How to Treat a Roast Chicken Right

Never take for granted the fact that US ovens have temperatures marked on the dial. Argentina and many other countries just have a “high heat” mark and an “off” mark on an otherwise blank dial. Oh, how I miss knowing how hot the oven is. Not a whole lot of places that sell in-the-oven thermometers, either. I just have to shrug and laugh when a recipe gives a pre-heat temperature.

That said, we still rock some roasted chicken here. We can get a fat, whole bird at Mercado Central for about 16 pesos (4 US dollars), and the rest is veggies, details, and nifty phases of leftovers.

Stuff ‘Er an’ Roast ‘Er an’ Eat ‘Er Down to tha Last Drop

Oven Temp: High? I’m guessing 450 F, really.

Ingredients:

Whole chicken, preferably with some of the organs stuffed in the cavity

3 large carrots

Half a celery bunch, the stalks

2 whole sweet onions

1 whole large sweet potato

(You can chop other random roastable veggies for the base as you see fit)

7 to 10 cloves of garlic

Olive oil

Salt n’ pepper

The leaves from the celery stalks

3 to 5 sun-dried tomato halves

Hot peppers if you like the heat, about a quarter cup

1 tablespoons thyme (unless it’s Argentine, in which case 2 tablespoons)

1 tablespoon crushed rosemary (fresh is best)

1 teaspoon crushed red pepper (unless it’s Argentine, in which case 1 tablespoon)

1 teaspoon black pepper (I really like pepper)

1 teaspoon paprika

Some of your delicious wine (or the crap stuff, so long as it’s not sugary)

The How-To

Take the bag of organs out of the chicken and rinse the chicken inside and out. Set aside. 

Chicken Baste (we do this the day before sometimes, just to give it time to get saturated):

Mince a clove of garlic, and stir it up with two tablespoons crushed rosemary (fresh is best), four tablespoons olive oil, a teaspoon of salt and pepper, each. Squeeze some lemon in there if you feel inspired. Mix up good and let it sit in a warm spot for the flavors to mingle.

Chop 2 ½ of the carrots, 1 ½ of the onions, all the celery stalks and the sweet potato into very large chunks (1 ½ to 2 inch diameters). Leave all but three of the garlic cloves whole. Toss the chunks of vegetables and the whole garlic cloves in enough olive oil to coat in the roasting dish. My roasting dish is about 10 inches by 14 inches, so all the veggies fit nicely. The big chunks will allow air circulation (crispiness!) under your chicken. Toss some salt and pepper over the top of the veggies in the pan, and while you’re at it salt and pepper the chicken cavity. You can just lay that pretty bird on the bed of veggies for now to get her out of the way.

Chop fine the remaining half a carrot, half an onion, celery leaves, 3 garlic cloves, sundried tomatoes, peppers, chicken liver and heart. Drop them in a pot over medium heat with a tablespoon of olive oil. Add all the herbs and cook until onions soften. I don’t add the lungs or the neck. I just drop those in the roasting pan with the bird to help flavor the juices at the bottom, then pick at the neck later. But I don’t eat lung. Too rubbery.

While that’s cooking, rub the chicken baste over every nook and cranny of the outside of your bird. Set her on her belly, NOT on her back. This is the secret to juicy breasts. Spoon the sautéed mixture into the chicken’s lonely cavity. Tie or sew her up. Pour a glass of whatever red (or white, I suppose) wine you happen to be drinking into the roasting pan (about a cup, maybe cup and a half). Add about a half cup of water as well. Stick her in the oven.

Cook her for 20 minutes on the high heat, uncovered. This makes the skin seal and get crispy. If there’s not much moisture in the bottom of the pan, add another half cup of water (or more wine, it’s all the same to me). Cover her with foil, lower the heat to 375 Fahrenheit (medium? Can’t really tell in this country), stick her back in. Let her hang out for about an hour and a half. A fork poked into the thick of her meaty spots shouldn’t produce blood or red juices by now. Stick her in for another half hour if it does.

Pull her out, and turn her breast-side-up. It’s tricky to do when she’s that hot and heavy, so get help if you need to. I always add another sprinkle of salt and pepper to the breast at this point. Leave her uncovered, turn the heat back up high, and stick her in for 10 minutes. Take her out and baste with the pan juices, then stick her back in. Repeat until the skin is golden brown. Take the bird off the veggies, and set it on a rack to drip and “finish” for about 5-10 minutes.

*Note about the juices: you can leave these in the pan for phase two, or add about a teaspoon of cornstarch to a tablespoon of cold water. Mix violently, then pour into the pan juices. Set the pan on a burner, and scrape and stir the juices and other bottom-of-the-pan delicious bits until you make a stellar gravy. If it’s still runny, just give it a minute or two to cool off. The gravy goes well over the veggies and the chicken.

That’s Phase I.

Phase II: Once you’ve had your dinner of delicious bird, keep all bones, leftover meat, leftover veggies (stuffing or in the pan), gravy, and juices in the pan in the fridge. Because the next day, you’re going to make soup. If you need to add more fresh veggies to fill up the soup pot (we always do), cook them in the juices from the roasting pan until they’ve absorbed the flavor. Do the fun but somewhat gross task of taking all the remaining meat chunks off the bird, chopping them to bite-sized morsels, and tossing them in the soup pot. Add all the bones that are big enough not to choke on—they add a lot of flavor to the soup! The small bones mostly disintegrate, so I don’t worry if a few fall in. Add any and all of the cooked veggies/stuffing. Scrape the roasting pan with hot water to get every scrap of flavor off. Pour this hot water in the soup pot. Add more water until the soup pot is full. Cook over low heat until you’re too hungry to let it cook any longer (slow cooker is MARVELOUS for this). Eat up, and toss out the bones unless you like to suck all the marrow out first. Mmmm…

That’s Phase II.

Phase III: It’s likely you’re going to have some dribbles left from your soup. Leave them in the bottom of the soup pot. Make sure there’s at least a quarter inch of soup at the bottom of the pot, if not add a bit of water. Rinse a head of chard. Chop the stalks, add them to the pot over low heat (I cheat sometimes and add a bit of chopped onion and garlic, but it’s not necessary). Chop the leaves and set them over the chopped stalks in the soup pot. Cover and let cook for about 10 minutes. The soup water will boil the stalks and steam the leaves. Once the leaves are just wilted, take off the heat and stir. Voila! You can do this with fresh spinach if you don’t like chard, but chard is SO GOOD, MAN!!!

**Additional note: if you got a really big bird and have plenty of breast left over after the initial roast, you can add a fourth phase wherein you make a chicken breast salad or a chicken sandwich. Leave nothing to waste away in the fridge!

This is turning into a recipe blog...

...and that's just fine. In fact that's super-awesome-great. Tell all your friends.

Honey Apple Pancakes of Awesome and Win 

INGREDIENTS

1 c. Flour
1 tsp. Baking Soda
1 tsp. Salt (optional)
1 tsp. Cinnamon
½ c. Chopped Green Apple Pieces

1 tsp Butter or Margarine
1 TBSP Honey
1 c. Milk (I used two TBSP cream mixed with water to make 1 cup. See rant at the bottom.)
1 tsp Vanilla
1 TBSP vegetable oil
2 Eggs

METHOD TO THE MADNESS
Mix together the flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon until you have evenly tan powdery goodness. Add the chopped green apples, coating them in the powdery goodness.

In a mildly warm little sauce pan, melt the butter and add the honey. Don’t let the honey cook. Add the milk, vanilla and vegetable oil. Let the honey dissolve, then remove from heat. Don’t let it get too hot, because you’re about to add the eggs. Bits of boiled egg in these pancakes would probably be pretty gross. Beat the two eggs, then add them to the nummy-nummy honey mix. Stir it all up good in there.

Add the powdery goodness to the nummy-nummy honey mix, or vice verse. I’ve heard it both ways, and it doesn’t seem to make too much of a difference. It’s delicious either way. But don’t over-stir. A few lumps is actually a good thing. Makes the cakes all light and fluffy.
Get a griddle or a pan all nice and hot (I’ve never owned a griddle, but I long for one) with a very light coating of vegetable oil. If you’ve made pancakes before, you know the drill: splash a drop of water in the pan and if it sizzles, the oil’s hot enough…yadda yadda yadda. If you have a griddle that lets you monitor the temperature digitally or something, then you’re a lucky son of a gun, and I have nothing to say to you.

Spoon about a cup of the miracle apple batter onto the hot pan or griddle at a time.  Flip ‘em when the edges are dry and you take a peek at the other side and find it golden brown. Make the other side beautiful, too. Transfer it to a plate. Show off if you can, pan-tossing the cake high in the air so it flips like an Olympic diver, then lands in the perfect center of the serving plate. I can’t do this, but you should. I bet it would be fun.

Important Note: The first pancake almost always looks like an abused pancake step-child, no matter how good you are at this. Eat it. You’re the cook. It tastes great, and no one needs to know that you don’t make perfect golden pancakes every time. Eat the second one, too, if it looks wonky. Or even if it doesn’t. These are soooo delicious!

Anyhoo, butter the heck outta the top and add some drizzles of honey. You can even dust it ever so lightly with cinnamon, but really everyone’s so impressed and hungry by now that the overkill just isn’t necessary.
Makes about 10 weep-on-your-plate-good Honey Apple cakes.

Snapp’s Tricks, Gimmicks and Rules
If you need to keep your heavenly creations warm while you cook 15 batches of this, a warm oven does the trick. Just don’t burn the heck outta your hands because you forget the plate’s hot. Like I do.  BUT--

Honestly it’s better to just yell “HOT CAKE UP!” until someone comes running in desperately with an empty plate each time one is ready and let them dress up their cakes themselves.  Make sure they refill your drink for you before they retreat with their prize, though.

Milk Rant: Here in Argentina, the milk tastes very different from anything I ever had in the states. I like it in  my coffee OK, but I don’t use it for anything else. Not even cereal. It reminds me of cardboard. But the CREAM, on the other hand, is glorious. Rich, almost nutty…and the ‘doble’ variety makes everything better. EVERYTHING. So there’s never milk in my fridge, only cream. So I improvise. Now you know.

The Fourth or Fifth Acorn Squash Dish

It's time to finally share this joy. In Argentina, fresh fennel is sold as its white bulb with a couple of inches of stalk (treat it like a far superior celery) and a small smattering of leaves. I buy it ALL THE TIME. Here's one of the things I do with it.

Fennel and Nut-Stuffed Acorn Squash (by Sami)
Oven preheat: 375

INGREDIENTS
Half of an acorn squash, approx. 8 inches in diameter
3 TBSP olive oil or vegetable cooking oil
3 large cloves garlic
The stalks of one fennel plant, chopped (if this is less than a cup, chop up the bulb, too)
½ cup chopped onion
2 tsp cinnamon
Salt
Pepper (optional)
½ cup of shelled cashews or almonds

METHOD TO THE MADNESS
Wash all veggies…except the garlic. That would be gross. Especially if you do it while they’re still in the skins. Well, I don't wash 'em. Anyway…

Clean the seeds and membrane out of the center of the acorn squash, reserving the seeds (see Seed Snack below). Compost the membrane. Cut a flat surface on the bottom of the acorn squash so that when it sits like a bowl it doesn’t roll around (guess how long it took me to figure this out…just guess).

Fill a baking dish (wide enough to fit the diameter of the acorn squash) with a half inch of water. Place the acorn squash open-end down into the water. Cook in the oven for 30min.

While it’s cooking, chop the vegetables. Heat a pan over medium-low heat with the oil. Add garlic and cook until lightly gold, about a minute.

Add the chopped fennel stalks, onion, cinnamon, salt and pepper (to taste) to the pan. Cook and stir until the edges of the onion just begin to clarify. You want to just introduce the flavors to one another, no more. Take the pan off the heat and let it cool completely. Add the cashews and stir well.

It should be just about time to take the squash out. Lift it out of the pan so you can drain the pan (I do this by stabbing two forks into opposite sides). Add a little oil to the bottom of the pan to keep the acorn squash bowl from sticking. Set the acorn squash bowl into the pan, opening up. Scrape the insides off until the edges are fairly uniformly ¼ inch thick. Thoroughly mix the scrapings in with your vegetable and nut mix. No need to be exact on your scraping, it’s delicious even of some parts are a bit thicker. Try not to puncture the bowl, though, so that it will hold together.

Spoon the vegetable-nut-scrapings mixture into the bowl of the acorn squash. Put the whole thing back into the oven and reduce heat to 350. Cook for another half an hour. Check for doneness. If you like your veggies medium soft, take it out now. If you like them REALLY soft, leave it in for another ten minutes. Alternately, you can top your bowl with shredded parmesan or Romano cheese for the last ten minutes of cooking time.

Let the food rest outside the oven for a couple of minutes so it will cool a bit, and so that the flavors can keep deepening. Bring into the eating area with great fanfare, because this dish looks pretty sophisticated and cool for being so simple.

Serves two people who greedily hoard all leftovers, or 3-4 people who learned how to share. It’s filling and fairly complete by itself, but you should probably set out seasonal fruit if you’ve got a crowd.

Because it’s a fall dish, serve a mild red dinner wine with it (unless it’s an unseasonably hot night. Then try some Riesling. The fresh fruity flavor goes with…well….anything). Here in Argentina, we drink Mendoza-region Malbec with everything. It happens to go especially well with this dish. Or so I say after the glass and a half that got me through the cooking.

If you’re more of a beer crowd, serve with a red lager or a mildly sweet brown. It will complement the sweetness of the acorn squash and tie in nicely with the cinnamon and the hint of licorice flavor of the fennel.

Oh yeah! The Seed Snacks! (Lots of wine while I cooked, even more wine now that I'm waiting for it to finish...I kinda forgot)
Get all that slippery membrane off the seeds. A wire mesh strainer comes in handy for this. Drain, then drain some more on a towel. Spread them on a baking sheet, toss on a bit of cooking oil and salt. Use your fingers to mix them around, being sure to get your fingers nice and oily. Because it’s fun to get your fingers all oily. Lick your fingers after you're done. Or not.

Anyway, toss this in the oven while your acorn squash is cooking. Pull ‘em out when they’re light golden-brown. It’s hard to say how long, because here in Argentina ovens with temperatures labeled on the knob just don’t exist (nobody nay-say me on this, dammit! I would cry…). Just check on ‘em after 5 minutes, then again after 10 minutes. When they’re just cool enough not to peel the skin from your tongue, serve them to your guests. Or just eat them yourself. I mean, you cooked, you get the delicious treats of your labor.

Too much wine to keep writing. I think I got everything. Enjoy!

Oh! Wait! Keep the fennel bulbs (if you didn't end up chopping 'em up) for a roasted fennel dish and the leaves for a bastard child of cucumber yogurt soup (because there's no dill to be had in all of Argentina. *cries*)

New Apartment Acoustics

We live in the apartment complex of random music fanatics.

The music of this country isn't Tejano, it's Tango. Where the accordians in tejano make your foot tap and your head bob, the accordian of the Tango isn't satisfied until you understand in no uncertain terms that you're being seduced. It will pull French, then wax lazily to Italian before spinning the tangoistas (who inevitably spring up a block away from the moment you first heard the music in the air) into a simmering Latin dip. So hearing tejano music spilling into the courtyard of our complex from an open window two floors above was something of a surprise. It was really the first time I'd heard any since I left the tejano saturated airwaves of Texas.

We also have a neighbor down the hall who seemingly hosts karaoke every night. Every. Single. Night. Sometimes during the day, too. Now, we can't bring ourselves to be annoyed, because it's just too damned hilarious. Loud and hi-la-ri-ous. He is, apparently, a fan of all things 80's and 90's American pop music. Many a night was a Thriller night. I think I love this city most for its unfailing tolerance. No one is complaining and no arguments have broken out (and we know...we would hear them whether we wanted to or not). It's our own nightly entertainment, and we needn't leave our apartment.

Before I continue, let me just explain that the acoustics of this place are such that EVERYTHING echoes. We may as well be in an ancient stone monastary for all the reverberations: footsteps, water, voices...nevermind the overpowering peal of thunder. It's a musical performer's wet dream.

And so, on to the best part: an opera singer lives one floor above us. The first time I heard that clear, crisp voice spiraling up her stairway of octaves only to plummet expertly to a pillowy contralto roll, I was, understandably, entranced. Classical music and I go way back. It was almost a holy quest, trying to figure out what I was hearing...surely this was no recording! I was in my apartment when the sound hit me, and tears began to sting the back of my eyes. I ventured into the hall to find the door that might be hiding that lovely sound. I may as well have been on a game show, trying desparately to guess which door hid the corvette. The acoustics sent the sound off every wall, every door. Down the hall to the stairwell I tip-toed, but the trilling stopped. I had to stand there, hoping she'd start up again. Not knowing which of my neighbors was this songbird seemed a secret too tantalizing to go undiscovered. Suddenly the sound washed over me again, and I went careening down the stairs. Her voice was getting louder, but less distinct. Wow. The high ceiling and marble floors actually intensified the volume as the sound moved farther from its source. I raced up the stairs as quietly as I could, willing my footfalls not to echo and disrupt the dulcet tones.

Finally, one floor above my apartment, right next to the stairwell, a door was almost vibrating with the sound. But it was far more clear, and so very, very precise. You could shave the hair from a man's face with the exact edge of her notes. I've heard MANY live musical performances (thank you, Austin, Texas!), and even gave a few myself. I know that what I stood hearing, as I leaned against the rail of the stairs, was a professional of a lovely caliper. She never pressed the music, she never overbore her vocal chords. She stopped and started as though thumbing her way through an aria that she knew, but needed only refresh herself on. If only I could force my words to convey the simple purity of her voice with the complex weave of notes and technique, I know you'd almost hear it yourself.

I had to go back downstairs, for fear of a neighbor questioning my statuesque pose on the stairs, and that my own halting, unsure explanation in a language I've not yet mastered would make the singer stop.

To my utter ecstacy, she practices every day.

Landing

So, airports are interesting environments in any country. When you get off a 16-hour international flight, you have a certain smell. And so does everyone else around you. You stare at the little brat that hollered the entire time the lights were out because he was bored. You decide you don't hate the other tyke that moaned in the seats in front of you every time the brat shut up long enough for you to catch a few z's. The tyke was just having nightmares. You even decide you like the sleepy little thing, who just stares blankly at you, wanting some honest shut-eye just as bad as you do.

You trudge along with your travel-weary fellow adventurers (looking more like refugees, really), until your mate realizes he left his hat aboard the plane. You can't get back on, because it's a safety concern, so it takes the efforts of 3 stewards to figure out which seat was 36-D, then find the hat. Well, hey, at least it's not lost.

Pass your health form to the man behind a big table who looks at you like you're supposed to give him something. He rambles to you in a language you've only just begun to grasp, so you just smile and nod. It works, and he welcomes you to his country. Hooray.

But just under it all is a seed of excitement, of completion, that's just beginning to germinate.

And it immediately gets hit by a flash-frost as you settle into the still-long line to go through customs. Your feet and legs suddenly have very strong opinions about the lack of leg room, and could give care less about this crazy notion of 'travel excitement'. But your mate is there with sleepy kisses and half-hearted attempts to rub some life back into your back, and you try to figure out what questions you'll be asked in the new language, and how easiest to answer them.

You're in front of the bored lady scrutinizing your passport for 30 seconds, and wonder how the hell, with 8 other people doing the same thing she is, that the line managed to be an hour long.

Hooray! You FINALLY get to wait for your checked bags! And the praying for their safe arrival resumes in earnest. The brat is trying to ride the turnstile. You wish you could bottle his energy reserves and market them. For one dark moment, you imagine that your new country allows that kind of thing in the case of brats. Then you catch sight of your little tuckered-out tyke, curled up around his sleepy sibling, out cold. And you remember that you didn't set out on an adventure to plot evil schemes against little twerps. "You came here to sleep, right?" your legs, hips, and fogged brain demand. "Sure," you mutter, out loud. Your mate gives you one of those sidelong glances that means he thinks he probably imagined you talking to an imaginary friend.

It's then that, like mana from heaven, the luggage begins to fall onto the turnstile. By the grace of some higher power, you and your mate find your luggage, all of it, in 5 minutes. There's a currency exchange booth next to the turnstiles offering to rip you off in the convenient proximity of your luggage. You look at them cross-eyed, and they tell you pointedly that you're welcome to try to find better rates outside. "Thank God," you respond.

On to the scanning of the luggage. Is this also customs? Helefino. You try to load your things as quickly as possible and get rapid-fire instructions (questions, maybe?) in another language from the security personnel. You look at them with all the confusion you honestly feel, and they load your luggage 'properly', shaking their heads. "Gracias!" you say, poorly but whole-heartedly.

Outside, indeed, are currency exchange stations that are far closer to the actual exchange rates. Good, even. "Well I'll be damned."

The ride from the airport that you arranged with your new landlady doesn't show up. Figures. Never, ever take a random taxi from the airport. You know this, so you head into the main entrance of the airport, watching the soccer team that was 6 aisles ahead of you trudge along in their uniforms. They REALLY should have brought coats. It's 46 farenheit!

You find the taxi "station" that is run directly by the airport. Bingo! They print out a full receipt for you, and a porter immediately takes your bags. The price is cheaper than the driver that the landlady was going to send out to fetch you. Nice.

Half-hour cab ride, and the fatigue is overwhelming, but the germinating seed of excitement just got a burst of the morning sunlight that you're watching wash through the cab window. The streets are strange, the music is strange, the smells are strange, and you realize, finally, that you've landed. Exhausted, worn, irratable and more than a little confused, you still feel ready for the adventure.

Then you blink too long, and wake up in front of your new home, half the new city that you meant to watch unfolding before you already passed. But there, on the doorstep to your new pad, is your roomie from your home state, and you're home.

It's a Hard-Packing Life

36 staight hours of cleaning. Of packing. Of trips to Goodwill to drop off all the things we couldn't sell at our garage sales, the things we couldn't give away to friends or family, and things we couldn't bring ourselves to throw away. Trips to Halfprice Books, carting 3 times our weight in the precious written word of literary geniuses. And the occaisional bathroom hilarity book. Genius.

I'd been packing for weeks by the time the 36 hour stretch began. Thomas and I kept ourselves running on coffee and small snacks. 5-hour energy shots were our friends. We were nearly delerious with fatigue and stress, the weight difference of a few pairs of socks in our checked baggage giving us cause to chew nails. An aside- airline restrictions on luggage gave me my next sprinkling of gray hair.

2 carry-on bags and 2 checked bags was the sum of my worldly possessions as I boarded the plane to Argentina. And still, I thought of things I could have left behind, and things I should have brought instead. Even now, I miss my eisel.

Count Down in Drum Beats

Each day feels like a staccato in time drumming to the flight to Buenos Aires. August 4th, I'll be in the U.S.; August 5th, I'll be seeing my new home in San Telmo, Buenos Aires for the first time.