Some years ago I listened to a somewhat breathless radio news story describing the benefits and growing popularity of “slow food”. This was a new term for me, although back when I lived in Montana I had been introduced to something called “slow elk”. That turned out to be a euphemism for the results of a near-sighted, inexperienced, drunk, or overly enthusiastic hunter’s accidental execution of a rancher’s steer.
But I digress…
Slow food was said to be as close to its natural condition as possible, primarily local or regional in origin, carefully and lovingly prepared and served with some grace. The radio story said it was all the rage these days. I found this surprising, since my Italian immigrant mother and her kin raised me on this kind of cooking, and knew no other. I learned to cook from these people, and was hand kneading home made pizza dough when the story came on the radio. For not the first time in my life, I found myself so hopelessly and anachronistically out of it, that I was back in!
Some rather sad realities were discussed in the story. While I know how to clean and butcher wild game and fish, it turns out my generation is about the last one that knows how to dismember a whole chicken. The growing preponderance of fast and prepared food means that the current generation may be one of the last ones to actually have any idea how to cook the damned chicken. People are not just forgetting where their food comes from; they’re forgetting what to do with it. Maybe that will help blunt the obesity epidemic.
My mother married a Scots-Irish farm boy whose people had been here for centuries and had their own culinary traditions very different from those of the Abruzzo. To please Charlie’s palate my Mom found various ways to adapt her ideas of what constituted good cooking to Appalachia. One of her triumphs is the chicken recipe below, which combines the Abruzzese love of oven roasted chicken with one of Appalachia’s best traditions…barbeque! Her grandchildren named it Nanna Chicken.
A couple points are important here. First, use bone-in, skin-on chicken and mix legs and thighs with breast meat. The marrow and skin and leg sections contain fat that will contribute substantial moisture to the breast meat. Don’t like the calories? Go for a long hike or bike ride, and then eat up! Second, this may seem like an awfully long time to cook chicken, and indeed the meat will fall away from the bones when you serve it. Like good pork barbeque, the long roasting time carries the flavor of the sauce deep into the chicken. Serve this with roast potatoes, local vegetables (Brussels sprouts are awfully nice in the fall, asparagus in the spring) a good salad and a bottle of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo (OK, or maybe a beer).
For 8 to 10 pieces of Chicken
A cup and a half of your own favorite home made barbeque sauce (Mine includes ketchup, stone ground mustard, sriracha sauce, Worcester, black pepper, sage, minced onion, cider vinegar, and brown sugar)
A tablespoon or so of olive oil
Preheat the oven to 350
Rinse the chicken parts and pat them dry. Rub the bottom of a covered roasting pan with the olive oil, and arrange the chicken in the pan. Cover liberally with barbeque sauce, and put on the lid. If you don’t have a covered roaster, use a baking dish and cover the meat with tin foil. Bake the chicken for an hour to an hour and a half, turning once. Remove the cover and turn the oven up to 375. The chicken will be swimming in sauce and very wet. Roast the chicken until the sauce is reduced to a thick, slightly browned paste on the roaster bottom and the meat is nicely browned which will take at least another half hour. Timing is much less important than appearance and flavor.
If it takes two and a half hours, that’s what it takes. Have a little more wine and be patient, it’s worth it!
