Lemon Curd + Black Pepper Roast Chicken (TTH)

Believe it or not, this my first ever experience roasting a chicken.  I know, weird, right?  But that kind of summarizes my whole kitchen story.

FOR THE BRINE

• 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
• 2 teaspoons Szechuan peppercorns (optional)
• 2 teaspoons coriander seeds [I would argue that coriander seeds and Szechuan peppercorns are similarly difficult to get.  Neither are all that obscure though you'll have to hit up both an Asian and Indian market unless of course it makes sense to hit up Christina's Spices and Specialty Foods.]
• 8 cups water
• Scant 1 cup Kosher salt
• 1 fresh red Thai chile, slice, or 1 teaspoon red pepper flakes [former]
• One 4- to 5-pound free-range chicken

Toast spice except for chiles.  Except, you know, I didn't notice.

Add 2 cups of water and salt.  Stir until salt is completely dissolved.

Remove from heat.  Add 6 cups of water and chile.  Let cool to room temperature.

Blais thinks you have to rinse the chicken for some reason, but ATK (which I usually hold as gospel) says this is unnecessary.  I swish some water around in the cavity and rinse that part.

Technically, you're supposed to brine the bird in a tall, narrow plastic container just big enough to fit the bird.  It was hard for me to settle on something without buying something new so I went with my enameled cast-iron dutch oven.  It's been showing battle scars lately, but I'm sure it's still very non-reactive.

Brine for at least 2 or 3 hours or preferably overnight.

FOR THE LEMON CURD

• 4 large egg yolks
• 1/3 cup sugar
• Grated zest and juice of 2 leomns
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, diced
• 1 tablespoon coriander seeds
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh rosemary or 1/2 teaspoon dried [fresh]
• 1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh sage or 1/2 teaspoon dried [Now if there was a dried herb that really did look like pot, it's gotta be this one]
• 1 tablespoon water

Or, hey, you could just be lame and use 1/2 cup store-bought lemon curd  mixed with two tablespoons of water, but don't expect me to respect you at the end of the day on this one.
Every time I make lemon curd, it tastes like a revelation.   I think I've had store-bought stuff before and it was not the same thing.

Lemon curd mise.

In a medium saucepan, whisk everything except the butter to combine.  Stir over low heat constantly until mixture is very thick and hot.  I stopped when it started looking like lemon curd since I've made lemon curd a few time over for MMB's Arnold Palmer Cake.

Remove from heat and whisk the butter in a little at a time until smooth.  Press mixture through fine-mesh strainer to remove the zest and inevitable lemon seeds.

Coarsely crush peppercorns and coriander seeds with a mortar and pestle or on a cutting board with the bottom a small pan.  Though good luck with that second option.

Not that I once didn't have proper equipment before and still do not in all cases.

Mix this all up with the rosemary and sage.

Add 3/4's of the mixture to the lemon curd, along with the water, and stir to combine.

The perhaps weirdest thing about roasting a chicken for the first time is the whole loosening its skin so just can jab stuff under it, like a compound butter, herb paste, or in this case lemon curd.  It's hard not to think, "Well wouldn't it be weird if someone was doing this to me?"  Or am I psycho for thinking stuff like that?
Anyway, 1/2 the curd goes under there and then you paint the rest of the thing with lemon curd and sprinkle it with the remaining spice/herb mixture.

Pour 1 cup of water into baking pan with rack and chicken set on it.  Tie the chicken's legs together, and I guess you were suppose to tuck the wings in under the bird (Blais leaves out the darndest details about how to cook something).  Roast at 450 for 30 minutes.  Then reduce heat to 325 and continue roasting until the chicken is golden brown and juices run clear when thigh is pierced, 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 hours.

I couldn't stop myself from picking at this.  I almost want to have one of these in my fridge constantly even though that'd probably be a bit dangerous.  Maybe this should be a biweekly thing.
Happy I didn't fuck up my first roast chicken.  Far from it.

Graham Crust (MMB)

• 190 g graham cracker crumbs (1 1/2 cups)
• 20 g milk powder (1/4 cup)
• 25 g sugar (2 tablespoons
• 3 g kosher salt (3/4 teaspoon)
• 55 g butter, melted, or as needed (4 tablespoons [1/2 stick])
• 55 g heavy cream (1/4 cup)

Typically used as an actual graham cracker crust for such pies like Crack Pies (picture to follow), I threw this together tonight so that I had the component ready when I make Compost Cookies tomorrow (entry to follow, ha).
Threw a pinch in my month and it was pretty unbelievable. This blows the Keebler pre-made stuff out of the water. Yes, salt certainly gives sweet things depth and this clearly shows that.


No, I've never had the infamous crack pie (named thus-ly because apparently it's impossible to stop eating) since it never sounded totally my thing. However, I'll probably wind up making it up soon-ish to share with friends since it really is sort of ubiquitous for MMB.


The Arnold Palmer cake that didn't wind up collapsing.



Proof that actual slices were to be had this time around.

Arnold Palmer Cake: Part Three

Lemon Tea Cake

• 115 g (8 T) butter (preferably Plugrà) [See my note on this topic in my 3/10/12 entry]
• 300 g (1 1/2 C) sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 egg yolks
• 65 g (1/3 C) grapeseed oil
• 110 g (1/2 C) buttermilk¹
• 70 g (1/4 C) lemon juice
• 4 g (1 t) lemon extract (Whole Foods and Harvest Co-Op in Central appeared to only have alcohol-free lemon flavoring.)
• 185 g (1 1/2 C) cake flour
• 20 g (9 bags) Lipton black tea leaves
• 4 g (1 t) baking powder
• 4 g (1 t) kosher salt

Mise en place


Cake batter ready to go into a 350° F oven for thirty minutes. I think I've used my stand mixer so much in a little over a month that at least a couple weeks ago I've thrown the tilt of the head out of alignment; therefore, the cake isn't 100% homogenized but it's easy to hide.
Finally bothered to twist the screw clockwise a tad after this though.


And 30 minutes passes.


Stamping out the cake rings. Lesson learned this time is that it's useful to stamp out parts of the circle instead of doing my best to try to stamp out two complete circles from a quarter-sheet pan.


Tosi says to use scraps to build the bottom layer of the cake that no one will ever see... Unless of course your entire cake collapses in on itself as it did on my trial run on Sunday. Oh, I tried to be careful, but certainly I wasn't careful enough. "Judy, please pack your knives and go," Padma Lakshmi as if I'd ever be cooking at such the high, hyper-restaurant-paced level that puts you in the running on Top Chef.


A cake layer smeared with lemon mascarpone. Essentially, it's lemon curd lightened up (I think that's the turn for it...) with a bit of mascarpone, an Italian cheese often associated with tiramisu.


The non"pectic-nh" pectin I used this time was not at all quite as successful as when I used the Ball brand pectin at the TAGS hardware store in Porter. Hopefully this doesn't lead to obvious architectural failure when this cake is served two Saturdays from now, but HEY!, I didn't break any layers so far!


What... I don't break any layers at all?!

Yes of course I see the crack, but a crack is not a full break.


All composed and with just a bit of a saran wrap and ready for a 2-week hibernation in the freezer.


Trial run cake before it collapsed. Looks an awful lot like the professional version except a little crooked as I'll never let Joe A. finish saying.


So far I haven't served an actual "slice" of this to anyone. This is what remained after composing the trial run cake. Good lord, I can just see how stupidly convenient it is to make a cake from a box and just ice it with canned frosting, but it makes my skin crawl.
Hopefully I can offer actual slices to my family on March 24th.

¹Excerpts from the Wiki for Buttermilk:

Originally, buttermilk was the liquid left over from churning butter from cream. Traditionally, before cream could be skimmed from whole milk, the milk was left to sit for a period of time to allow the cream and milk to separate. During this time, naturally occurring lactic acid-producing bacteria in the milk fermented it. This facilitates the butter churning process, since fat from cream with a lower pH coalesces more readily than that of fresh cream. The acidic environment also helps prevent potentially harmful microorganisms from growing, increasing shelf-life. However, in establishments that used cream separators, the cream was hardly acidic at all.

Commercially available cultured buttermilk is milk that has been pasteurized and homogenized (if 1% or 2% fat), and then inoculated with a culture of lactic acid bacteria to simulate the naturally occurring bacteria in the old-fashioned product. Some dairies add colored flecks of butter to cultured buttermilk to simulate residual flecks of butter that can be left over from the churning process of traditional buttermilk.

Condensed buttermilk and Dried buttermilk have increased in importance in the food industry.

And what does all the food literature I've read have to say on the topic? Well, that buttermilk in the dairy case is certainly not real buttermilk and since the stuff is used so sparingly I wouldn't buy the stuff. Different authorities support the use of clabbered milk (milk mixed with a bit of lemon juice or white vinegar and left to get lumpy) or powdered buttermilk which is found in the baking aisle of most conventional supermarkets. I'll go with the dried stuff, particularly when baking, but take note to add the buttermilk powder with the other dry ingredients and the reconstituting water with the wet.

Arnold Palmer Cake: Part One

Although the grand reveal of the test run will be unveiled on Sunday afternoon, I'm making the components and assembling for my birthday party with the family two weeks from today. Maybe I won't break all the cake layers again.

Bitter Tea Soak and Tea Jelly

• 475 g (2 1/4 C) water
• 8 Lipton black tea bags
• 350 g (1 3/4 C) sugar
• 50 g (1/4 C) instant Lipton unsweetened tea powder [This took me a little bit of hunting and I eventually managed to find this Porter Square Shaw's. They only had the decaffeinated unsweetened instant tea, but I can live with that. However, I think the measurement by weight is grossly inaccurate. Perhaps later I'll go into why typically it's better to bake by weight rather than volume.]
• 10 g (1/2 t) pectin NH (easily obtained online) [Perhaps if you're willing to bake beyond a hobby level, but I used grocery store dry pectin. There's a possibility I will choose to actually buy pectin NH some day since it is sort of available on Amazon unlike something else I will mention in this entry.]
• 20 g (1 1/2 T) lemon juice

Doubled the amount of ingredients this time for the tea soak since:
a) I wanted to actually have enough to make the tea jelly this time
b) Hey I might as well have some left over to not just skip the soak since there isn't any!

In transferring this from container to container I spilled enough to warrant throwing four kitchen rags into the laundry pile I'm doing tomorrow... But progress!


Tea jelly mise en place

Almond Tea Crunch (Couldn't take a proper photo of any of this)

• 50 g (1/4 C) instant Lipton lemon iced tea powder [Whoa just now realizing that this calls for a slightly different thing than the Tea Jelly ingredient. My bad; this probably wasn't a fatal mistake.]
• 15 g (2 T) slivered almonds
• 55 g (1/4 C) almond butter
• 40 g (1/2 C) feuilletine [The item that IS NOT available on Amazon. I was considering ordering this from a gourmet shop based in NYC along with a moderate amount of pectin NH but I can't exactly justify paying 50% extra because FedEx ground is my cheapest shipping option. A cursory Google search turned up an idea on a forum that Chinese Love Letter cookies (Available where else but a Chinese market and also more commonly known as egg roll cookies) is an acceptable substitute for something Tosi considers "impossible to replicate." ]
• 30 g (3 T) confectioner's sugar
• 2 g (1/2 t) kosher salt

Part 2 and 3 to come in the subsequent days. Additionally, an entry on Short Ribs and Cinnamon (HCE) tomorrow.

I've been Post-It Flag-ing the hell out of the Legumes chapter of HCEV so really I have no excuse to start eating a bit lighter for a little while. After packing tomorrow's work portion of Risotto Alla Milanese, I'm only left with a bit of a snack so I really should throw together that do-over I've been planning of Tofu-Stuffed Chard (It could be kale or any number of things, but I think I have better luck getting big enough leaves with chard) and Fermented Black Beans (Actually not black beans at all but soybeans. BTW, I'm still talking about HCEV.). I made it last week and aside from removing the stems and chopping them the prep was negligible. I'm making it again because I had the bright idea of making way too much Baked Tofu (Hello HCEV!).
Also I plan on using mirin instead of sake this time because alcohol is best cooked away in food. That didn't really happen with the lid on.

I swear I'm not becoming a vegetarian since I just transferred my 3-pound package of short ribs (courtesy of Davis Square's Mckinnon's, Boston's best variety of butchered meat at the best prices) from the freezer to the fridge so I can braise Short Ribs with Cinnamon (HCE) for the fourth or so time again this weekend.

Blog posts forthcoming about each of these and eventually I need to start writing the one about the Arnold Palmer Cake. Although I probably won't publish that until I unwrap it on Sunday.