sprigs of fresh thyme or about ½ teaspoon dried thyme

10 black peppercorns

One bay leaf

FOR THE MIREPOIX

2 carrots

2 celery stalks

½ large onion

FOR BASTING

2 cans of chicken broth

2 cups dry white wine

FOR THE GRAVY

6 cups of water

Giblets cut into small pieces

3 tablespoons carrots

3 tablespoons onions

1 tablespoon celery

2 sprigs of Italian parsley

½ bay leaf

3-4 sprigs of thyme

6 black peppercorns

2 tablespoons flour

1 cup water

First: Heat the oven to 425°F. Take out the gizzard, neck, etc., and set aside. Thoroughly wash the chicken inside and out until the water runs clear. Remove any excess fat. (There’s usually a big gob at the opening between the legs.) Dry it inside and out with paper towels.

Second: Squeeze the lemon over the inside and outside and rub the juice to coat the bird. Sprinkle the seasoned salt inside the chicken. Coarsely chop the shallots and garlic and stuff them along with the celery stalk, parsley, thyme and peppercors into the chicken.

Third: Truss the chicken, leaving the string loose enough so that you have access to the chicken’s cavity for basting. Thoroughly grease or oil the roasting pan rack and place the chicken, breast up, on the rack and place the rack in the pan. Cook for 20 minutes to brown the skin.

Fourth: While the chicken is cooking, coarsely chop the celery, onions and carrots for the mirepoix and set aside.

Fifth: Make the giblet broth. Finely dice the carrots, onion and celery and add them, along with the giblets and spices to a pot filled with about six cups of water. Simmer on the stove while the chicken is cooking. (Be sure to skim off any scum that rises to the surface.)

Sixth: Take the chicken out of the oven at 20 minutes and remove rack from pan. It should be a nice, golden brown. Scatter the mirepoix on the bottom of the roast pan and set the chicken on the mirepoix. Pour ½ cup of canned chicken stock over and inside the chicken and do the same with the ¼ cup of white wine. Reduce the oven temperature to 350°F and put the chicken back in. Although an overall cooking time of 20 minutes per pound works for most roast chicken recipes, since this one calls for an initial 20 minutes at 425°F, reduce the rest of the cooking time to about another 15 minutes per pound. For a five pounder, then, you’re looking at 20 minutes at 425°F and an hour at 350°F. If you’re doing two five pounders, figure another 30 minutes on top of the hour. Cooking two together takes longer than one, but not twice as long. Use a meat thermometer to be sure.

Seventh: Baste at 20-minute intervals with the proportionate amounts of the canned stock and wine. Use a bulb baster to pull out the liquid from the inside of the chicken for basting as well.

Eighth: Just before the chicken is finished, remove the giblet broth from the heat, and strain out the vegetables and giblets keeping the broth. There should be about two cups. When the chicken is finished (180°F at the inner thigh), removed it from the pan, place it on a cutting board and cover loosely with aluminum foil. Let rest for 20 minutes.

Ninth: Using a slotted spoon, remove the mirepoix from the pan. If you want to use the vegetables in your sauce, reserve them. If you want gravy, you don’t need the vegetables. Put the roast pan on the stove and, over medium heat, scrape up the caramelized bits on the bottom of the pan. Add the two cups of giblet broth (or canned broth if you were lazy) and continue scraping and stirring until you have recovered the natural flavors.

Tenth: Now comes the decision. If you want to have a sauce thickened by the mirepoix, pour the liquid and the reserved mirepoix into a blender and blend thoroughly. Watch for splash back. If you want gravy, blend two tablespoons of flour into a cup of water and shake thoroughly until all of the lumps are gone. Stir the mixture a little at a time into the liquid while it is simmering. Stop when it’s the thickness you want and let it simmer a few minutes more to cook off the flour taste.

And finally: Keep the sauce or the gravy warm while you carve the chicken and serve. Mashed potatoes are an absolute must for this dinner. If you even think of serving anything else, I will find out, come to your house and take this recipe away from you.