Zuni Cafe Roast Chicken & Bread Salad

Warning: Spoilers everywhere!
The Hound Eats ALL the Fucking Chickens. 
Season 4, Episode 1: Two Swords

Arya's sass level is out of control here and the Hound is absolutely loving it. What better match for the baddest motherfucker in Westeros than Arya Stark? Together, they are just pure delight. They encounter a band of baddies, Arya crosses a name off her list, gets her Needle back and she rides off on her own pony. The Hound - well, he gets his chicken and for one brief moment, all is right with the world.  This is about as close to a happy ending as we get in Game of Thrones. We should all be lucky enough to get us some chicken, so here we are with this week's recipe for an excellent fucking chicken.

Now, I have some feelings about roast chicken and if I had to pick a roast chicken to die for, this is the one.  I have not been to Zuni Cafe in San Francisco, but everyone - and I mean everyone - on the internets talks about this fucking chicken. I had my doubts, but then my online cooking she-ro Deb Perlman featured this recipe on her blog, Smitten Kitchen. Friends, in my world what she says goes. If you don't know her amazing blog, go to it now because everything she makes is gold. So I did as she said and fell in love with roast chicken all over again, and I think you will too. 

This recipe is slightly more involved than the simple chicken in the oven. This involves salting the whole chicken and leaving it to dry brine in your refrigerator for at least one day. You do have to plan ahead and set some space aside in your fridge, but after the salting it's relatively easy and more than worth the effort for a perfect bird, I promise. Salting tenderizes the meat, and if you've ever cut into a chicken roasted to within an inch of cardboard, you know this matters. It's the difference between 'oooh, roast chicken!' and 'ugh, chicken.'

As this bird is tenderizing in your fridge, it is also drying out the skin. Which brings  to the other significant factor of this recipe - the crispiest of crispy skin.  For this to happen, a very dry skin is necessary and this is what happens over 2 days hanging out with that salt. Pop this salted chicken in a super heated cast iron skillet before the oven and the whole bird gets a crispy beautiful skin - not just one side, the entire bird comes out golden brown. Brilliant, right? You know it's the best part of a roast chicken - and if you were planning to not eat the skin - well, I don't even want to know you, Jed.

The Bread Salad: It's basically bread tossed with the golden roast drippings (yum!) and then tossed into a salad studded with currants (or dried cherries, in my version) with a simple vinaigrette. It's a cross between stuffing and a salad and the perfectly unstuffy stuffingish accompaniment to a beautiful chicken. Altogether it's a perfect meal, and as simple as this sounds, there's nothing quite as satisfying as a good roast chicken dinner with great sides. 

So, who's eating all the fucking chickens? You are. Enjoy.

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Zuni Cafe’s Roasted Chicken
Adapted from cookbook from the Zuni Cafe, San Francisco, via Smitten Kitchen
Serves 2 to 4

• One small chicken, 2 3/4 to 3 1/2-pounds
• 4 tender sprigs fresh thyme, marjoram, rosemary or sage, about 1/2 inch long
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 to 1 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
• A little water

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1.  Season the chicken: [1 to 3 days before serving; give a 3 1/4 to 3 1/2-pound chicken at least 2 days] Remove and discard the lump of fat inside the chicken. Rinse the chicken and pat very dry inside and out. Be thorough — a wet chicken will spend too much time steaming before it begins to turn golden brown. Approaching from the edge of the cavity, slide a finger under the skin of each of the breasts, making 2 little pockets. Now use the tip of your finger to gently loosen a pocket of skin on the outside of the thickest section of each thigh. Using your finger, shove an herb sprig into each of the 4 pockets. Season the chicken liberally all over with salt and pepper. Season the thick sections a little more heavily than the skinny ankles and wings. Sprinkle a little of the salt just inside the cavity, on the backbone, but don’t otherwise worry about seasoning the inside. Twist and tuck the wing tips behind the shoulders. Cover loosely and refrigerate.​
2.  Prepare your oven and pan: [Day of, total time is 45 minutes to 1 hour] Preheat the oven to 475°F. Choose a shallow flameproof roasting pan or dish barely larger than the chicken, or use a 10-inch skillet with an all-metal handle (we used a 12-inch cast iron frying pan for a 3 1/2 pound chicken). Preheat the pan over medium heat. Wipe the chicken dry and set it breast side up in the pan. It should sizzle.
3. Roast the chicken: Place the chicken in the pan in the center of the oven and listen and watch for it to start browning within 20 minutes. If it doesn’t, raise the temperature progressively until it does. The skin should blister, but if the chicken begins to char, or the fat is smoking, reduce temperature by 25 degrees. After about 30 minutes, turn the bird over — drying the bird and preheating the pan should keep the skin from sticking. Roast for another 10 to 20 minutes, depending on size, then flip back over to recrisp the breast skin, another 5 to 10 minutes. 
4. Rest the chicken: Remove the chicken from the oven and turn off the heat. Lift the chicken from the roasting pan and set on a plate. Carefully pour the clear fat from the roasting pan, leaving the lean drippings behind. Add about a tablespoon of water to the hot pan and swirl it. Slash the stretched skin between the thighs and breasts of the chicken, then tilt the bird and plate over the roasting pan to drain the juice into the drippings. You can let it rest while you finish your side dishes (or Bread Salad, below). The meat will become more tender and uniformly succulent as it cools.
5. Serve the chicken: Set a platter in the oven to warm for a minute or two. Tilt the roasting pan and skim the last of the fat. Place over medium-low heat, add any juice that has collected under the chicken, and bring to a simmer. Stir and scrape to soften any hard golden drippings. Taste — the juices will be extremely flavorful. Cut the chicken into pieces, spread on the warm platter (on top of the Bread Salad, if using)
6. Capitalize on leftovers: "Strain and save the drippings you don’t use" says Deb Perlman. She is right of course, drippings are liquid gold and will be tasty on anything you use it in - risotto, soups, etc., but I may have been a bit heavy handed pouring liquid gold on the toasted bread salad and the chicken, and I'm not even sorry.

Zuni Cafe Bread Salad
Adapted from cookbook from the Zuni Cafe, San Francisco, via Smitten Kitchen

“Sort of a scrappy extramural stuffing, it is a warm mix of crispy, tender, and chewy chunks of bread, a little slivered garlic and scallion, a scatter of currants and pine nuts, and a handful of greens, all moistened with vinaigrette and chicken drippings.”

The original recipe calls for tossing the bread with chicken stock and water, but why not use those delicious drippings that just came out of your oven? Slight adjustments have been made.
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• Generous 8 ounces slightly stale open-crumbed, chewy, peasant-style bread (not sourdough)
• 6 to 8 tablespoons mild-tasting olive oil
• 1 1/2 tablespoons Champagne vinegar or white wine vinegar
• Salt and freshly cracked black pepper
• 1 tablespoon dried currants (I used dried cherries and I'm not sorry about that either) plumped in 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar and 1 tablespoon warm water for ten minutes or so
• 2 tablespoons pine nuts
• 2 to 3 garlic cloves, slivered
• 1/4 cup slivered scallions (about 4 scallions), including a little of the green part
• 2 tablespoons chicken drippings from your roast
• A few handfuls of arugula, frisée, or red mustard greens, carefully washed and dried

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1. Preheat the broiler. Carve off all of the bottom and most of the top and side crusts from your bread (you can reserve these to use as croutons for soup or another salad). Tear bread into irregular 2- to 3-inch chunks, wads, bite-sized bits and fat crumbs. You should get about 4 cups.
2. Toss them with just a tablespoon or two of olive oil, lightly coating them, and broil them very briefly, just to lightly color the edges. If you’d like to toast the pine nuts (recommended) you can put them on your broiler tray as well, but watch them very carefully — they cook quickly!
3. Combine about 1/4 cup of the olive oil with the Champagne or white wine vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Toss about 1/4 cup of this tart vinaigrette with the torn bread in a wide salad bowl; the bread will be unevenly dressed. Taste one of the more saturated pieces. If it is bland, add a little salt and pepper and toss again.
4. Heat a spoonful of the olive oil in a small skillet, add the garlic and scallions, and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until softened. Don’t let them color. Scrape into the bread and fold to combine. Drain the plumped currants and fold them in, along with the pine nuts, if they were not already mixed with the bread scraps from the broiling step. Dribble the chicken drippings over the salad and fold again.Taste a few pieces of bread — a fairly saturated one and a dryish one. If it is bland, add salt, pepper, and/or a few drops of vinegar, then toss well.
5. If you’re going to serve the salad under the roast chicken (recipe above), you can pile the bread salad on the serving dish you want to use and tent it with foil. If you want to serve it separately, do the same, but in a 1-quart shallow baking dish. Hang onto the bowl you mixed it in — you’ll use it again. Place the salad in the oven after you flip the chicken the final time, for about 5 to 10 minutes.
6. Tip the bread salad back into the salad bowl. It will be steamy-hot, a mixture of soft, moist wads, crispy-on-the-outside-but-moist-in-the-middle-wads, and a few downright crispy ones. Drizzle and toss with a spoonful of the pan juices. Add the greens, a drizzle of vinaigrette, and fold well. Taste again.