Roast Chicken of Christmas Past

And so the highlight of the Christmas season has passed us by. Quite thankfully, it was spent with more consciousness of what the holiday was all about in the first place. It was a pleasant surprise, too, that most of the people I know felt the same way, the motivation being that friends and acquaintances started comparing Christmases of the recent past with that of the distant ones.

One that sparked my memory train was that time we celebrated Christmas in Rome (what better place than in the official seat of the Heavenly Host). The city itself was very much into the spirit of things - concerts here and there, churches were open well into the evening for tourists and faithful members, and the streets well-decorated which eventually led you to the festive lights of the Piazza Navona Christmas market. Regardless of the decor and commercialisation, however, the ordinary people there were still able to keep things simple.

And the one thing that further stood out from this reminiscent train was this roast chicken we thoroughly enjoyed when we were there. Actually, neither one of our party prepared it since it was just a ready-to-eat roast that we purchased in Ipermercato Panorama located at Via Aurelia. 

It was perfectly roasted as it maintained the crispiness of the skin with a minimum of seasonings, and yet the meat stayed succulent and very juicy. At €5 (around Php300 at the exchange rate of that time), it was well worth it.

In the pursuit of such simplicity, I thought of roasting 2 chickens of my own at exactly 1 kilo each. I prepped it by giving the chickens a sea salt rub, washing them off with water and patting them dry.

In a separate bowl, I poured a 1/8-cup of good quality olive oil, then mixed it with some salt, dried thyme, 4 tablespoons fresh rosemary, fresh ground pepper and half a teaspoon of lemon zest to make it into a paste. I rubbed this all over and inside the chickens, including in between the skin and breast meat and thigh to let the flavours seep through.  Afterwards, I cut a lemon in half and put one of the halves each inside the hollow of the chicken and secured the legs together by inserting the ends into the chicken's extra skin, and tucked the wing tips under the shoulders.

I used a halogen light-powered portable oven (a.k.a. turbo broiler in Philippine parlance) and set it at 250 degrees Celsius for 55 minutes. The low temperature  contributes to the crispiness of the skin. I also basted it with additional olive oil every 15 minutes. Halfway through cooking, I inverted the birds to receive equal browning from the heat source.

At the end of cooking time, I let the chickens rest for a couple of minutes, then removed the half lemons from each of the chickens before serving them on a platter. The drippings can be placed in a separate bowl for those who like to have them as a light sauce. No additional thickening or cooking needed.

What came out were delicately-crispy birds worthy not only of the holidays, but anytime you feel like celebrating or sharing with friends.

A Weekend Dish - Pollo Al Ajillo

I am still feeling the after-holiday kinks. Thus, meal preparations are limited to dishes that require less ingredients, and cooking procedures that are even less complicated.  But to add a bit of warmth from these cool mountain breezes, a Spanish salute seems well in order.

Pollo Al Ajillo, or simply Chicken with Garlic, is an Andalucian dish.  Since garlic is the important feature here, it is most preferable that it should be plump and soft, not the ones that are beginning to sprout shoots.  The olive oil to be used should be golden in color, not the green of the extra-virgin variety since the high temperature from frying would lend it a bitter after-taste.  (Although sometimes, I use extra-virgin for quick sautes).

The Recipe

1 whole small chicken, cut into 6-8 pieces or 6-8 pieces of 

              your choice cuts

8 cloves garlic with only the last layer of peel on, & crushed

1 cup all-purpose flour seasoned with salt & pepper

1 cup olive oil

Coat chicken pieces in seasoned flour and set aside for a few minutes in the refrigerator.

Heat olive oil in a deep sauce pan until you hear a slight hissing sound, then fry garlic cloves until fragrant.  Don't wait for the garlic to brown.

Fry chicken pieces a few at a time.  Careful that you do not overcrowd them to distribute heat evenly and attain a crispy outer skin.  To check if chicken is done, pierce a part near the bone and see if juices run clear, not bloody.

Take chicken pieces out once cooked and set on a dish.  Pour the olive oil with garlic on top of the chicken and serve.

¡Vamos a comer!

Special Plate - Chicken Galantina

Have you gone through an occasion when you thought that you would like to do something special for a meal - be it breakfast, lunch, snack or dinner?  It was like that for me and the idea of preparing a Chicken Galantina. 

This is usually a celebratory dish, only prepared on special occasions like if one is throwing a party, or served during the noche buena feast on Christmas eve.  Ideally this is served as a cold cut with Spanish origins where it is referred to as a Galantina de Gallina.  A galantina, in other words, is a chicken that is deboned and stuffed, then poached and served cold.  In Spain, commercial versions of this dish are sold alongside Serrano hams.  Traditionally, though, when it was usual for Spanish rural kitchens to tend their own hens for eggs, they don't use roasting chickens for this dish, but use a gallina, an old hen past her laying days. 

Presently in the Philippines, any chicken would do as long as it has the proper weight.  However, commercial chickens tend to have thin skins, which make sewing the fowl together after stuffing a challenge.  Nevertheless, if you can get hold of a native or organically grown fowl, then their thicker skins would help make things a bit easier.

It took me two hours to prepare this dish, from deboning to chopping the filling ingredients and stuffing it in, and an additional two hours for poaching the bird itself. I was committed of course, and the end result was the reward itself.  I served this dish with a salad of mixed greens dressed with vinaigrette, and warmed pan de sal, and it was a perfect meal.

And as for my motivation for preparing this dish for our dinner in the first place?  Well, there was no special occasion, but does one really need to find a reason to have a good meal?  I say any day is a good day. 

The Recipe

1 1.5 to 2-kilos whole chicken (you can ask the butcher to debone this for you, if you wish)
1 kilo ground pork
1 medium white onion, chopped finely
1 medium carrot, chopped finely
1 long or 2 short pieces Chinese sausage, chopped finely
1 can Deviled Ham
1 small can Vienna Sausage, chopped finely
1 T. liquid seasoning
2 T. Worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper to taste
2-3 eggs

1.  If you are deboning the chicken yourself, start at the neck and feel with your hand for the wishbones.  Slice of a portion of the meat from the top of the wishbone and release the meat from the bones gently by feeling your way through with your fingers loosening the meat from the bone, then the tendon at the end.  Go the same way sideways towards the wing area and cut off the tendon connecting the wing to the body.  Break off the bone from the wing tip but maintain the wingtip bone where it is.  Do the same to the other side.

2.  Turn the chicken around so the cavity on the lower portion of the bird is facing you then cut off the thigh part from the body bone, careful not to tear into the skin.  Loosen the meat from the thigh bone and disconnect it at the tendon connecting the leg bone.  Do the same to the other side.  To work on the back bone, loosen a portion of the skin next to the butt and work with your fingers to loosen the rest of the meat from the spine and spreading to the rest of the back bone.  Once you reach the top where the neck is, loosen the skin on the neck.  Carefully remove the entire body bone from the lower cavity careful once again not to tear the skin.  Hopefully, you were able to debone the bird without making any additional slices with the knife.  If there were tears long enough that it would give the bird an opening, then one has to sew it together.

3.  With a kitchen twine and sterilized needle, sew the neck portion of the bird close.  Place the deboned chicken in a bowl and sprinkle juice from 3 calamansi (Philippine lemon, or 1 lemon if not available) and let marinate while you are preparing the stuffing.

4.  The stuffing, mix all remaining ingredients (from the ground pork to the eggs) until well incorporated and set aside.

 

5.  Remove the deboned chicken from the bowl, wash off the lemon juice and pat dry with paper towels.  Set on a large chopping board, and carefully put stuffing through the lower opening, making sure the cavity on the chicken wing and thigh areas are filled.  Sew bottom opening with kitchen twine.

 

6.  Boil 2 inches of water in a big casserole.  Fit in a rack.  While waiting for the water to boil, wrap the chicken with aluminum foil, making sure that there isn't any opening, then place inside casserole on top of rack when water has boiled.  Poach for 2 hours (for a 2-kilo chicken; 1 hour 40 minutes for a 1.5 kilo chicken), checking to see if there is still water every 30 minutes or so.  If the water has almost evaporated, add more water.

 

7.  Once cooking time is over, remove the chicken from the casserole and let rest for 15 minutes on another rack.  Remove the foil cover and let chicken cool completely.  You can transfer the chicken in another foil wrapping and place in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

 

8.  If you prefer to serve the chicken with a sauce, there will be drippings left in the aluminum foil used for cooking, carefully transfer this liquid in a container.  In the meantime, get a small saucepan, and make a roux by heating 2 T. butter  until melted and adding 2 T. flour, mixing constantly until it thickens.  Add the drippings in a slow steady stream until well incorporated and the sauce reaches a smooth consistency.  Add a dash of pepper, or to taste and serve with the galantina. 

 

9.  For any leftovers, wrap the chicken in a foil and freeze.  This can then be enjoyed any time as a sandwich filling or as a cold cut. 

 

For a Filipino-style breakfast, serve it with fried egg and steamed rice with a side of atsara (pickled vegetables).   Just thinking about the possibilities makes me anticipate my morning.

Just Salt

We had another quiet, simple weekend, just spent with my daughter and husband. While Saturday was efficiently spent doing the weekly groceries, and driving my daughter to and from her violin lessons and ending with Mass in the early evening, our Sunday began with brunch of Filipino tapsi (combination of breakfast sweet meat, fried rice and fried egg) at this place we recently discovered called Deo’s Hideaway Bar, just a 5 minute drive from our house. It is situated at one of the high points of our area quite near the Provincial Hall with a really great panoramic view of Metro Manila, from Muntinlupa on the left to Quezon City and Marikina on the right. Just sitting there and taking everything in was therapeutic by itself.

In the spirit of going back to basics, it was also timely that a week before, I already planned on trying out a different recipe for Hainanese Chicken Rice for dinner. My old recipe called for salting the chicken, and stuffing the cavity with ginger and lemongrass, then boiling the chicken until it was cooked through. With this method, I usually ended up with chicken that was dull, got too flaky, and the skin all torn up.

However, this new discovery of mine required prepping the chicken by rubbing it all over with kosher salt. In my case, since I wasn’t able to make a quick drop at the supermarket for kosher salt, I just used rock salt (I’m not sure if they’re actually the same thing), which worked just as fine. Rubbing the chicken all over and inside the cavities definitely made the chicken and its skin all firm and glossy, and certainly contributed to producing a better broth, both in appearance (one ends up skimming off white colored scum, instead of brown), and taste (clean chicken flavor). It is also desirable to have a rice cooker for preparing the rice dish as it will substantially cut your labor time. I used jasmine rice for this version, but any long grain variety will do. However, jasmine rice is already aromatic by itself and it is ideal for this dish. I further enhanced the flavor and aroma by adding a few leaves of pandan (screw pine) into the rice cooker and the result was all heavenly flavor and aroma.

The first few bites into the chicken, and few sips of broth certainly confirmed why this much loved Singaporean dish is named as its national dish, and getting to be more popular here as can be seen by restaurants sprouting like mushrooms offering this as their special.

Considering that I cooked double the recipe of this dish as I was going to try it out for the first time on 8 people, it took me three hours to cook everything alone — from the chopping to the scrubbing to the boiling and plating. But now that I’ve already gone through the whole thing once, I am now familiar with it and will probably be able to cook the same dish for a shorter period next time. Don’t be daunted by my experience here. Hainanese Chicken just needs a bit more care in preparing and cooking, but the reward of a simple, flavorful and invigorating dish is well worth it.



The Chicken

1 whole chicken (organic if available)
kosher salt (or rock salt)
4˝ section of ginger cut in 1/4˝ slices
spring onion (both green & white parts)
3 cloves garlic, crushed with some skin on
1 tsp or so of sesame oil

The Rice

2 Tbsp. chicken fat or vegetable oil
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
1˝ section of ginger, finely minced
2 cups long grain or Jasmine rice soaked in water for 10 mins. or longer
2 cups reserved chicken broth
1/2 tsp. sesame oil
1 tsp. kosher salt
pandan leaves

The Chili Sauce

1 Tbsp. lime juice
2 Tbsp. reserved chicken broth
2 tsp. sugar
4 Tbsp. Sriracha chili sauce
4 cloves garlic
1˝ ginger
generous pinch of salt to taste

For the Table

1/4 cup dark soy sauce
few sprigs cilantro
1 cucumber sliced into bite sized chunks

1. To clean chicken, rub with salt to rid of loose skin and dirt. Wash and pat dry inside and out. Season generously with salt inside and out.
2. Stuff chicken cavity with crushed garlic, ginger and spring onions. Place in stockpot and fill with water just covering the chicken. Let boil over high heat, then immediately turn heat to low and keep to a simmer. Cook for about 30 minutes more (depending on the size of the chicken).
3. Check for doneness by sticking a fork or chopstick into the flesh under the leg and see if juices run clear, or insert a thermometer into the thickest part of the thigh without touching the bone. It should read 170 degrees Fahrenheit.
4. When chicken is done, transfer to a container prepared with ice water and soak to stop the cooking process and allow to cool. Reserve the chicken broth to serve as soup, for cooking rice & preparing the chili sauce.

5. For the rice, drain the water. In a wok or saucepan, heat 2 Tbsp. oil over medium high heat. When hot, add ginger and garlic and fry until fragrant. Make sure not to burn the aromatics.
6. Add drained rice and stir to coat. Cook for 2 minutes, add sesame oil and mix well.
7. If cooking rice on stovetop, in the same saucepan where you are frying the rice, add 2 cups of reserved chicken broth, add salt and pandan leaves if using, and let boil uncovered. Immediately turn heat down to low, cover the pot and cook for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let sit (with lid still on) for 5 to 10 minutes, to allow residual heat to finish the cooking.
8. If cooking rice in rice cooker, after frying, pour aromatics and rice into rice cooker, add 2 1/2 cups reserved chicken broth and salt. Fold 2 to 3 pandan leaves together, if using, and insert in the rice. Turn on your rice cooker and allow it to cook your rice accordingly.
9. While rice is cooking, remove chicken from ice bath and rub outside of chicken with sesame oil. Carve chicken for serving.
10. For chili sauce, blend all ingredients in the blender until smooth and bright red in color. Prepare soup by adding salt as needed and serve hot.