Adventures with chicken and my first week of school

This has been a full first week of Geography classes and cooking. I love my classes so far and they all seem to fit together nicely. This semester at San Francisco State University, I am taking seminars in Urban Geography and Environmental Management, as well as a Human Geography Field Methods class. I have so much more time this semester to spend at the library absorbing information, it’s a great feeling. Everything I’ve been learning the last three semesters seems to be coming together. Before, I could only see the trees and now the forest is starting to materialize! It helps that I’m only working 8 hours a week instead of the insane 18 hours I worked last semester. I know that sounds funny to people with full-time jobs who must think I have no concept of what it’s like in the real world. Not true. I did have a full time job before going back to school. Although I will admit, it did seem to me cruel and unusual at times. Trying to balance work stress with school stress has tended to undo me, so less hours is helping immensely. Ah, and I have found that taking the time to cook and enjoy food is helping so far...It is early in the semester though, so we shall see how it goes….

Saturday we went to the beach at Marin Headlands. It was an unusually sunny day around the bay, not the usual socked-in fogginess that makes it feel like January in the summer. So, after a couple of hours of my agonizing about not going to the library, we headed out over the Golden Gate and enjoyed the weather. I did get some reading done at the beach, I have to mention in case anyone who cares about my study habits is reading. I also saw a classmate at the beach which made me feel much better about my delinquency in not going to the library on this beautiful Saturday.

When we got home I opened a bottle of cold, buttery Chardonnay and began to prepare dinner. I roasted a whole chicken! I’ve been really into working with the whole chicken for the past year or so. It used to seem overwhelming, reaching in to pull out the gunk (livers and gizzards - I still don’t quite know what a gizzard is) from inside the sad little cadaver, plucking the left over feather follicles. Now, no big deal! I can even debone the poor little thing without flinching – cracking the back is a little satisfying for some reason, it must be the early human in me. I found a great video on Epicurious, demonstrating how to debone a chicken. I highly recommend watching it several dozen times before attempting the procedure. Otherwise you will end up like me…with chicken goo hands trying to rewind the online video to the place where you think things went astray for you and your poor little partially deboned chicken. Not pretty or sanitary.

I’ve been on a Tuscan-food binge lately so I roasted the whole chicken with copious amounts of olive oil – given to me as a gift from my brother who works for the California Olive Ranch in Oroville, CA. That connection will come in handy for years to come I hope, yippy! It’s good stuff, too. I did a taste test comparing his oil to an Italian brand I also had in the kitchen. Not that I know what I’m supposed to taste for, besides overall general goodness. My fiancé wouldn’t participate in the slurping-tasting process. He said he wasn’t going to “drink” olive oil – fair enough. It is kind of an odd thing to do and really it’s just as effective for my needs to put some on a piece of bread. But I wanted to be professional about it, get the proper aeration, you know? Is it possible for oil to taste warm and green? That’s what it tasted like to me, like a hot summer day in Tuscany!

Back to the chicken…very simple, besides slathering the chicken with olive oil and S&P, I warmed some fresh garlic in a pan with a little more olive oil, then put that, along with some fresh sage leaves inside the chicken cavity, sprinkled some “Herbs de Napa” on my little poultry friend and popped her into the oven at 375°F for an hour and 30 minutes or so. I have both Herbs de Provence and Herbs de Napa in my cabinet; I’m a little embarrassed to say. I wonder if in France they really have packaged herbs called “Herbs de Provence”. I kind of doubt this, but what the hell, the marketing worked on me apparently – I’m going along with it.

My chicken was a hefty 5 lbs, which I am very proud to have purchased for a little over $5 at Safeway. I was tempted by the organic chicken but it was three times as much and I am on a budget here. The chicken at my local butcher would have been equally as much.

Why do I feel the need to defend my non-organic, Safeway food purchase? There are social and political considerations and I usually feel a little pressure to buy organic. However, what does it mean to identify as an organic food buyer, or not to? What does organic really even mean…when you start looking into the lack of regulation surrounding organic food production? Not to mention the myriad private, for profit entities we rely on to label these products. Is it any more humane to the people involved in growing this food? Is it any smaller scale? Who has access to it? Who gets marked as un-educated for not going along with this, “real food” eating craze, for whatever reason? One really great writer and scholar of such topics is Julie Guthman. Not that organic is in any way negative. Overall it’s a great thing to have food that we don’t have to worry about getting sick from ingesting over time. But that’s just one small part of the equation, and just because something is better than the status quo does not mean we should stop asking questions about it…I digress. For my purposes I bought the cheaper chicken because I was looking for the best deal.

The chicken was delicious, juicy, everything I hoped it would be. With our chicken we had cannellini beans with sage and olive oil, a Tuscan staple (although my beans were not slow cooked, they came out of a can). Dinner was a success! My fiancé is well fed and no doubt, feels loved. Joy radiates through me, or maybe that’s the Chardonnay. I thought I only had one glass, but I slept like a rock and upon waking to go to the library I see we in fact polished off the whole bottle. At least I managed to pick up that chicken bone off of the floor before going to bed. I have a vague, foggy memory of it launching off the cutting board (meatless already, thankfully) to a dusty corner of our small San Francisco size kitchen, amidst my fervent carving frenzy. That’s what a wild night of chicken roasting will do for you.

Recipes
Roasted Chicken with Herbs and Garlic
1 chicken, 5lb
Salt and pepper to taste
10 fresh sage leaves
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 large garlic cloves, sliced thinly
Herbs d’ Napa or d’ Provence
Cooking twine
Roasting pan with rack
Instant read thermometer

-Preheat oven to 375° F
-Rinse and dry the chicken. Sprinkle with salt and pepper inside and out. Place 5 sage leaves inside the chicken cavity.
-Warm the olive oil over medium-high heat (do not let smoke) add the sliced garlic and 5 or so sage leaves, sauté, but do not brown. A couple of minutes should do the trick.
-Use a slotted spoon to remove the garlic and sage and place inside the chicken cavity. Use the remaining oil to baste the chicken, throughout the roasting process. I like to use a pastry brush to make sure I get full coverage with the oil.
-Tie the drumsticks of your little chicken together with cooking twine and tuck its wings behind its back so they don’t burn (the poor little thing). Place the chicken, breast side up in the roasting pan – hopefully you have a rack inside the pan to elevate it above its juices.
-Drizzle with more olive oil with even coverage for the best browning. Sprinkle your chicken with Herbs de Napa or de Provence (depending on which regional-cooking, marketing scheme you have fallen for).
- Roast uncovered, basting occasionally with the left over garlic and sage olive oil until the thermometer inserted into the thigh reads 180° F (about 1 hour, 35 minutes).
-Transfer your chicken to a cutting board, cover loosely with foil and let rest for about 10 minutes before carving and serving.

Cannellini Beans with Sage and Garlic
1 15oz can Cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
4-8 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
8 fresh sage leaves, torn
3 tablespoons dry white cooking wine

-Over very low heat simmer beans, olive oil, garlic and sage for 5 minutes.
-Add wine and continue to simmer over very low heat for a few more minutes.
-Drizzle with additional olive oil and serve. Yum!