Mulberry Jam

Enough with the boneless skinless chicken breasts! What if you could have a golden brown roasted chicken ready in about an hour and fifteen minutes? And remember, once you get the bird into the oven, most of that time can be spent relaxing with a glass of wine while you wait for a savory dinner.

This is an aside, but I think it’s relevant. I know the skinless breasts are popular largely because they cook quickly, but I think it’s also related to the lack of respect we give to chicken these days. I’ve always thought of chicken as budget food, but that certainly hasn’t always been the case. In a history of the 1930’s that I read recently, the prices of common food and dry goods items during the depression were listed. At that time, chicken cost as much as beef, pound for pound, and a chicken dinner was something special. That fact kind of lends a new light to those old campaign promises of "a chicken in every pot," doesn’t it?

My husband claims that he could happily eat roast chicken once a week. Jacques Pepin, my kitchen idol, says that his family served roast chicken every Sunday. Although I’m not ready to have it quite that often, it is something I make at least once or twice a month. It’s so simple and so good that I hope more people will consider revisiting a simple roasted chicken.

Part of the secret is cooking a smaller bird. Many chickens labelled "oven stuffers" can be five or six pounds, which takes a long time to cook. When you roast a small bird, it doesn’t take long and the breast stays juicy, so I always look for a bird of three-and-a-half to four pounds. I cook the bird more quickly at a higher temperature which helps make sure the outside turns golden brown while the meat stays moist. The method below is adapted from one of my favorite cookbooks, "Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home."

1 fresh 3 ½ pound chicken
salt and pepper
handful of fresh sage leaves or ½ t. dried thyme
1 lemon cut into ¼-inch slices
2 T. unsalted butter
kitchen string

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. In a heavy roasting pan, cover the bottom with parchment paper to keep the bird from sticking.

Wash the chicken inside and out and pat dry with paper towels. Sprinkle salt and pepper in the cavity, and stuff with the lemon slices and herbs. Cut off the final joint of the wings and truss the bird tightly with kitchen string. Smear softened butter over the entire bird and sprinkle with more salt and pepper.

This is the part that’s different from what most people do: Lay the bird on its side in direct contact with the parchment for the first portion of the cooking. If well-trussed, it will probably be able to sit up that way on its own, but if it tends to fall over I brace the chicken with a slice of potato. This way the darker meat of the thigh and leg receives more direct heat and browns beautifully.

Bake the bird on its side for about 25 minutes (four or five minutes longer for a 4-pound bird). Then pull the pan out of the oven and turn the bird gently onto the other side, trying not to break the skin. Lower the heat to 400 degrees (Important!) and put the chicken back in for another 25 minutes. When that period is over, take the pan out and turn the bird breast side up. Brush with the juices that have collected at the bottom of the pan and return it to the oven for a final fifteen to twenty minutes. At the end of that time, the bird will be golden brown. Test for doneness by pricking the thickest part of the thigh. Juices should run clear, with no trace of pink, and the bones should move easily.

Let the chicken rest for ten minutes before carving into quarters. This serves four or makes two meals for two.

I thought we’d never get any snow this winter. Not that I’ve missed the shoveling and the slush, but since I grew up in upstate New York, it just doesn’t seem like winter to me without a little of the white stuff. This storm was a Camelot-style storm, too. Whereas in Camelot it only rains after sundown, we got our storm early Sunday morning, so most of the city could just sit inside cozy houses and enjoy it while sipping coffee, rather than having to get out there and slip and slide into work. Thirteen inches of sticky snow was plenty to turn my whole neighborhood into a wonderland. What fun!

When I lived within the District of Columbia in my late twenties, lots of my fellow city dwellers were very dismissive about the idea of living in the suburbs. The general attitude was, why would anyone pass up the excitement and stimulation of living in the heart of the city in order to go out to a territory of manicured sameness and homogeneity? And for a few years I bought into this idea too. I treasured my easy access to ethnic restaurants and quirky shops. I was enormously pleased to hear the mishmash of foreign languages on the streets around me. I congratulated myself for living in such a culturally advanced setting.

But it’s a good rule to never say never. Just a few years later I found myself in love with a man who had just bought a nice house in northern Virginia. We quickly decided we couldn’t do without each other and I moved my household lock stock and barrel into his place eight miles outside of DC.

I expected that this would mean a sharp reduction in my exposure to other cultures. But I’d been reckoning without the turn-of-the-century model of a suburb. I quickly found that my neighbors were now a far more diverse lot than before. Whereas my neighborhood in Washington had been almost exclusively comprised of white professionals, now I live in a neighborhood where immigrant families outnumber the American-born. My immediate next-door neighbors are from the Philippines, from Jordan, from Guatemala and from the Caribbean. I’ve had lots of occasions to use my rusty Spanish when communicating with the folks with whom I now share a property line.

I haven’t suffered any decline in nearby ethnic restaurants and shops, either. Within walking distance from my house are four Asian grocery stores, two Latin American groceries, and one Indian grocery. There is a Bolivian bakery, a German gourmet food shop, a Vietnamese place specializing in pho (beef broth and noodle soup) and a Korean restaurant. The local pizza and sub shop is run by an Iranian family and the Italian restaurant has a staff of Eastern Europeans. If I get into my car, I am within five minutes of the Eden Center, a huge shopping plaza catering to the local Vietnamese population with restaurants, jewelry stores and video shops, travel agencies and more.

The Bolivian bakery at the end of my street is a great example of the stew of influences I’m surround by on a daily basis. The shop makes terrific croissants and doughnuts, but also sells Bolivian favorites I’d never encountered before. Pastel con api is a popular combination—a light flaky pastry filled with cheese and a thick warming drink made from blue corn and sweet spices. There is also a sit-down Bolivian restaurant nearby and I’m trying to learn my way through a menu that is filled with dishes I’ve never tasted before, like sopa de trigo, a hearty soup thickened with whole grains of wheat.

Don’t think I’m living is some unusual enclave either. In this area, my neighborhood is typical, nothing special. So just a suggestion to my city-dwelling friends still harboring anti-suburban mindsets: Why don’t you come out and visit a little more? You might find that the whole idea of city versus suburbs is more than a bit passé.

Thanks to our continued warm winter weather, I took a walk the other day along a public path that runs through my town of Falls Church. The path is a converted railroad bed, used by bicyclists, pedestrians and roller-bladers. I enjoy the walk partly because it gives a glimpse into the private lives of the town. Since it was an old railway, it passes at the back edge of properties both residential and commercial as it heads westwards out of town. The glimpse of the private is what makes me go back to the walk again and again. There seems to be so much more scope for the imagination there, as opposed to the carefully controlled facades that the same properties present to the street.

One place along the path where I always stop is at the rear of an auto body shop. While a mismatched assortment of cars and tires are always arranged in this small parking area, I have never seen any humans or signs of human work. This space, perhaps fifteen or twenty feet wide, is the domain of a pride of feral cats. The dust-colored lithe cats spend late afternoons sunning in the west-facing yard. I don’t know whether their coloring comes from being covered in dust or whether that’s the natural color of their fur. It’s become my own private “Where’s Waldo” game to see how many of them I can spot. Since they are all varying shades of gray, they blend in well with the faded asphalt and sun-bleached paints of the cars. I can make guesses as to their relative status levels by their positions—some lie quietly in the shade of the cars, others sprawl on top of hoods. On the afternoon of my last visit, one green-eyed cat held court over the entire area by perching regally on top of a stack of tires. As it sat poised with a fluffy tail curled around its feet, it gazed straight at me from a position significantly higher than that of any other cat in the yard. I felt a bit like a commoner being noticed by a queen.

I know it’s only February, but signs of approaching spring are coming early this year. The photo is from my garden. The snowdrops planted beneath my mulberry tree are coming out into the sunshine already. As I sit here at my desk, I hear a song sparrow singing softly in the bush outside. He’s working through a fairly simple song at low volume, almost sotto voce. He sounds exactly like a singer warming up before going on stage. I think he’s warming up his spring song for when the warmer weather and breeding season truly arrive. I miss the birds’ songs so much in winter, I’m always delighted when I start to hear them call again. It’s not that the birds went anywhere– they’ve been there all along, only silent, waiting for warmer days to call their singing back.

I know I’ll still suffer at least a few more cold snaps. Some of our worst cold spells often come in March, when my resistance is low. But still, on a day like today, I can sit here and imagine that Spring is waiting outside my window, and if I lift my head I might see green leaves and flowers.

Last night we had vegetable soup and cornbread for dinner, one of my favorite cold-weather combinations. You’ll notice from the photo that this is yet another dish that’s best baked in my beloved cast-iron pan (see my blog entry about the pan from earlier in January). I’ve tried literally dozens of cornbread recipes because I love it so much. This is the standby, the one I always come back to. I’ve adapted it from a recipe in Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread, one of my favorite cookbooks. Written by the unforgettably named Crescent Dragonwagon (a true hippie from wayback), my book is starting to come apart at the seams from too much love.

Buttermilk Cornbread

1 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 T. baking powder
½ t. salt
¼ t. baking soda
1 ¼ cups buttermilk
1 large egg
2 T. sugar
¼ cup canola oil (or other mild vegetable oil)
2 T. butter

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, combine cornmeal, flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda. In another bowl, whisk together egg, oil, sugar and buttermilk. Spray a 10-inch skillet with nonstick spray and heat over med-high heat on top of the stove. Melt the two tablespoons of butter in the pan until it starts to sizzle, then quickly combine wet and dry ingredients and scrape all batter into the skillet and transfer to the oven. Bake for about 25 minutes, until golden brown. I like mine slathered with butter and honey.