A very different roast chicken.
I’ve come to believe that kitchens fail catastrophically. You don’t lose water pressure in the faucet, no, water comes gushing out the back every time you turn it on…the weekend of your 150 person holiday party. In fact, you can’t wash a single dish until you get up the morning after and go out to buy a replacement faucet.
You also don’t notice a burner that is hard to light or the oven temperature getting less reliable. No, it happens in the middle of cooking dinner for guests. You take the temperature of your roast chicken and it is has risen nicely at 130ºF. You figure you’ll be sitting down to eat in about 30 minutes. You check it 15 minutes later and the chicken is still at 130º. No worries, you think. Sometimes larger pieces of meat stall out in the cooking process. 15 minutes later when you go to check you notice the oven is just warm. Your oven has died.
I scrambled that night, taking out the chicken, breaking it down into pieces and finishing it off on the stove which, thankfully, still worked. (And that, kids, is how Jonathan got a new stove this year!) We had a wonderful dinner with Adam and Corey and left the dishes until the next morning.
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A week into my Colorado retreat, October 21 to be exact, I was settling into a quiet night on my own and had defrosted a chicken. I explored the box of spices I had brought out for my retreat and settled on Baharat, a Persian blend in the same family as Ras el Hanout and Chinese 5 Spice, warm and savory at the same time. I spatchcocked the chicken, placed it over a bed of mushrooms, onion and thyme and roasted away, finishing it with fresh lemon juice at the end.
The oven worked, all the way through. The chicken was perfect, warmly spiced and rich. I even did the dishes right after dinner.
Baharat roast chicken
Serves 4
Warmly spiced and savory Baharat coats the crispy skin of this roast chicken finished with a bright splash of fresh lemon juice and cooked over a bed of mushrooms and onion.
Ingredients:
1 whole chicken, 3 1/2-4 pound
1 lb mushrooms like cremini and oyster, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 small onions, cut into 6 wedges each
2 tbs olive oil
3-4 sprigs thyme
2 bay leaves
about 1/4 cup Baharat spice*
1 cup chicken stock
1 whole lemon, quartered
*You can find Baharat from my friends at North Market Spices
Directions:
Preheat oven to 425ºF.
Spatchcock your chicken: Using sharp kitchen spears or a sharp knife, remove the spine from the chicken. Reserve for stock. Turn the chicken breast side up and press it firmly to flatten. If you are doing this for the first time, watch the video below.
Prepare chicken and vegetables for roasting: Place mushrooms and onions in a 12” oven-safe skillet. Toss with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Distributed evenly in pan. Add thyme and bay leaf and place chicken on top. Tuck wing tips under the thighs and sprinkle Baharat spice over the chicken, rubbing it into the skin. Place in pre-heated oven and cook for 20 minutes.
Roast and baste: Remove pan from oven, add chicken stock and squeeze two lemon quarters onto the vegetables and then place in the pan. Baste chicken with juices from the pan.
Return pan to oven and roast, basting every 15 minutes, until a quick read thermometer registers 165ºF in the deepest part of the thigh, about 75 minutes.
Rest, carve and serve: Remove chicken from oven, tent pan with foil and let rest for 10 minutes. Squeeze remaining two lemon quarters over the chicken. Remove the leg and thigh quarters from the chicken and split the breast to serve.
