Of Chicken Bondage

There's a saying that the mark of a very good cook is in their ability to roast a chicken. I think this is wildly untrue, because roasting chicken is so easy it shouldn't even be called cooking. It was one of the first techniques I really mastered in the kitchen, because mostly all you have to do is rub stuff on a chicken and then bake it. Voila. I have done it a million times, so many millions of times, actually, that I rarely do it anymore, because I'm tired of it.

Yet I was intrigued by this article. Why? Certainly the simplicity of it drew me in, and the lovely reminiscence at the end. Certainly I was taken by the bare ingredients, the promise of a lovely, moist chicken.

But mostly it's because I want to marry Thomas Keller and have his babies.

Who is Thomas Keller? Only the best chef in America. And if it's good enough for Keller, it is good enough for me.

The recipe calls for trussing the chicken, which I'd never done before. I read somewhere once that it actually dries out the chicken -- but if Keller says to truss, I'm trussing. If Keller told me rub moose snot on the chicken, I would do it. Unfortunately, I fail at Boy Scout sports, because I am a terrible trusser.

Sorry, honey, I got roped into staying late at the office.

I was so tied up in the bondage puns (ahem) I forgot to mention the singular experience of shoving paper towels into the chicken cavity to dry off the excess water. I have stuffed a chicken with a great many things, but that was a first.

And it was totally worth it. Crispy, golden crust, moist and tender meat. And all of ten minutes in the kitchen, including the time I spent indulging my OCD genes about having had raw chicken on my counter.



And, voila!