“The French say the hardest thing to cook is a perfect roast chicken,” the Hermit observed. By the way he said it, Claire sensed she had measured up.
I wrote these words in my 2012 novel, Island Apart. While that book is a love story, not a cookbook, it does suggest the primal importance of a well-roasted chicken in human gustatory happiness.
It also reveals a myth perpetuated by the French chefs I trained with in Paris—that a great roast chicken is a difficult dish to make. That myth has something to do with the contradictory attributes of a perfect roast chicken: skin so crisp it crackles when you bite it, yet meat so moist it squirts when you cut into it. Read More…
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