Pluck: A Poultry Tale + Recipe

"The best way to execute French cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken. Bon appétit. "

— Julia Child

There was a time not so long ago when, if I didn't feel like cooking, I would drive a good distance from our house in Savannah to The Fresh Market to pick up dinner. On those evenings, I would grab a basket, walk straight past the wooden tables displaying woven wicker crates bursting with gigantic blush pink apples, baby spinach and arugula. I would shoot past the acrylic, lift-top candy bins and the international chocolate shelf, the artisinal cheese display, the barrels of aromatic coffee beans and the nut grinding station, then weave my way through the biscotti and imported "biscuits" aisle, which brought me to the gourmet deli section. And that's when I would smell it. What I had come for. The rotisserie chicken.

Oh, how I miss that rotisserie chicken: White Wine Herb, Lemon Rosemary, Butter Garlic, Honey and Thyme or Natural (which, they should call "elegantly simple", for that is indeed what it is.) I loved to watch them turning ever- so-slowly on their sabers, the top one dripping it's flavorful cooking juices onto the one below, creating a cascade of savory essence, basting, coating, dripping until each golden droplet suspended and finally splattered and sizzled into the pan below. Watching this process, I theorized that the chicken on the very bottom must be the most flavorful and tender, as it had received all of the drippings from the rungs above. On those occasions when I timed it right and could pick my own chicken right off the rotisserie, that's the one I chose. My piping hot, herb-encrusted chicken nestled inside the foil-insulated bag in my basket, I would wind my way back through the vegetables and fruits (ok, and maybe the international chocolates) to complete my dinner. Those were the days.

In Senegal, I usually dig a chicken out of the freezer chest at our local grocery and dump it into an insulated bag (to keep it cold this time) as quickly as possible. Those suckers are really, really cold. And heavy. Then I met a Senegalese man who raises and sells organic chickens. I ordered one to be delivered the day I was having a dinner party. I would be making Zuni Cafe's famous Roasted Chicken and Bread Salad for one of Richard's new clients and his wife.

On the morning of the party, I was on a roll--I had decided that this time, I was not going to let myself get stressed out. Instead I would be organized, ready, cool and calm. I would have dinner prepared, the table set, my kids bathed, the animals fed and the kitchen cleaned, leaving myself enough time to actually shower and have a much-deserved glass of wine well in advance of our guests arrival at 7:30.

All was going well. I had the bread salad ready at 2:00, or as ready as possible, as the final step is to pour the hot pan drippings over the cubed and grilled bread chunks and then toss with arugula. I had the table set, dessert made, the wine chilling, the green beans trimmed and the orange gremolata ready to pour over the beans once they were cooked. All I needed was the chicken. At 4:00, just as I was putting Sunny and Jamie in the bath, I heard the clip-clop of a horse cart pull up outside. Yes, the chicken. I ran and opened up the gate and there indeed was my organic chicken man, right on time.

He pulled an old rice bag from the back of his cart and reached inside, pulling out a fully-feathered, just killed bird.

"No, no, no", I said, shaking my head. "There must be some mistake. The chicken I ordered is plucked, cleaned and has no head or feet," and, I thought to myself, doesn't look like Ginger the Hen in "Chicken Run" which I had unfortunately watched with my kids the day before.

He laughed and tried to hand me the chicken, but I backed away. "Madame," he said, "you ordered a chicken and that is what I have brought you. You're lucky I killed it for you." With that, he carefully placed the chicken at my feet, got back in his cart and clopped away. I ran after him, hauling the chicken along by the feet, shouting, "but how do I get the feathers off?!! Wait!! Don't go!!"

In situations like this one, (i.e. an entire three pound chicken that needed to be de-headed, de-clawed, plucked, "voided", washed, prepared and roasted in two and a half hours), I have been known to succumb to something akin to Tourette's Syndrome. Sunny and Jamie ran outside with towels on to see why Mommy was standing in the courtyard shouting obscenities, holding a dead chicken by the neck.

"Get your father on the phone, now! . . . Please."

As I tried not to hyperventilate, I heard Sunny, who loves nothing more than to push the #1 button on my cellphone to call her Papa, leaving Richard a message:

"Papa, it's me, Sunny. You better get home soon. Mama's cursing at a chicken. She used the really bad word."

I frantically Googled "how to pluck a chicken". A surprising number of results popped up. I decided to skip the Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church video on YouTube entitled "Ms. Dudley Shows How to Pluck the Chicken" because it was seven minutes long and I didn't have seven minutes. I did however bookmark it for later viewing. Scrolling down, I learned fairly quickly that one only need place the chicken in a pot of boiling water and let it sit until the feathers loosened and could be easily removed.

While the chicken sat in it's pre-pluming bath, I thought it would be a good idea to sample the wine. Two glasses later, I reached into the pot, pulled out the chicken and realized it would be easier if I got the neck/head and feet off first. I somehow managed to do this rather smoothly, finding the joints easily. That accomplished, I took a deep breath, reached into the pot (which had now cooled slightly) and began ripping feathers out. The downy ones came out quite easily, but the wing feathers were more stubborn, so I asked Jamie to please find my eyebrow tweezers. By now, our three cats had become very interested in what I was doing and had climbed onto the counter and were pacing like circus tigers. Tweezers in hand, I began to tug at the more difficult quills. As my hands were wet, I was covered in chicken feathers which were plastering themselves all the way up my arm. Sunny had pulled up a stool next to me and was cheering me on. "You're doing a great job Mom." She kept asking me if I didn't want another glass of wine.

At 6:00, the chicken was naked as a . . . well, you know, and I braced myself for removing the innards. I got a scrap bowl out, cut the skin around the cavity and reached in. I don't know that I could identify what I pulled out, but I placed it all in the bowl to cook later for the cats. I scrubbed my hands, arms and the chicken clean, inside and out, and placed it in a roasting dish. It looked just like it was supposed to! I felt triumphant, giddy, plucky even!

Just as I was popping my beautifully dressed and tressed chicken into the oven, one of the cats snatched the entrails out the bowl and trailed them across the counter, down the hallway and up onto Sunny's bed where she proceeded to gnaw on them ferociously and howl at me viciously if I tried to get near her. The resulting mess topped my 'grossest thing ever' list, Sunny's bed had to be changed and Sunny herself needed lots of comforting. She feared that her favorite Hello Kitty sheet (ironic, don't you think?) would never be the same. And, I found, I needed another sip of wine.

Twenty minutes later, I had just enough time to wash my face, brush my teeth and throw on a dress and some lipstick. My cheeks already had that healthy 'just plucked a chicken in record time while downing a bottle of wine' adrenaline glow, so I skipped the blush. The chicken was starting to smell pretty good and, although the recipe doesn't call for it, I basted it with the remainder of the wine bottle I had so thoroughly sampled. When Richard arrived with our guests, who I was meeting for the first time, I wanted to drag him into a corner and tell him everything that happened, but I would have to save it for later.

Somehow, I got dinner on the table. I nervously waited as our guests took their first bites. No one said anything, so I quickly scooped up a forkfull of chicken and bread salad and was relieved that it had turned out well, really well. The woman turned to me and said, "this chicken is absolutely delicious. Did you use white wine?"

You could say that.


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Actually, it was excellent, which is why I'm sharing the recipe. If you want to impress someone or simply cook the best roasted chicken dish you've ever tasted, you should give it a go. I didn't read the recipe carefully in advance--the chicken is supposed to be brined two days in advance--oh well. This is a link to my absolute favorite cooking blog and the recipe. Enjoy. Oh, and Bon Appetit!

http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/12/zuni-cafe-roast-chicken-bread-salad/