The Rolls Royce of Chicken

Part two of our weekend of "traditional" eating revolved around chicken.  The Borough Market is full of chicken choices: free-range chickens of all colors and breeds and provenances, organic and non-organic; and of course smaller birds that we have been already sampling.  But it was time to put one of these larger chickens to the test of a simple roast chicken recipe.  We had settled finally on a "Label Anglais" from the Wyndham Farms stall, and as we were trying to decide between one with more breast (yellow label) and with more leg (green label), a fellow shopper who was there to purchase a stewing chicken and a duck, assured us that these were the "Rolls Royce of chicken," all the great chefs including Gordon Ramsay used them in their restaurants. He was very enthusiastic.  How could we resist? So we opted for a 5-pound (with two packets of giblets) yellow label bird (costing 12 pounds and fifty pence. The Rolls Royce is not your everyday car, and the Label Anglais Special Reserve is not your everyday bird!)

Following Simon Hopkinson, we decided on a classic and simple roast chicken, its cavity stuffed with sprigs of thyme and two squeezed lemon halves.  The breast is slathered with butter.

The chicken is then roasted, first at high temperature (425) for 15-20 minutes, and then for another hour at 375. Hopkinson claims the whole process for a 4-pound chicken should take only an hour; Julia Child calculates an hour and twenty minutes.  There are of course many variables, but Julia usually turns out to be more helpful.   Once roasted, the skin nice and brown, the chicken should rest for 15 minutes to allow the juices to relax into the bird and make carving easier.

For the rest of the meal, we cooked some carrots Vichy style with water and butter, but instead of sugar or honey, we sliced up some of our stem ginger and added that plus its syrup to the cooking mix.  An excellent variation on an old favorite.

And in what may be a first for this blog, dessert!  We bought some early season, forced rhubarb from "Turnips," one of the large vegetable stands at Borough Market (known especially for their large variety of mushrooms, but featuring vegetables from all over.)  The yellow leaves, we assume, were the result of the forcing.

We decided to make our usual rhubarb crisp a la Chez Panisse, but with variations based on our larder.  We still had hazel nuts from an earlier dish, so we toasted and chopped a half cup of these.

Meanwhile, we macerated the rhubarb in sugar and flour, and then combined it with more slivered stem ginger.  The topping consisted of butter, dark brown Madagascar sugar (the Brits stock an amazing variety of sugar, even Sainsburys), white sugar, flour, cinnamon, and the chopped hazelnuts.  Bake in the oven until bubbly, and it's done.  The rhubarb did not exactly get as bubbly as usual:  is early forced rhubarb less liquid than our Urbana varieties?  Was there too much flour?  Or was the oven temperature again inaccurate?   The all-important test of taste rendered these questions rhetorical.  But perhaps we should try again later in the season.

Meals out: Sardo, the neighborhood Sardinian restaurant on Friday (and again Monday!), and a "Bombay Cafe," Dishoom, meant to recapture the ubiquitous casual all-day eating spots of 1960s Bombay.  Small plates, quick plates, nice flavors, especially the calamari and vegetable samosas. Right next door to Jamie's Italian, and a good place to go after the theatre, especially if the theatre is 5 minutes away.