We first stuffed the chicken with seven-ish garlic cloves, some salt and pepper, and some smoked paprika. By the way, if you have never tried cooking with smoked paprika, you need to change your ways. Then butter was placed under the skin and more salt and pepper rubbed over it. We then bundled the whole thing into a piece of parchment paper.
Right around Thanksgiving Williams-Sonoma put out a new product for roasting chickens in clay. I was immediately in love with the idea. How rustic! How intriguing! Well, I finally bought a couple packs of the clay and today Lis and I decided to try it out. It was extremely easy and seriously the most fun you can have roasting a chicken without an open fire and a spit. (Not that I would know. Anyone want to remedy this and buy me a fire-pit?) We first stuffed the chicken with seven-ish garlic cloves, some salt and pepper, and some smoked paprika. By the way, if you have never tried cooking with smoked paprika, you need to change your ways. Then butter was placed under the skin and more salt and pepper rubbed over it. We then bundled the whole thing into a piece of parchment paper. We then rolled out the clay, which comes in two pieces, and snuggled the chicken into it. It's best if you can get the clay entirely air-tight. Ours leaked a tiny bit, which was fine, but I think the whole point is that the clay traps all the moisture and flavour. Then, when our chicken was sealed off, we did what any self-respecting home chef would do. We decorated it. Flames: always a good choice and totally not cliche at all. The chicken then sits merrily in the oven for a little over an hour at 425*. Then comes the best part of all- when you take the chicken out you get to smash the clay open. The clay doesn't get that hard but because we don't own a mallet or a meat tenderizer we used a cast iron pan. A bit overkill, but dramatic. You then peel away the clay and parchment paper and have the most amazingly tender chicken in the history of chicken. The skin doesn't get crispy, which I guess is the one downside. But if your bird is bigger than ours was and didn't quite finish cooking you could always throw it back into the oven to finish, which will help crisp the skin. Or you could take a culinary torch to it. We chose to attack it as it was because it smelled delicious and there was just no way we were going to wait. It was definitely as good as it smelled and fell apart at the slightest tug. I've already planned about five more things to try by clay roasting, it was so easy and so good. Seriously. Call your closest Williams-Sonoma and see if they have any more roasting clay kits left. (They're on sale...) You can thank me later.
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I don't take directions or suggestions easily. 'Why do it that way?' or 'Why stop there?' are questions I am fond of. It made me a good, although rather irritating, student. Questioning authority, even if it is only the authority of a label, can lead to great things. Take, for instance, my new muffins. I recently started working for the wonder-company that is Williams-Sonoma. There are a million perks to working there, one of which is the generous employee discount, another of which is being around when marked-down products and slightly expired food get discovered. Last night, my second day of work, I managed to come into possession of the above items: raspberry spread and chocolate chocolate-chip pancake and waffle mix. I'm a fan of pancakes and waffles but quite frankly, they are a lot of work. Thus, my decision to repurpose the mix into muffins! I fudged all the measurements like normal, adding one more egg than the recipe for pancakes called for, a little less butter and less milk as well. This was also my first time trying out almond milk as a substitute for real milk. It didn't seem to affect the consistency or baking at all and not having made these before, I can't tell whether or not it affected flavour. Oh, I also added some steel cut oats for good measure. After I spooned the batter into my little mini-tins I hollowed out little spaces in the middle and put a dollop of the raspberry spread in the depression. They baked up nice and fluffy, with a slick of raspberry sitting on the top of each. Their texture remained close to that of a pancake; they weren't dense at all. The oats and chocolate chips added some crunch and the raspberry keeps the muffins from tasting too dry and it gives them that extra little sugar kick. I would definitely make these again and of course will be repurposing the mix in other ways as well.
I can't wait to bring you more Williams-Sonoma products! Working there is already fantastic and will bring great additions to the blog. |
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