Finger lickin’ chicken!
MOST of us lead busy lives these days, or at least that’s what we tell ourselves as an excuse not to spend an hour or so in the kitchen when we get back home.
I’m as guilty as anyone in being lazy on occasions, and especially on the days when I’ve been at the café. Sometimes it all feels very ‘coals to Newcastle’, and I don’t want to face chopping another onion.
At such times, we all phone the local take-away or default to our go-to dishes. These are the core recipes for which we don’t need to consult any notebooks, the ones we know like Grandma knew her scone recipe and it seemed like magic as she whipped up batch after identical batch without weighing a single ingredient. I have a few absolutely nailed-on recipes I default to in those ‘can’t be bothered’ moments, and they have saved many a dinner. A slab of belly pork, slow-roasted with a little salt and pepper. A thick rib-eye steak with oven-roasted tomatoes. Packet noodles thrown into a medley of stir-fried veg and a jar of black bean sauce. Spaghetti with a simple tomato sauce knocked-up in minutes. But perhaps the dish I’ve eaten the most in my life – amazing to think how many times I’ve eaten this in my lifetime – is chicken salad.
In myriad variations, the combination of a nicely-seasoned chicken and some well-dressed salad leaves never seems to get boring, and is something I can do with my eyes closed and brain well and truly switched off. You probably have your favourite versions of the same dish – for me, it’s a lemon squeezed over the skin, the halves chucked in the cavity, a sprinkle of olive oil, black pepper, salt and a dusting of my favourite Portuguese dried oregano, then a slow-ish roast until golden.
Carved over a salad of sweet and bitter leaves, some ripe tomatoes and occasionally some diced avocado, it’s a soul-satisfying and reasonably healthy supper. Human nature dictates that people must always create a hierarchy, that something has to be ‘the best’, and it’s been decided (without my participation, I might huffily add) that the best chicken salad in the world is served at the famous Zuni Café on Market Street in San Francisco. The instant I read this, I was determined to try this amazing salad for myself. My wife pointed out what would happen if I flew on my own to the west coast of America just for a plate of chicken, so I looked up a recipe online and decided instead to have a go in my own kitchen. And you know, it’s not half bad. I can’t say with conviction that it’s the best in the world, as I’ve not eaten them all, but it is certainly a lovely dish, and I present it here with a few personal tweaks.
For sure, I’ll be stuffing the skin with herbs from now on, as it really works well, and I love the idea of the half-soggy, half-crunchy bread, which I reckon would work in many salads. A note before we start; this dish takes a couple of days to prepare, so have a read through first before getting excited.