Читать книгу Everyday Gourmet - William Maltese - Страница 10

YES, IT’S CHICKEN, BUT...

I was at the train station, waiting to embark for the three-hour ride to the ancient once-lost-now-found Incan mountain retreat of Machu Picchu, Peru. It was pre-dawn, only because the sun hadn’t yet made its official appearance by actually topping the snowy high-Andean peaks in the East, only just beginning to paintbrush that horizon with a faint shade of blushing pink.

That my point of departure was Cuzco, a city with more than a quarter-million people, made the accompanying sounds of unseen crowing roosters, all in herald of the upcoming dawn, genuinely incongruous, especially to this city boy who wasn’t used to any barnyard sounds occurring—morning, noon, or night—in U.S. cities of far less population.

Once on board the train that began its series of switch-backs that would take us up one side of the mountainous bowl enclosing Cuzco, even to a higher elevation than the city’s 11,000+ feet, then slide us down the other side to the still-lofty Incan Citadel, at 8,000 feet, I could look out the window and get up-close views of many Peruvian shanties with backyards whose hard-packed dirt provided occasional views of chickens...which made my traveling companion genuinely ecstatic.

“God, do you know how long it’s been since I’ve seen a free-range chicken?” she said, more than once. “I’ve not seen one since I was a kid back on the farm. And, let me tell you, there is no comparison to eating one when it’s in a contest with one of those hormone-laden mutations we get in our local U.S. grocery stores.”

In fact, she had me so convinced of what I’d been missing, that when I, later, noticed there was chicken on the menu of our hotel in Machu Picchu, I made specific inquiry of the chef, who assured me the chicken in question was, indeed, free-range; we ordered it. Only to find ourselves served up with probably the toughest bird I’d ever eaten, or, for that matter, have eaten since. All of that free-ranging in a country where every morsel of food had to be fought over, even in competition with the local human population, had left our poor bird nothing more than muscle, sinew, gristle, and bones.

Of course, since then, having been able to access free-ranging chickens that have actually existed within environments where food for them is plentiful, I’ve come to realize that my companion on that train to Machu Picchu hadn’t been wrong when saying that they DO taste differently (aka better) than their store-bought counterparts, especially to food purists.

In fact, it was just one such free-range chicken, literally chased down on a privately owned South Pacific atoll, killed, gutted, and plucked for an evening roast on a beach bonfire that provided my first sampling of Beer-Butt chicken, the recipe for which follows. Not that a free-range chicken is required. Frankly, I’ve had consistently great results, since, with the mass-produced plump fryers I’ve picked up at local U.S. grocery stores.

Beer-Butt Chicken

Prepare rub:

1 TBS Paprika

1 TBS Garlic salt

1 TBS Onion powder

1 TBS Salt

1 TBS Pepper

Cayenne Pepper, to taste (optional)

Set rub aside.

1 can of beer (12 oz)

1 chicken (approximately 4 lb)

Olive oil

2 c of wood chips (preferably hickory, or cherry), soaked for 1 hour in water (or beer), then drained.

Pop the beer-can tab. Dump ½ of the beer over the wood chips. Use a church-key opener to make 2 additional holes in the top of the can. Set can and its remaining beer aside.

Remove giblets from chicken body cavity and save them for some other time. Remove and discard whatever excess skin and fat you find inside the chicken cavities. Rinse the chicken, inside and out, under cold running water. Drain. Blot dry, inside and out.

Sprinkle some of the rub inside the chicken body and neck cavities.

Drizzle the olive oil over the outside of the bird to coat the skin.

Sprinkle rub over the outside of the chicken. (If you have remaining rub, funnel it through one of the holes in the beer-can lid, not being concerned by any resulting foam).

Hold the chicken upright, and sit its body’s cavity firmly down and over the beer can, pulling the chicken’s legs forward to provide, along with the can, a tripod that allows the bird to remain erect.

Tuck the tips of the chicken wings.

If using a gas grill, place wood chips in smoker box or smoker pouch, preheat grill to high until chips begin to smoke, then turn down to medium. Put a drip pan under chicken.

Place erect chicken (affixed on beer can) to center of grate (over drip pan) away from the main heat. Cover and cook until the skin is dark golden and crisp (1 to 1½ hours). If using charcoal, you’ll need to add more charcoal after about an hour of cooking.

If chicken skin starts too brown too quickly, turn heat down or move chicken farther away from the coals.

Using tongs, grip the visible part of the beer can, and the chicken, to transfer the chicken in an upright position onto a platter. Let it remain there for about five minutes, and, then, very carefully, being sure not to spill any hot beer still in the can (or burn yourself), remove the bird from the beer can. Cut chicken into halves or quarters.

Serves 2 – 4

Should you want to do this over an open fire, merely start your grated camp fire, let it (and charcoal, if you so desire) burn down to glowing coals. Place upright chicken-on-its-beer-can on the grate, cover bird with aluminum foil. Cook.

NOTE: I have a tendency just to serve beer with this dish, although if I choose to make it more formal, I invariably opt for a Pinot Noir. The dish, being wood-smoked, lends itself to experimentations with reds; Pinot Noirs having proved, in my opinion, to be the best.