Winter 2010 is on, pigeons, and she is a Stone-Cold Bitch. Mid-January we had those three or four gorgeous days, when everyone was outside without a jacket on, walking their kids and playing with their dogs, and we all sort of thawed out and people were smiling at each other on 8th avenue, and then WHAM! 7 degrees. And you know you don't want to leave your apartment when that happens. But you also don't want to order Thai and watch Heroes alone in your undies--again. So what do you do? Call your friends/lovers/roommates, make them come over (suckers!) and cook a chicken.
On Saturday Gige and I hung out at Cafe Amrita until we started getting dirty looks from the people waiting for tables, and then we took our party to the Hungarian Pastry Shop to sit and drink coffee and do work. Hungarian is a great place to hang out if you like to listen to pretentious grad-students (or if you are one), or if you need a place to work on your latest novella/screenplay/manifesto. They have some really tasty pastries (almond horn!) and also some less than delicious concoctions(weird chocolate ball thing--Sasch loves it), good coffee, and you can just sit there for hours. Which we did, until I started to vibrate from the 7 or 8th refill. We decided to meet up with her mom and make some dinner. The consensus: Chicken And Maybe Like a Salad or Something.
I swear to whatever deity is listening, nothing slaps a band-aid on Winter Madness better than the smell of a roast chicken. Think about it. All the crispy salty brown goodness, the juicy plumpness, the schmaltz dripping down onto various root vegetables. It makes everything just. a little. bit. better. And it's also the kind of dish that looks impressive without actually being that labor-intensive.
You can look up how to do this online, so I'm not gonna repeat it here, but note this: one thing no one ever tells you is that you have to dry the chicken off or it won't brown. Use a few paper towels, get it good and dry, and then rub some butter or olive oil into it. It's foolproof.
Rubbing in the butter. Oh yeah.
Gige does not have a roasting pan, so we used an aluminum thing from the grocery store. Be advised: it is wicked easy to cut through the bottom of these things, and then the juice goes all over, so be careful. Anyway, then we ate it, and I know you're jealous. Deal with it.
We made a gorgeous chicken roasted over turnips and sweet potatoes, and a salad with watercress. The whole thing was fantastic. And we had so much fun cooking together. There's something about cooking as a communal act that is deeply compelling. I think it's the shared responsibility of providing nourishment. Some of my best memories from college are of giant breakfasts we'd make together, of JP grilling salmon he caught himself on a little tailgating grill in the back of his truck, of making blue-cheese stuffed burgers and seared pineapple on the crappiest charcoal Weber in a front yard littered with party-wreckage. And then of eating these things together......as much as I love restaurants, this is the best argument I know for a night in with a (few) bottle(s) of wine, and the people I like. Winter can just suck it, like I sucked the meat of those chicken bones Saturday night (sidenote: I'm not allowed to eat roast chicken in front of people who don't know me. It is Not Cute.)
But tonight I'm definitely watching Heroes in my underwear. Let's not pretend.
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