A Fancy Pants Chicken. What Salads Are For. A Samurai Moment of Zen.
Last night I took a few extra steps for today’s chicken. Simple things that anyone can do at home. If you want restaurant quality chicken here’s what you’ll need to do. And while we’re at it, what the hell, let’s make it look fancy.
Starting off, we’ll use some kosher salt to sprinkle lightly both sides of the chicken. Cover that and rest it in the fridge for 30 minutes. Just set your oven timer so you don’t forget.
In a large Ziplock the chicken goes in without rinsing off the salt. I poured cold water over to completely cover the chicken. I added about a 1/2 cup of pickle juice. 4 gloves of garlic, 1/2 onion, about a teaspoon spoon of black pepper, and a teaspoon of dill. This goes in the fridge over night.
I used a mallet to flatten the thicker parts of the breasts. I didn’t beat it too much.
Let me teach y’all a little somthin’ about somthin’. This chicken is going to be stuffed and rolled. True of both the chicken and bacon, you’ll want to have the fat ends facing towards you.
On that goes some sliced ham and some gruyere cheese. For a successful roll don’t overstuff the cheese. It doesn’t need much.
Then you can just roll them up away from you and pick them. You’ll want the seam of the bacon to go in your pan first and flip after about 3–4 minutes.
This is in about a tablespoon of neutral oil, in this case avocado oil.
Once done on both sides I took them out to rest on a plate while I got other components of my sauce going in the same pan.
Rough chopped garlic goes into the oil and juices. To that I add about 1/4 cup of freshly grated pecorino Romano. Don’t panic!
As the cheese melts and toasts, place the chicken back in the pan and put that in the oven for 12–15 minutes at 350. The juices from the bacon, chicken and ham will soften the cheese and it will come right off the pan. But use cast iron for this.
Next step, ravioli. This is store bought fresh pasta BTW.
After oven time it should look like this.
I said don’t panic about the cheese!
It’s going to be fine.
My ravioli are intentionally undercooked by about a minute. It’s about to get a steam bath of white wine and beef stock along with a tablespoon of butter.
Just before I hit it with the steam I toss the pasta around for a good coating.
Bada-bing! Steamed fresh ravioli and a silky buttery sauce.
Just to keep things snazzy I lightly toasted some bread, buttered it, and topped that with the leftover pecorino and gruyere. I baked that in the oven for 5 minutes at 350 and for the last 2 minutes turned on the broiler.
You’ll want a 10–20 minute rest on the chicken.
I spooned sauce into the bottom of the bowl and place my chicken, splitting the bowl between that and the ravioli.
Since I used white wine a lemon slice is totally appropriate and on tippy-top an oven dried tomato for some sweetness. The final bits of garnish were finely shopped been shoots and…
the very last of my pecorino.
I started this by talking about restaurant quality chicken and this will definitely get you there. You may be thinking this seems like a lot of steps to get out quickly and it would be! But there’s a secret about restaurants that makes this very practical to serve.
We don’t serve entrées with a free salad for nothing. We can’t take the chance of you not ordering an appetizer because we need that time. So you’re getting a damn salad.
Eh, also, the salad isn’t actually free. We just work it into the price of the entrée. So you may as well eat it. You’ve already paid for it.
Prices are non-negotiable.
One last thing tonight:
A lot of folks are rightfully stressed and ridden with anxiety this week. I know quotes won’t do much to ease anyone’s worries. I’m not that naïve. But I do like reading the Hagakure in these times.
Even if it seems certain that you will lose, retaliate. Neither wisdom nor technique has a place in this. A real man does not think of victory or defeat. He plunges recklessly towards an irrational death. By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams.
