So there I was with an uncooked, whole chicken in one hand and a small bag of leftover pottery clay in the other and I was in dinner mode.
What’s a feller to do… except combine the two for a too, too dinner for two.
THE CLAY
I pounded out some red, terra cotta clay into a slab about 1/2 inch thick and big enough to cover the bottom of a greased 8 x 8 glass baking dish. I then stuck “wings” on all four sides to wrap around the bird after placement. I, of course, reserved some small clay bits for embellishment.
THE BIRD
I pulled out all the oddments stuffed in the cavity, rubbed the whole bird down with butter, dusted the outside with salt, pepper & paprika and stuffed half an onion and a sliced lime inside. I then mixed a little salsa verde juice with some good, 100% agave tequila (I prefer El Jimador Reposado…) and, using my ever so handy-dandy monster syringe, shot it under the skin and into the meaty bits of the breast and leggies… ummmm, good.
Since we were having corn on the cob I husked the ears ahead of time, reserving and blanching the green husks to make them more pliable. Saving back enough husks to re-wrap the corn for slow roasting, I laid a bed of greenery down on the clay, slid in the clucker and covered it with the remaining husks.
After that it was the old slick and easy to fold the clay over the bird, seal the edges, model a quick chicken head and feathery bits, draw on some wings, poke a tiny steam hole in it somewhere and stuff it into a pre-heated 375° oven for 2 ½ hours.
Come dinner time pull it out of the oven and give it a sound whack with a meat tenderizing hammer or some similar blunt object. A word of advice… the clay is dry at this point so put the whole affair in the sink and give it a direct hit and not a glancing blow which will only serve to ricochet teeny bits of clay into every corner and crevice of your stovetop area. Pull off the clay bits, peel back the corn husks and lift out the bird. Don’t be nervous that the bird is still pretty much as white as it was going in… remember, you essentially boiled the bird in it’s own juices with absolutely no exposure to the kind of heat that makes it brown & crispy.
Serve it with fresh steamed baby artichokes, fava beans, mashed with garlic, onions and spices then stuffed into tiny banana peppers, slow baked new potatoes and corn on the cob that has been buttered, salted, peppered and drenched in lime juice before being re-husked and slow roasted with the spuds and peppers and, by golly, you got yerself the kind of meal they show on TV.
JUST DESSERTS
For dessert we had dates and sliced cherimoya.
For those of you who have never tasted cherimoya, it is an unattractive, lumpy, green thing on the outside with a creamy inside scattered with big, black seeds. The texture and taste is like a really good pear with a hint of vanilla and roasted nuts. Mark Twain said it was the greatest fruit of them all and he may very well be right (except for raspberries, of course…)
