Ingredients

2 mangos

1/4-1/2 red onion, minced

1 tbsp olive oil

Minced cliantro and jalapeno as desired

Salt, Lime Juice to taste

Cut the mangos into cubes using your favorite method. I prefer to orbit the outside of the pit with a knife, then drag the biggest spoon I have along the pit to separate it out from the flesh. (I know, I know: pictures are coming as soon as I eat some more mangos). Score the mango, still in the skin, with a butter knife, then scoop out the cubes with the spoon. Presto!

Stir everything together. Feel good about how fast it was. Ponder if it's a salsa or a chutney; ask deep, ethical questions about mango salsa -- after all, there are no tomatoes in it. It's a mad world.

a) Soak it in an alkali, like lye or lime (the stone, not the fruit). This breaks down the germ of the corn, creating hominy, which is vastly more digestible, and therefore more nutritious.

B) Pair corn with beans. Neither corn nor beans is all that healthful on their own, but put them together and you have the components from which your body can assemble a very good complete protein.

 And thus, I suggest you eat this marvelously economical salad. Cheap, fast as hell, nutritious as can be: a trifecta of delights! No special equipment is needed, and you can -- truly -- mix in damn near anything.

Base:

1 can pre-cooked black beans

3/4 can sweet corn

Olive oil, salt, and lime juice to taste

....that's it. Done. Now, for delicious, I reccomend you add some of, really, any of the following:

Red onion (1/4-1/2ish, chopped in small pieces)

Cilantro, minced

Crushed garlic (2 cloves for very garlicky)

Chopped mango

Jicama, peeled and diced (about 1/2 of a small-ish bulb)

Apple

Peppers, in almost any format (roasted and peeled, chopped and sauteed, raw and crispy)

Minced jalapeno.

Stir in whatever else you like and eat it! So simple! Spoon it onto chopped cabbage or greens to lighten things up a bit. I find the above makes enough salad for four good portions.

Okay, look: there will be a lovely essay here about how great starch is, someday. At least, there should be. That said: I'm sick, and woozy, and having a hard time waxing verbose about, well, anything. Give a guy a break, no?

I love this pie. It's fast, it's easy, it's freaking delicious. One of these suckers is 6 very solid portions; feed your friends! It's also a great place to seasonalia -- almost any root or tuber will work beautifully in this dish. I make mine tall and hearty; you can scale down if need be.

Choice of Root Veggies

I usually make my pies with at least four different root vegetables, selected from the following list: Carrot or Parsnip, but not both; Rutabaga; Turnip (not my very favorite, but OK); Potato; Beet; Jerusalem Artichoke/Sunchoke; celeriac.

A note about beets: while I love all beets, do remember that purple beets = purple pie. I prefer golden beets for this reason.

A note about potatoes: go with a waxy potato, like a Yukon gold or a German butterball. You want something with a little staying power -- this is a dish about Chunks of Roasty Goodness, and a starchy potato (like a russet) wont give you that. Purple potatoes make for a pretty pie, and wont stain the whole works like a purple beet.

Equipment

A Pie Pan of Some Incarnation: I make my root veggie pie in a spring form pan to allow for a Brian Jaques-esque depth of pie. You might prefer a round cake pan or a standard pie pan. Either way, really.

Ingredients

1 Batch of Pie Crust

4-6ish pounds root veggies

Garlic

Olive Oil

Salt

Pepper

Optional:

Herbs/Spices (I enjoy thyme, sage, rosemary, basil, oregano, and fennel. What I use in a given pie is entirely a product of mood and whim.)

1 large batch of Mushroom Gravy (Highly recommended)

Process

Your veggies will never get anywhere if you don't pre-roast them, so let's get on that. Set your oven on kill (about 425), then assess your veggies. You'll want them all reduced to a pile of roughly-evenly-sized chunks; I leave peeling up to you. (I peel beets, but never potatoes or sunchokes, which keep most of their nutrients in the skin of the root.) As you chop, put everything together in a large mixing bowl. To be honest, I play pretty fast and loose with the volume of my spring form pan; if you're worried, put your chopped veggies into the pan you're going to use and stop when it gets full.

When the chopping is complete, pour a tablespoon or two of olive oil over the pieces, along with a hit of salt, black pepper, and any herbs desired. Toss thoroughly: add more oil if necessary to get every piece lightly covered. Pour all of this into a relatively shallow roasting dish, cover with foil, and toss it in the oven.

Tossed with oil and herbs, ready to roast.

Now would be a great time to make pie crust, don't you think? No need to pre-bake; just have the dough ready to go.

Fill it like this! Click for big!Check your root veggies after 45 minutes; you're looking for mostly-cooked-ness -- not perfectly done, but almost. When that point has been reached, roll out your pie crust. If you're like me, and cooking this in a nice, deep spring form pan, you'll want to separate out about a third of the dough to form the top crust from. Roll the dough out until you have enough surface area to cover the inside of the pan, with extra hanging over. Remember, a spring form is a cylinder; you'll need to coax the dough down into the right-angle where the base meets the side of the pan. This accomplished, dump in the veggies. At this point, I always sprinkle chucks of raw garlic over the whole works -- it'll be roasty and awesome by the time the baking is done. Add the top piece of dough and try, as best you can, to work the edges together to seal the pie. Cut a few steam vents in the middle of the pie; maybe shape them like the Greek letter Pi, in honor of this favorite ratio.

Put the pie in the oven. My huge pies take a half hour or more to bake fully. Maybe go make mushroom gravy (highly recommended). For a snack, take your leftover pie crust, roll it out flat, cover it with butter and brown sugar and cinnamon and ground clove, and bake it in a little pan in the oven with the pie; in 15ish minutes you'll have a lovely treat. Om nom nom. Click for big!

It should look a little bit like this. Click for big!When the top crust is golden, remove the pie from the oven, open the spring form, cut slices, top it with mushroom gravy, and eat it!

Oh man. That's a good pi. Erh, pie. Enjoy!

This recipe has its roots in the Joy of Cooking. It purports to make two 9-inch shells or one 9 inch covered pie, or two 10.5 inch tart shells. I agree with this assertion.

Equipment

A rolling pin

Optional, but highly recommended: a pastry blender

Ingredients

2.5 Cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

1 teaspoon white sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 sticks butter, as cold as freaking possible without being frozen

Ice water (have a tall glass on hand, drink what you don't use)

Method

Whisk together flour, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. If making a savory pie, consider omitting sugar; if using salted butter, salt can be cut in half. Now, consider the following:

Your job here is to cut butter into the flour, a process that banks on a little handy chemistry. Flour contains a protein, gluten, that likes to form long, robust chains; this permits bread, among other marvels. But the ideal pastry crust is flaky and light. So, cold fat (butter or shortening or lard) is worked into the flour. Chunks of flour are separated from one another by a wall of impassable deliciousne-- erh, shortening. Flakiness is achieved. Everyone rejoices.

However: this doesn't work if A) the butter gets too warm and melts, or B) the works gets too wet. Your hands emit heat, making them awkward implements for crust-making. There are baking ninjas who use their bare hands in combination with an ancient Tibetan hand-freezing technique to make pastry crust; certain masters of kung fu are known to make pie crust using nothing but their overwhelming chi. I use a pastry blender; I highly recommend them. Lacking that, use two forks.

Let me say this again: the butter needs to be cold. You'll never get anywhere with frozen butter, but leave it in the fridge until the last possible moment.

To cut in the butter: take it out of the fridge and, touching it as little as possible, cut it into tablespoon-ish-sized pieces. As you cut each piece, toss it into the flour. When all the butter is in the flour, begin working your pastry blender or forks, smashing the butter briskly against the bottom of the bowl. I have very good luck holding a fork in each hand, pinching butter and flour between the two. Go until you have a great deal of flour that looks like corn meal, plus a number of hunks of unblended butter.

Get your glass of ice water and, using a spoon to dip it, start sprinkling water over the dough. Stir with a wooden spoon. Add water until the dough will just hold together. Yes, it's going to be uneven; mixing like this it's impossible to really get the water spread around thoroughly. It's OK: you should be able to glom most of the dough together in the middle of the bowl into a semi-solid-but-fragile mass, with a surprising amount of unincorporated flour. I usually use around a quarter cup of water, but there's no hard-and-fast rule.

Now, the trick: laminating. Lamination takes those big hunks of flour and works them into flat, thin layers all through the dough, making a spectacularly flaky crust. This is how we do it:

Flour a work surface, form your dough into as much of a mass as you can, and turn it out. Sprinkle flour over the dough; flour your rolling pin. Roll the dough out to a thickness of about a half-inch. As you work, scoop the unincorporated bits and pieces up and put them in the middle of the dough, rolling them into the work. When the dough hits the half-inch-thick mark, make sure all the remaining loose bits are piled in the middle of the dough, fold it into thirds, then in half, and put it in the fridge. Leave it there for at least a half hour; covered in plastic wrap, it'll keep for a day.

When it's forming a pie crust time, remove it the instant before you need it. Flour your work surface and pin, dust the dough with flour, and roll it out to a half-inch again. Fold into thirds, then in half: now you're ready to roll to the thickness and shape you actually need.

For a very wet pie, consider pre-baking: roll the dough, line the baking vessel, poke the bottom and sides full of wholes, and apply a thorough layer of aluminum foil to the whole works. Seriously: make sure the foil is in contact with the bottom and sides of the crust, because your next step is to fill the whole shell with raw beans. This is called weighting the pie; yes, you can buy re-usable, purpose-specific pie weights. We're simulating a filled pie; without all the weight, the crust would poof up tremendously, then collapse into a sad heap of flakes -- which would be sad, so don't do it. Bake at 400 degrees for 20ish minutes, until the whole works is a light golden color. Hooray! Pie crust! 

Now go fill it with something!

My stock drawer. Beautiful, no? (Also, ice cream churn. They're friends!)

Ah, here's something useful: chicken stock. Any of you who've been reading lately have probably noticed the "chicken are abundant sources of economic deliciousness!" kick I've been on. This is the latest -- and probably final -- entry in that series.

Home-made stock really is a marvelous thing to have in your kitchen. You'll be surprised just how much richer it is. There are fine brands of store-bought product out there; Pacific Foods, f'r instance, makes a totally fine range of stocks. If you must, for whatever reason, use store-bought stuff, I highly reccomend Better the Boullion. The principle problem with store-bought stock is, after all, concentration of flavor. Working from BtB, you can mix your stock as strong as you feel like you need it. But again: this is all store-bought stock. Your stock will be better; done really well, yours might be the best you ever have.

To be honest, I dont really grok why this is. Would it be so bad for a company to sacrifice a little efficiency and a little quantaty in favor of quality? Perhaps the economics just don't shake out unless you're a dude in a kitchen with a pile of chicken, beef, or veal you want to convert into a liquid. Whatever the case: I've yet to have a storebought stock that was better than the crummiest home-made stock. The best home-done stuff is perfectly unbelievable.

You'll need:

Equipment

Either 2 large stock pots, or 1 large stock pot and 1 large bowl

A collander

Cheesecloth or a chinois

Ingredients

Chicken

Mirepoix

Clove

Garlic

Bay

Parsely (optional)

Apple cider or white wine vinegar (optional)

Salt

Your main ingredients here are chicken and mirepoix, for which you'll want a 2-1 ratio chicken-mirepoix by weight. Generally, unless you're making stock specifically for one-and-only-one four-person batch of soup, you'll want to make stock in largeish batches.

On the question of water-to-poultry ratios, I follow Bernard Clayton -- as much a guru of soup as the world has ever seen -- who advises 4 quarts of water per three pounds of chicken. And yes, you can definitely do a quart of water and 3/4 pound of chicken.

Before you get going, you'll want to make your sachet d'epis -- a cheesecloth baggie of spices. To be honest... I often just chuck my spices straight in the stock, assuming they wont be too hard to strain out again later. One way or the other: your sachet should contain/amount to your garlic, clove, and bay. Parsely is highly optional -- as I dont like it much, I usually leave it out. For a batch of stock containing 6 lbs of chicken and 8 quarts of water, I usually use three whole cloves, three well-bruised cloves of garlic, and three crushed bay leaves. Remember, though: you're building a background flavor here. Stock becomes the body of a food; you can always add more flavor later.

Oh, and a bit of potential apocrypha: my mother always told me to add 2-3 tablespoons of vinegar to a stock early on in the process, the idea being that it leaches nutrients from the bones of the bird, making the stock healtheir. Do I know if this works? No. But I like the way my stock turns out, so I don't sweat it much.

Method

Finally, something refreshingly easy!

1. Put your chicken in a pot big enough to fit everything in. (Remember, you'll be adding a few things as you go -- think ahead.) If using raw chicken, give it a good rinse in cold water first.

2. Pour the water over the chicken. Put the pot on the stove. Turn on the heat. Add vinegar, if you're using any.

3. Let the stock-to-be come to a boil, then cut it back to a simmer. Let this go for an hour.

4. After your hour is up, add the mirepoix. Make sure you get back to a simmer, then give it an hour and a half.

5. Add your sachet d'epis (or just add things directly to the pot). Simmer for a final half-hour.

Holy crap, it's stock!

The Hard Part

So you've made a pot of stock! Great. I told you making it was easy, didn't I? The tricky part is filtering and packing it. Alright, maybe not hard; maybe just kinda irritating. I'm going to talk you through my aproach, but remember that this is just to give you an understanding of all the things that need to happen. Just how they happen is up to you.

First off: your stock is full of bones, fat, and heat, and we've got to get rid of all of those things. Chicken stock spoils more easily than other stocks you could make -- it's a very good idea to cool it as qickly as you can. During the winter, I usually just put a lid on the pot and put it on my balcony until the next morning. During the summer, empty your ice trays into a sinkfull of cold water and plunk the pot right in. If you've the fridge space, put the stock in there once it get's down to room tempterature (puttng a 200-degree pot of stock in your fridge is like filling out a written request for all your other food to spoil -- don't do it). Let it get very, very cold.

Ahem, right then. Look, I've got to do something to make this fun, no? Mirepoix is about as straight forwards as you can get. Observe:

1. Cut a number of carrots into smallish cubes (brunoise cut, dontcha know).

2. Cut an equal amount of cellary into small pieces (say, quarter the ribs lengthwise, then 1-cm pieces).

3. Cut up as much onion as you have celery and carrots combined. Dice it, but don't go crazy.

....you're done. That's mirepoix. 1-1-2 (by weight) carrot-celery-onion. I've seen recipes call for the addition of ham to the mirepoix, and others that seem to assume your mirepoix will already have ham in it. I make mine as above, and deal with the meat on a case-by-case basis.

By now you're curious what it's for, surely? Most of the time it's sauteed in butter and used as a soup base, or added directly to the liquid when making stock. It can be frozen and kept ready-to-go, but it's easy enough to make that I usually just whip it up as needed. If a clear soup or stock is desired, consider using parsnips instead of carrots.

Well that was riveting! Onwards, to delicious!

You will need to have made mashed potatoes recently. Beyond that, no special ingredients are needed.

In a cast iron skillet over medium heat melt a tablespoon of butter -- maybe a bit more for good measure. While it melts, scoop up a handful of mashed potatoes -- as much as fit comfortably in your hand. Work them into a patty about 1/2-3/4 of an inch in thickness. When your butter is molten and your pan is nice and hot, set the patty into the pan. I usually make two at a time, so I make sure to off-center the first one -- you can't really scoot these around the pan to adjust them. If making a second patty, do so and put it on in.

Now wait. This takes time. Really, almost as long as you can stand. Like, 10-15 minutes. Seriously. And leave them things be! They don't take kindly to scooting, shifting, shaking-the-pan-to-see-if-they're-loose, or lifting one edge to see if it's working. Just wait.

When the time is up, use a spatula to flip the little beauties. Be assertive, but don't whip them around -- there's nothing much structural to mashed potatoes. You should be looking at a beautiful, golden-brown disc of crisped potato. This should help you wait the second 10-15 minute stretch while the other side cooks. Note: if you feel like it, you can drizzle a little melted butter on top of each cake pre-flip to make sure there's enough of the stuff around. It's up to you; I usually don't, as I usually make these when I'm not in the mood to fuss with my food.

Time's up again. Pull 'em out of the pan, put 'em on a plate, and put it in the oven on its lowest setting -- your partner probably wants some, too, so you should make more. When enough have been produced, eat them slowly, and think about how great things fried in butter are. Drink a porter to clear the palate. Go running the next day.

Life's not so bad, eh?

The basic chasis of gravy is a roux -- one of the traditional French sauces. Getting chummy with roux opens up a number of options. It just. Keeps. Getting. Better. Read on!

The Roux

A roux is flour fried in fat, diluted with a liquid; the exact fat and liquid can vary broadly. (The flour is less optional -- use unbleached all-purpose, always.) After the flour has been thoroughly cooked in oil (and the oil thoroughly taken up by the flour), liquid can be mixed in to create a thickened sauce with neither lumps nor a layer of free-floating oil. A roux tastes like what its made from; using fresh butter and milk yeilds a bland, white sauce perfect for creamed tuna, or as a base for mac'n'cheese. Conversely, making a roux from bacon grease or the drippings from roasted meat, thinned with stock or more pan drippings, makes a rich, full-bodied sauce, ideal for slathering on... well, nearly anything. (Caution: test on a hidden corner of carpet to check for discoloration, texture, and mouthfeel.)

Your basic technique goes like this:

1. Assess your fat. You can use nearly any fat you feel like: fresh butter, bacon grease saved from breakfast, schmaltz from a chicken. (I feel like the idea of olive oil gravy is inherently gross, but if any of you out there in Internet Land try it, let me know.) I've made canola-oil based gravy for vegans. There are very, very few instances where your fat is already in a good pan for gravy making, but it can happen -- when I pan-fry chicken, for instance, I usually just pour out a little oil, then make gravy with what's left. This brings up two points:

• The chunky/crispy bits of stuff that are the byproducts of a lof of cooking are highly desirable in gravy. If you've just roasted a bird, scrape every little thing you possibly can out of the roasting pan. That said, the ideal time to add them to the gravy is with the liquid, not the fat. If you're using a pan you've just, say, seared a couple steaks in, I recommend deglazing the pan before starting the gravy. Put the pan on worryingly high heat, give it a second to juuuuuust start smoking, then pour in a half-cup-or-so of white wine or stock -- even plain water will do, if its all you have. Whisk furiously while this burbles for five or six seconds, then kill the heat and scrape everything into a bowl. That stuff is pure flavor. Trust me. (You can apply this same technique to the pan you roasted your chicken in If And Only If your roasting pan is safe to put on the stove top. If so, use a rubber spatula to try and clear out as much oil as you can before heating and deglazing.)
• Make sure you're not using a foolishly large amount of oil.  Notice: if I've been frying something and am going to use the leftover fat right away, I often pour a bunch of it off. I do all my measuring using the How Much Looks Right system, but at the thickness of gravy I make I usually need about a tablespoon of fat per hearty serving of gravy.

If you're using the various liquids that have exited your bird/roast during cooking, you'll have a combination of fat and other stuff to sort though. There is a tool for this: the fat separator. If you've any intention of making gravy a member of your household, go out and get a fat separator -- it'll look like a measuring cup with a spout hooked to it at the bottom of the cylinder, not the top. With this, you can let the various fluids rest for a minute, then pour what fat you need into the pan (it'll settle to the bottom of the cup -- perfect!). That accomplished, the remaining stuff can either be saved or poured out, leaving the liquid available for use later on in The Process.

Your fat, being thoroughly assessed, should now be in a pan over medium heat. Now is the time to add flavorings of any kind desired; a favorite of mine is caramelizing onions in slightly-too-much-butter, then removing the onion before the next step. (This also works very well with mushrooms.)

2. Cook in your flour. I usually go with 2-3ish tablespoons of flour per tablespoon of fat. In this stage, you want your roux to look unnervingly like plaster -- I add flour a bit at a time, whisking furiously, until the whole deal sticks inside the basket of the whisk. Remark the image below; this is perfect. Also note one of my favorite implements: the pan whisk, conveniently shaped to, well, whisk things in pans. Whisking really is key, here; nobody likes lumpy gravy, and having fat evenly distributed through the concoction is part of what helps you achieve that.

Once the flour and fat are incorporated, knock them back out of the whisk and let them cook for a bit. I don't let this go for very long; too much cooking at this stage seems to encourage a gummy gravy. I usually forget to have any liquid on hand; letting the roux cook for as long as it takes me to go get my liquid of choice seems to work very well.

3. Time for Liquid. For gravy, I usually use all the pan drippings I have on hand, plus a combination of stock and milk. For creamed tuna and the like, milk only. For mac'n'cheese sauce base, white wine and milk augmented with a touch of heavy cream. One way or the other, the "right amount" of liquid has to do only with the desired thickness of your product. I usually start at about a cup of liquid per serving of gravy -- "start" being the operative word; I usually go north from there, at least a little ways, because I like a slightly thinner sauce.

Much noise has been made in the past concerning adding only pipping-hot liquids to your gravy, lest you encourage lumpiness. I have never once worried; I have only once made lumpy gravy. Most of my liquids are, at the very warmest, room temperature -- and often my milk is straight out of the fridge. I believe the secret to smooth gravy is adding liquid slowly and stirring like a drugged maniac. Seriously. Make sure all liquid is abso-freaking-lutely fully incorporated before adding any more, and add no more than about a quarter cup at a time, at first. At first, you'll be frantically trying to beat liquid into globby, spackle-y lumps of roux; this is messy and annoying, but will, eventually, work. The liquid will vanish. Very little will change. Persevere! Keep adding, keep whisking. At a certain, magical point the whole thing will relax; no longer will the roux exist only as a tangled mass caked in your whisk. This is the point at which slightly more liquid can go in at a time -- the more liquid you add, the more liquid you can add, savvy? I go until about here:

You're done whenever you want to be, whenever your gravy is at the stage you want it to be at. I make a lot of vegetable-based gravies -- sauteed mushroom or caramelized onion or such. Now is the time to stir those lovely additives in. Check for seasoning; your gravy probably needs both salt and pepper.

4. Eat it like you know you want to. This stuff is good. In fact, it's much too good. I often make a little less gravy than I think I need, just to inhibit my own intake, slightly.

A favorite trick of mine:

I love Better than Boullion. It is amazing stuff. If you don't have the storage space to keep stock on hand, this stuff is the answer. Best of all: for gravy making endeavors, you can thin the roux with water, then stir BtB into the gravy-to-be directly until full flavor is achieved. For the win!

Some basic combinations and applications:

1. Meat gravy. By now, this should not be mysterious. Use fat from an animal and flour; thin with mostly stock, but some milk (to improve mouthfeel, dontcha know).

2. Vegetarian gravy. Either: caramelize onions in too much butter, remove onions, make roux, add onions back in (thin with milk and veggie broth), or sautee mushrooms and use a pretty analagous process. (For vegan gravy, use canola oil.)

3. Mac'n'cheese base: for fat, cook minced onion and garlic in butter. Add flour, cook, and thin with milk and white wine. Add an embarrassing amount of shredded cheese (sharp cheddar, parm, fontina, mozzarella, in whatever combination suits you). Cook until everything is molten; stir in Dijon mustard. I'd aim for 2 cups of roux base per pound of macaroni, with 8-12oz of cheese melted into the roux. Apply to a baking dish full of cooked noodles, top with bread crumbs, bake (~425), eat! (For a vastly more precise recipe, check out the Gourmet cookbook, edited by Ruth Reichl. This is just a basic blueprint, y'know?)

4. Creamed Tuna: Okay, I love this stuff when I'm sick. 2 tablespoons butter, 1/4 cup flour (I believe...), thin it with milk (and maybe a touch of cream). Cook in a can of tuna (I prefer chunk for this, honestly -- but in water, not oil) and some peas. Serve on toast. As mild a supper as ever existed. Also works with chicken.

Enjoy, eh? This is a good trick. Let me know your variants!

So:

Special equipment: you'll need something to roast your chicken in. I have an antique (I think from the '50s) apparatus known as a "poultry roasting rack" -- a sort of adjustable V-shaped rack that accommodates up to a small turkey, but must be placed in larger pan to catch drippings in. I've never seen the like in cooking stores, but I've also never looked. In my experience, birds of all kinds roast best when not laying directly on flat/non-draining surface (like a cookie sheet or jelly-roll pan). A suitable roasting vessel can be improvised with a cooling rack and any sort of pan that can hold a little liquid (to catch run-off fat and juices).

You'll also want a meat thermometer. Ideally, you'll want a digital probe thermometer; if you don't own one, oh-em-gee go buy one now -- 15 bucks you'll never miss. Every hole you poke in your chicken drains deliciousness from it; every time you open the oven, heat flees, making your bird roast unevenly. Your goal: to be able to poke only one hole and know how done your bird is without opening the oven! A probe thermometer does this: the business end is on the end of a long cable, with a handy digital readout that usually doubles as a timer. The probe goes in the bird, the read-out sits on the counter. For the win!

Ingredients:

1 roasting chicken

Salt

Optional, but highly recommended:

2-3 tablespoons of butter

1/2 yellow onion

1 stalk celery

A few stalks each fresh rosemary, sage, and thyme (available in grocery stores as "poultry herbs" in convenient little tubs)

3 cloves garlic

1 whole clove

3 bay leaves

Cooking twine

Even more optional:

Dried sage and/or thyme

Fluid of choice (more melted butter, white wine, whiskey, cider, or otherwise)

 Mmmm, chicken!

A half-hour before you get going, pull your chicken from the fridge and let it start its hike to room temperature -- we'll be taking that sucker to about 170 degrees (Fahrenheit, eh?), so give it a head start. You can leave the bird in whatever wrap its packaged in -- its enough to have it on the counter. At the same time, set your oven to 300. Go have a beer, or some darjeeling.

When finished having tea, consider your approach. Strictly speaking, roasting a chicken requires little more than flopping the sucker in a pan, putting it in the oven, and waiting. If this is your idea of a good time, just, well... flop it in your cooking vessel, skim the rest of the article for notes on trussing, the thermometer, and crisping, and pray to God it turns out OK. (This would not be my version of chicken, but I'm told it works.)

If you're like me, on the other hand, you'll want to start by soaking the little dear in butter -- which requires the butter to be melted, so hop-to. (A microvave works well for this; if you, as I, lack a microwave, use a ramekin in the oven -- which is already hot!) To my butter I add a tablespoon-or-so of salt and a twist of black pepper, at minimum. Most any flavoring agents can be used: garlic, spices, or the ever-popular option of herbs. For herbed chicken, herbed butter is needed (gasp!)  -- throw some dried what-have-you (sage, thyme, and/or rosemary are traditional, but you can use what you like) into the butter and give it a minute or two to reconstitute. This is a whim-based decision, informed by future intents. If you're intending the leftovers for, say, enchiladas, I wouldn't use any herbs.

 The two layers you need to separate. Click for big!

Now it gets exciting. Let your butter rest for a minute and get comfortable touching your chicken (with clean hands -- you don't want chicken on your stuff, and you don't want stuff on your chicken, dig?). Your goal here is to -- deep breath! -- get your hand in between the skin and the breast of the chicken without breaking the skin. Pick an end of the chicken -- neck or bum -- and look closely. You'll see a flap of skin (remnants of cleaning the carcass of your dinner-to-be). Gently pull it taught; the meat of the breast will be visible, as will a layer of fat. I accomplish this by applying my right index finger firmly to where the fat meets the skin; I then move my finger back and forth until the seam yields. Loosen the skin on the breast as far down the side of the chicken as you can. Down the center of the breasts, along the bird's sternum, the skin is too firmly attached -- don't try to go across; rather, loosen the skin at the bottom and top of each breast separately.  Given the size of my hands (large), I can't make it more than half-way across the breast without stretching the skin too far and ripping it -- if you can, go for it!  You should be able to peer into the space between the skin and the breast, like this.

Congratulate yourself: that was the hard part you just conquered! Now: the You should be able to kinda peer under the skin of your chicken, like this. Click for big!messy bit. You'll want to coerce butter into the space between the skin and the breast. I do this by propping the chicken up on one end, holding the skin open with one hand, and either pouring or spooning butter in with the other hand. I know some who manage the buttering maneuver by putting butter directly in their hand, then putting their hand in the bird. Either way: your goal is to spread butter about, all over the breast inside the skin.

A curious fact: if you butter the exterior of the bird, it never seems to crisp as well. (In my relatively extensive experience.) If anyone can give me a satisfactory explanation for this, I'll share the oysters with you the next time I roast a chicken myself.

Anywho: you've a well buttered chicken resting in front of you. A well buttered, hollow chicken. My personal favorite things to jam into a chicken are listed above, but to recap: 1 stick celery, half an onion (or, rather, two quarters of an onion -- fits easier in two pieces), fresh sage/rosemary/thyme, 1 clove, 3 cloves garlic (peeled and bruised), and two to three crushed bay leaves. Whatever you stuff it with, I recommend an application of salt and pepper to the inside of the bird first. Once everything is in place, pour in an eighth-cup-or-so of your favorite flavored liquid - yes, you can use water if you must, but I like white wine or cider.

Wings Akimbo! Well, kind-of. Click for big!

You're almost ready to roast the little devil -- but first, trussing is in order. You'll want food-appropriate tying material; a variety of different sorts are available, but as long as it contains no A) plastic, or B) dye, it's probably good. Yes, there is, as is so often the case these days, a re-useable silicone trussing whatsit. I use undyed hemp twine (yes, the kind for macramé). Whatever the implement: tie the ends of the drumsticks together. Now take the wings and tuck the tips behind the... erh, upper-arm-equivalent. Look: if you could take your right hand and, reaching over your own right shoulder, place your palm on your right shoulder-blade, you'd achieve the position you want to now induce in your chicken. Make it so.

You shoud now have: a chicken, slathered in butter and full of Tasty Things, and a well pre-heated oven. One last step before roasting: apply the probe! Here's the skinny: if the probe isnt in the meat (i.e., if it protrudes into the cavity), you wont get an accurate reading; if the probe rests against the bone, you wont get an accurate reading; and if you're too far away from the bone, you wont get an accurate reading. Your mission is to insert the probe into the thickest part of the thigh, parallel with (but not touching, heaven forfend) the bone. Courage!

This is what we're looking for. Chicken, full of stuff, in pan, with properly inserted probe thermometer.

Now: put the bird in the pan, put the pan (with bird!) in the oven, and -- making sure the cord for the probe exits the oven -- shut the door. You're now roasting a chicken! Plug the probe into the read out; if you're an alarms kind of person, set the temperature alert for 170 degrees. Note: the safe temperature of poultry is generally considered to be 160 degrees. I like to overshoot by 10-15 degrees to help balance out the relative ease of taking the wrong temperature.

I usually plan an hour-and-a-half for my chicken to achieve optimal done-ness. At about 150 degrees I often boost the oven temperature to 400-or-so, to encourage the skin to crisp. At 160, remove the chicken from the oven and let it rest on the counter; do not remove the probe! As with steak, chicken should rest for 5ish minutes before carving. During this period, the meat fibers relax and re-absorb juices that have been forced out by heating -- carve too soon and the bird will be dry.

(This is where you would expect to find a picture of a roasted chicken. I don't have one, because by the time it is out of the oven i just can't help myself and I eat it! So sorry.)

I am not going to tell you how to carve your chicken. No, I'm just not. Excellent directions -- including great diagrams -- are available in many cookbooks. Fanny Farmer. The Joy of Cooking. Many others. Read them. Carve your bird. Eat it. Sing happily to yourself about how great a cook you are -- that bird should be damn tasty. Save all the drippings. My cutting board has a juice groove, which I regularly empty into the same jar I scrape the pan drippings in to. (Yes, this is yet another layer of economy -- the drippings can be used to make The Tastiest Gravy, or the fat [schmaltz in kosher cooking (yes, this is a quadruple parenthetical, thanks!)] can be used to fry or flavor just about anything you might use butter or bacon grease for.)

Contemplate the flexability of these techniques as you eat your supper and plan your next bird-roasting. This is, really, the tip of the roasted chicken iceberg. For the next level of study, I highly recommend the kids over at The Paupered Chef -- they've painstakingly documented no fewer than seven different approaches to the conundra of bird-roasting. I view many of these techniques as mix-and-match; you could just as easily put herbed butter under the skin as lime, garlic, cumin, and crushed red pepper. (Note to self: do that.) If I get around to trying it soon, I might blog about how to spatchcock a chicken.

Cook it, eat it, and tell me about it. Go!

Choice of creature: I really prefer pig in this -- ideally of a cured variety. This is a heavy soup, so American bacon/prosciutto/pancetta aren't top of my list. I like either ham or Canadian bacon. Good eating, to be sure!

Potatoes: my go-to spud is the Yukon gold, which has yet to let me down. I love this soup in part because it can be made from fresh potatoes or mashed potatoes, or any combination of the two. Between you and me, I think mashers make a better soup, so I make a small batch of this to use up the tag end of large batches of mashed 'taters.

I consider a batch to contain:

2.5ish pounds of potato matter.

1/4-1/2 pound creature

2 large or 3 medium (or, yes, 4 small) leeks

Garlic (but this depends -- if you're using mashed potatoes, and they're anything like my mashed potatoes, you wont need much if any garlic. With fresh potatoes, I'd use 4 cloves. With mashers, I usually throw in one just for good measure.)

Chicken stock -- have a quart on hand, but you wont use all of it. I really like Better than Bouillon for this purpose.

1 cup-ish Cheap white wine

1/2 pint heavy cream

Cheese (amount depends on mashers, as with so many other things)

3 tablespoons of your Fat of Choice (butter, olive oil, bacon grease -- more below)

To make:

Split the leeks lengthwise, then chop them into even slices of a size you'd like to eat (I like 1/8" strips). I eat the green part of leeks; I'm told this is not what you're supposed to do, but I like 'em. Peel and mince whatever garlic you're using. Cut your meat into bite-size pieces. (My bite comfortably engulfs a 1/4" cube of pork.) If you're using fresh potatoes, this'd be the time to chop them into small pieces.

Heat your chosen fat in a a pot (I do most soups this size in a nice, heavy-bottomed 2 quart) on a medium-high level of warmth. I like bacon grease in this soup; butter has a lot to recommend it. If you must, olive oil will work -- but I don't feel like it adds much to the dish. To the pot, add the alliums (leeks and garlic) and meat. You're looking for a cheerful sautee; adjust the heat as needed to achieve this. Stir frequently. Have your white wine on hand.

You're watching for the Maillard Effect, the marvelous browning that occurs when you expose protein and sugar to heat. I brown things just a bit, raise the heat to Kill, hit the whole thing with white wine, and -- in the ensuing steam, confusion, and reduction -- choose your own adventure:

If fresh potatoes are in the game: add them to the pot now! Add enough liquid to cover the potatoes, however much of them you have. I really can't take cooking with water; it brings so little to the table! I use mostly chicken stock with some white wine -- but I also tend to use fairly few potatoes. Use as little liquid as you think you can get away with. Bring this to a boil, then simmer until the potatoes start coming apart. Add cheese as your heart desires -- cheddar, the Italian cheeses, or gouda being my suggestions. Turn off the heat, add cream, and break out the immersion blender (the only way to get a really creamy texture from this soup). Salt and pepper to taste. Serve. Smile.

If only mashed potatoes are being used: make sure you've got stock on hand, then add the taters to the pot just after the white wine. As soon as the mashed potatoes show signs of heating up and mixing in (they'll be leaden and obdurate at first, but will come around fairly quickly), start thinning with stock. Add stock and stir until you achieve a consistency you like. Add cream if it suits you (depends on how much was in the mashers). Add any cheese you feel the soup needs. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve. Know happiness!

If both: add your raw potato to the pot just after the white wine. Add enough liquid to cover -- mostly chicken stock, but white wine is good, too. Bring to a boil, then simmer until the potatos start coming apart. Add the mashed potatoes, raise the heat, and stir until you're back to bubbling. Add liquid as needed to achieve the desired consistency -- you can use stock, milk, or cream. Add cheese, as desired. Unless you're desperate for a smooth consistency, just accept that this soup is wonderfully chunky and get eating!

I recommend eating this with porter and sourdough. Holy crap: delicious!