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A Chicken in Every Pot There may be a chicken in every pot these days but the real question is who is going to cook it. Not too long ago the goal seemed to be to have a “big job” that required a personal infrastructure to support it. After all, if you and your spouse are each working eighty hours a week, domestic help becomes a necessity not a luxury. However, personal cooks, nannies and maids raise embarrassing issues of class, not to mention immigration. And besides, aren’t personal services becoming a little passe. Having
one of those killer jobs used to be cool. But these days “having a
life”, and therefore enough time to cook the chicken yourself, has
become the more valuable side of the coin. I
hear from a growing number of people who say that they choose to work as
well as an equal number of dual income families where one or the other
has chosen to bail. And
among the “bailing” class, you hear a lot of talk about cooking
dinner. It’s a point of pride if not a down right declaration of net
worth. Let the masses eat other peoples cooking! Those who have truly
succeeded have earned the right to cook for themselves. I
admit that we’re talking about a small minority at this point, but
believe me, they are leading the way. What they lack in number they make
up in the power of the fantasy, which they embody. Make no mistake,
having a life means having the ultimate luxury of time, and nothing says
that quite as eloquently as a well-prepared meal. The
equation is simple; the satisfaction and status of a leisurely prepared
homemade meal against what most people lack: the time to cook. As
a cooking school teacher, I have spent a great deal of time preaching
the virtue of cooking intensively when time is available – preparing a
central dish in advance so that it may be used later, when time is
tight, as the foundation for various meals. The
home chefs may have time to imagine and prepare meals but the rets of
the world has just the weekends. With the proper collection of recipes
and a pragmatic strategy, weekend chefs can join members of the elite in
the pleasure of a daily home-cooked meal. Today, more than ever, we need
to have our chicken and cook it too. Roasted
Chickens 4
broiler sized chickens 1
tablespoon cooking oil sea
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste 1)
Preheat the oven to 500 F. Pat the chickens dry and place them
breast side up, without crowding , into roasting pans fitted with racks.
Rub them all over with the oil and salt and pepper. 2)
Place them in the oven and roast for 15 minutes. Lower the
temperature to 350 F and roast until the thigh reads 170 F on a meat
thermometer or the juices run clear when the thickest part of the thigh
is pierced with the tip of a knife, about sixty five minutes. 3)
Remove the chickens from the oven and let them rest at room
temperature for 10 minutes. Next
week I’ll provide four recipes to help turn the chickens into four
great meals. |
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