Winner Winner Chicken Dinner Part 2: Lou's Roast Chicken Dinner

So K had a craving for a roast chicken dinner the other day and it was a Sunday so I acquiesced.  Who am I kidding here, there was no protest at all and I fully went into top gear to get one of my favorite meals together.

Roast chicken is a universal comfort food and ubiquitous in many family's kitchens.  But too many times, without proper love and care, the chicken turns out overcooked, dry and just unpleasant.  I've honed my roast chicken recipes for a few years now and have a pretty good version to call my own. It starts with grain fed, all natural, hormone free chicken.  I always brine my chicken the night before to ensure it stays moist through the roasting process and helps penetrate additional flavors deep into the meat.  I will let the chicken air dry in the refrigerator for a couple of hours to help dry out the skin and ensure a nice crisp.  Next be sure to truss your bird. It keeps everything tight while roasting and ensures a nice even cooking bird.  I baste it with butter to add flavor and help with browning/crisping the skin.  Lastly, I coat the chicken with my own spice rub to add another layer of flavor to that lovely skin.  I know many people are trying to eat healthy and would do all that they can to avoid the fatty skin blah blah blah. I get it, but the skin is what makes roast chicken, thus the extra care to make it special.  Lastly, the secret sauce is the pan gravy.  This is the essence of the chicken flowing down into your roast pan, sizzling and browning with little bits of the rub and chicken caramelizing. It would be a travesty to have all that go to waste.

For this chicken dinner, I serve a variety of sides with it, but for this Sunday's dinner, we had roasted root vegetables.

This recipe takes some time and TLC.  You can skip the brine and the air drying but why go with my recipe if you don't follow the key steps?  Make this on the weekend and ensure you have time to go through the process. I promise it's fantastic.

Lou's Roasted Chicken with Pan Gravy

1 grain fed, free range, hormone free chicken (about 3-4 lbs)
Lou's roast chicken spice rub (recipe below)
5 liter chicken brine (recipe below)
2 sprigs rosemary
2 sprigs of thyme
1 lemon cut in half
2 cups of chicken stock
2 tablespoons of flour
1/2 cup of melted butter

Put chicken in brine and let it brine overnight (at least 8 hours)
Remove the chicken from the brine, pat dry and put the chicken in the refrigerator with no covering and let it air dry for at least 2 hours
Preheat oven to 450 degrees
Take chicken out of the fridge and let it sit for 20 minutes to get the chill out of it before roasting
Stuff the cavity of the chicken with the thyme, rosemary, and lemon
Truss the bird (here's a how to if you need help)
Baste the entire bird with butter
Rub the spice rub all through the bird
Put the chicken on a wire rack in a roasting pan that's stove top safe - breast side up
Put the chicken in the oven, roast at 450 degrees for 20 minutes
Lower the heat to 350 and roast for another 1:10 to 1:30 minutes, depending on size of the bird, basting the chicken with pan juices every 20 minutes
Chicken is done when juices run clear and hits an internal temperature of 165 degrees - careful not to overcook the chicken
Take the chicken out of the oven and keep it warm.

To make the pan gravy, remove wire rack, put the roasting pan on your stove top and turn it to medium high heat.
Discard some of the fat leaving about 3 tablespoons.
Add flour to the hot pan and stir it in with the fat, scraping up the brown bits.
Let this cook to a nut brown color but careful not to let it burn.
Add your chicken stock and whisk it till you get a smooth gravy, add more stock if necessary to get the right consistency.
Season with salt and pepper as needed.

Lou's Roast Chicken Rub
1 sprig of thyme de-stemmed and finely chopped
1 sprig of rosemary finely chopped
1 teaspoon of fennel seeds
1 teaspoon of coriander seeds
1 teaspoon of black peppercorns
1 teaspoon of celery seeds
1 tablespoon of salt

Put all the ingredients into a pestle and mortar and grind it down to a fine rub herb rub.  You can save any extra in air tight container for a week or two and use it for other meats.

Chicken Brine

5 liters of water
1 1/2 cups of kosher salt
1/2 cup of brown sugar
2 sprigs of thyme
2 sprigs of rosemary
1 lemon
6 cloves of garlic, smashed flat with a knife
1 tablespoon of black peppercorns
2-3 bay leaves

Bring 1 liter of water up to a boil.
Add the rest of the ingredients and take the pot off the heat
Stir till sugar and salt is fully dissolved
Add 4 liters of ice cold water to the mixture
Ensure the brine is cool before you put the bird in for brining

Roasted Root Vegetables
1 parsnip
1 yukon gold potato
1 carrot
1 onion
1 sweet potato
1 head of garlic, peeled and cloves left whole
1 sprig of thyme de-stemmed
olive oil
salt and pepper

Chop all the vegetables into even 1 inch cubes, except for garlic left whole
Toss vegetables in olive oil with salt and pepper
Preheat roasting pan in 350 degree oven for 10 minutes to get pan nice and hot (this helps with caramelizing the veggies)
Add the veggies into pan and roast for 35-40 minutes

Runny Gravy and the "Best Wings in the City"

I had the rare pleasure (actually not so rare) of going out for a nice lunch with K and baby A yesterday.  It was great because it gave us an opportunity to cross one off our 'list'.  You see, we have a list of food establishments we would like to visit before we move back to the suburbs in the summer.  After living downtown for 2 years, we finally caved and bought a house in Vaughan so Baby A will have more room for her forays around the home.  (Sorry for the tangential direction I took this post, back to the food...)  Anyways, I love cooking and cook a lot at home so we tend to dine out less.  That being said, we probably eat out or order in once a week for convenience's sake.  Now that we have a 9 month old bundle of energy in our laps, we tend to order in more than we eat out.  We have our favorites like Enoteca Sociale, Pizza Libretto, Pho Tien Thanh, Golden Turtle and now the newly found Khao San Road for dinners and School, Mildred's and Le Select for brunch.  The problem with having favorites is that you continue to gravitate to them because they are your favorites.  And since there are only so many times you can go out - not to mention limited dollars to spend - you end up missing out on many other great establishments.

We've had our fair share of visits to some of Toronto's top restaurants but there's a list of spots that are not necessary fine dining or fancy, but infamous for one reason or the other, that K and I want to try before we move ourselves out of the downtown core. I won't go through the entire list here, but I'll give you some examples.  The Real Jerk at Queen and Broadview is legendary for serving really good Jamaican food for the last 28 years.  They are closing down within the month because the building has been bought and they have been given notice to move. I can't let myself live knowing I didn't taste some down right dirty (in a good way) jerk pork from a Toronto institution, so that made the list.  Then there's The Wheatsheaf, serving Toronto since 1849 and self-proclaimed oldest pub in Toronto and home of the "Best Wings in the City".  What? "Best Wings in the City"?  Just up the street from me, the spot I drive by almost everyday?  The best wings?  Sorry for the double take but anything deep fried gets my mouth watering but wings are on a whole different level.  I LOVE WINGS!  Is that clear?  I LOVE WINGS!  And naturally, The Wheatsheaf is (was) on the list.  It comes as no surprise to you then that I was thoroughly ecstatic when K suggested we visit this fine establishment for an easy Friday lunch.

I'm not a restaurant critic and I'm not going to turn this into a review.  But here's my two cents.  I go to a bar/pub expecting to eat bar/pub food. I have a taste for refined cooking but also like to indulge in greasy everyday grub, bar foods no exception.  After all, there's a time and place for everything. So when I go to a bar/pub, I have slightly different expectations than if I went to Lucien or One.  So with that said, I will have to say I was both underwhelmed and disappointed. 

The food in general was not that bad.  We had calamari dinner with Greek salad (do the Greeks call it Greek salad and what makes a salad Greek? If lettuce comes from California, tomatoes come from Ontario and feta comes from a tub, can it really be Greek?  I digress), lentil soup, fries with gravy and an order of the "Best Wings in the City".  Calamari was good, perfectly cooked, well seasoned, lightly breaded and had a nice light crunch.  The 'greek salad' had a bit too much dressing for my liking but was passable.  The lentil soup came cold but otherwise tasted like lentil soup you would expect from a bar.  Now the wings.  The wings came piping out. They were large roaster sized wings.  They were fried perfectly, without batter and had a very nice crisp to them.  The were moist and juicy and I have to admit, as wings, they were fantastic.  But every wing needs a sauce and I'm sorry...for all the good the wing did, the sauce was utter failure.  I ordered medium since K doesn't share my fondness for hot and spicy.  The spice level for the sauce was right for medium but it was very sweet and ketchupy.  Now I spent my early adolescent years in Thorold and St. Catherines which is a stones' throw away from Buffalo.  Cross-border wing runs was an integral part of my early food experiences.  So to get this sweet ketchupy sauce for what would have otherwise been a really good win was a complete disappointment.  I'm a purist, give me that butter vinegar hot sauce that has made buffalo wings so famous. Different strokes for different folks and I guess I'm just a Duff's kinda guy.  But that was not the worst of their transgressions.  Fries and gravy is a Canadian thing. Its really hard to screw up fries and gravy.  I mean, can you imagine the Brits screwing up fish and chips?  Or the french screwing up croissants?  I know I'm in a watering hole so I will forgive the fact that the fries were frozen.  But the gravy that came with my fries was runny like soup stock.  If I dip my fry into gravy and the gravy slides off of the fry, guess what?  The gravy needs some thickening.  It needs to stick to the fries.  Gravy should not share the same consistency as water or au jus.  We all know that fries and gravy is not the healthiest thing to eat, so we don't eat it that often.  Which is why when we eat it, we expect it to satisfy a long enduring craving.  But this was the disappointment of the week.

I know it may seem petty to whine about wing sauce and gravy but mastering basics turns ordinary into extraordinary.  Look, I'm sure the Wheatsheaf is a fine establishment.  The service was friendly and quick.  But 'Best Wings in the City' is a little ambitious and the overall experience was a little underwhelming.  Ah well, just because we have a list, doesn't guarantee everyone on the list will be good.