Okay. This is the most fantastic thing I have ever eaten, and it was easy as pie. No. Pie is not this easy.A few months ago I decided to roast a chicken in a plastic roasting bag, because my friend Angel Mouse recommended it. Would you roast chicken in a plastic bag? No! Only if your friend Angel Mouse recommended it. So I did.
Then she told me the secret weapon. Save the juices and fat in the bag. When the chicken is cool enough, peel off the skin and dig out the bones. You know, shreddy.
Dump ALL this (sans bones and skin, and if you used a spoonful of flour in your plastic bag, get a spoon and remove that too) into a little terrine dish (oh, lord, it was difficult to guess the right size) and refrigerate.
You doubt me right about now. But I'm serious. Only salt went onto the chicken. Goozle and grease went into the little dish, coating the chicken shreds. If it's a really good free-range chicken (and ours was a small one) it's gonna taste so good.
I pressed it down with a smaller dish and some weights. I can't tell you what. OK, cans of beer.
Chill this mess, and tomorrow, blend a little chopped tarragon with mayonnaise. You can also pepper up some Dijon mustard, but you'd probably prefer the mayo.
We ate little chunks of the terrine on sliced baguette. I kinda avoid baguettes, but this was perfect.
Bonus: There are leftovers.
Posts
20 comments:
Love it! Honey, that's PRESSED CHICKEN. I have an almost-century-old cookbook from Atlanta that recommends, "Nice to serve to company on a hot day."
As I recall (the cookbook itself is somewhere in a box in the garage right now), they also used some stock that got even more jelly-ish in the dish.
Yum.
Kudzu: Century old, and I'm just discovering it. Life goes on. Didn't need the stock. It was simply wonderful.
Isn't the world of food discovery a real kick??
Kudzu: And how cool that an Australian taught it to me. Her mom was a restaurant reviewer. Life! L'chaim! Waltzing Matilda!
Kudzu: Cranky just showed me our old "Presidential Cookbook," with a recipe for Pressed Chicken. 1912.
Okay, this sounds insanely good - did you use just the leftover chicken or all of the chicken? Great use of goozle! Those Aussies know a thing or two.
Zoomie: No no no no no! ALL the chicken. It's insanely good, and too easy. Thank Mouse. And Kudzu, it turns out.
Did your chicken come with all the giblets? Because if you mince up the organs, and use the carcass for stock (and reduce it so it gels) and maybe throw in some of those herbs you people have all over the place, it might be even better. Also, booze.
Your photo is fancy, too.
Given my mater is probably almost-a-century-old she may well have got the idea from one of those cookbooks (DON'T tell her I said that).
Chicken terrine? I love it! This, I'm going to have to try.
This just might bring me back to liking chicken again.
Sounds like a mad science project but looks so good.
Okay, thanks. I will definitely try this! And I think it would be fun to make a little "confit" of chicken from the pickings off a carcass some time, too, using the goozle again. I am drooling at 10:30 in the morning - time to go shopping!
Peter: We were surprised to find no giblets in there. Some of those little pieces are too hard to eat anyway, said the Fox scorning the grapes.
OK, yes, I feel there will be variations in the future, but... it was already so good.
Mouse: I friended your mum on FB; we have no secrets.
Zia: You have to. Why didn't they teach this in home ec? So damn easy, fancy, great.
Denise: Not liking chicken? This is something somebody should offer you a slice of.
Greg: A lot easier than a science experiment. If you do this, you will feel so fancy.
Zoomie: There will be leftovers. Can't be helped.
Where did you find the header? In the newspaper?
Zoomie: I spend a lot of time reading a progressive Democratic group blog, Daily Kos. The line was from an email someone sent Kos. Isn't idiocy fabulous?
Yes, I couldn't decide if it was commenting about messing up the littoral zone and badly spelled, or just plain dumb and badly spelled.
Zoomie: I liked "myslef" myself.
My mother is on FACEBOOK???
Mouse: I really wouldn't know. Ha ha!
Post a Comment