Michael is immersing himself in his first culinary class - Hot Foods - at Scottsdale Community College. Mike hasn't applied for the actual certification program yet. He thought it would be wise to take just one class to get a feel for it and see if it's really what he wants to pursue as a full-time career.
Since the class is all online, via video instruction and student uploads, today my tasks in this culinary adventure have included grocery shopping, sous chef, and food stylist/photographer. Sadly, Mike is at College Group right now, so my final task will be dishwashing before I collapse into bed.
Here are the photos that we'll be uploading to Blackboard Academic later tonight.
According to the instructional video, to properly truss a chicken you start with about 3 yards of kitchen twine. I couldn't find kitchen twine at Safeway. Thankfully, I found this bundle of string in the minuscule hardware department. I'll be heading to A.J.'s Fine Foods, Williams Sonoma and the restaurant supply store soon enough for veal stock, a 1 cup stainless steel ladle and a chinois. Didn't want to have to go there for trussing materials.
The chicken starts out breast-side up. First, pull the legs together (modesty?). Next, center the string under the legs. Finally, wrap the string around each of the ends of the legs and draw the string tightly so that the leg ends are touching.
Now tuck the middle of the string under the breastbone, not over it. Goal is no string marks on the bird. Then take each end of the string and bind the fronts of the wings down while quickly flipping the chicken over to its back. Took Mike a couple of tries to coordinate the string and the flip.
Then it's time to tie a knot. I discovered that Michael didn't know how to tie a knot. We had to stop the trussing and practice knot-tying for a few minutes. You don't even want to know how juicy and slippery the string was by the time this knot was finally tied.
Final step was to cut off the excess, soggy string. Trussing the chicken wasn't nearly as challenging as we thought it might be. Handling a raw chicken is pretty gross. It's important to remember to remove all the little surprises that are tucked away in its cavity for safe-keeping - gizzards, liver, neck - I can't handle all that stuff. But once those were disposed of, it wasn't too bad.
We squeezed a fresh lemon all over the chicken, then stuffed the cavity with the lemon shells and lots of fresh thyme. Cut up 2 TBSP butter into tiny bits which we then stuffed under the skin. Lots of coarse salt and freshly ground pepper on the skin. Roasted it at 500 for 15 minutes then at 350 for 1-1/2 hrs. It was really juicy and savory; happily, the skin was crisp and perfectly seasoned.
Moving right along to the roasting of root vegetables. Before today, neither Mike nor I could properly identify a parsnip, a rutabaga, or a turnip. We also stumped the produce guy at
Safeway. He had to call someone else in to help discern between the assortment of uncommon shapes & colors in the vegetable bins. The purple-hued spheres are turnips. The brown/tan spheres are rutabagas. The big orange things are yams. The long, white "carrots" are parsnips. We peeled and peeled then chopped and chopped. Mike used his brand new chef's knife. It is extremely sharp and he had a little scare when the carrot he was dicing put up a fight and he got a little cut on his finger. No blood. Just a scrape. Very sobering.
These are ready for a good roast in the oven. We started with olive oil and butter in a big, Le Crueset skillet. Added the shallots and some sweet onion chunks. Let them start to caramelize. Then added the root vegetables, some fresh rosemary, salt, pepper, white wine, and chicken broth. Let it brown and soften on the stovetop, then put it in the oven when we took out the chicken.
This is ready for the oven! 20 minutes at 450 ought to do the trick.
Here's Michael's dinner plate. Roasted root vegetables. Hand-trussed, perfectly roasted chicken. Grocery total - $51.98. Time in the kitchen - 3-1/2 hrs. Money and time well-spent. Mike was pretty happy with the end results. I'm leaving the dishes for tomorrow.
