Food Thread: It's Thyme to Talk Food!

I picked up some absolutely spectacular fresh thyme from a local market. Fresh, aromatic....just lovely. It's for the dish below the fold, but now I have a lot of a really nice herb and I do not want to waste it.

Yes, I am a cheap bastard, but it also seems like a shame to discard such wonderful ingredients!

Any suggestions? Thyme Stroganoff? Thyme Soup? Sous Vide Thyme with Maple Syrup?

I ordered a fancy chicken from an excellent place in NY called Hudson Valley Farms, which is justifiably famous for its high quality foie gras (fattened duck liver). They have branched out to chicken, so I figured it might be better than my local poultry farm.

But why make a simple roast chicken if I can think of a way to make it more complicated! So I tried a technique that works very well on beef and pork. Reverse Sear is easy with relatively thin cuts of meat, but becomes more of a timing and temperature issue with larger cuts. And a whole chicken is definitely a larger cut!

My first step was to salt it liberally and put it in the refrigerator for several hours.The plan was to let it air dry a bit, and that seemed to work, although I did dry it off before putting it in the oven. Then I stuffed it with a bit of lemon, onion, and a handful of thyme before trussing it I put it on a rack at 275 degrees for a very long time...more than two hours! Then I took it out while the oven heated to 475 degrees, although in retrospect I could have gone even hotter.

I cooked those vegetables in the cast-iron pan while the chicken was in the oven for the low-temperature cook. I figured they would get mushy if I cooked them for so long, even at a low temperature.

Just before I put the chicken in the hot oven I poured a mixture of melted butter an a bit of olive oil over the skin, because fancier cooks than I have used that technique to crisp the skin even more.

That was after about 15 minutes, and for a first attempt? I am very, very pleased. The chicken was perfectly cooked and delicious!

You garlic people are insufferable!

Weekday lunch! simple dough, simple sauce, deli pepperoni (it's under the cheese), and leftover mozzarella from the last tomatoes of the season.

Is it perfectly round? No. Was it mighty tasty? Yes!

About the Bourbon Bubble...I think it has burst, but the category is also suffering from the inflation that affected everything else (Thanks Biden!). I think the sweet spot is still $40-$60 for excellent and interesting bottles, and bumping that to $100 gets you an incremental improvement in quality, but nothing mind-blowing. More than that and I think you are paying for hype and rarity, which may look good in your liquor cabinet, but doesn't translate to more quality in the bottle.

The problem...or the solution...is to buy lots of bourbon, take tasting notes, and eventually arrive at your favorites! It should take forty or fifty years, but it is worth it!

posted by CBD at 04:00 PM

| Access Comments