Easy
4
Published 2019
I love to spatchcock a chicken—that is, to remove the backbone of the chicken so that you can flatten it out. I use a chef’s knife, or you can use kitchen shears to cut through the ribs on both sides of the backbone. It’s then seasoned with herbs, roasted with garlic, shallots, lemon, and wine, basted with the resulting juices during cooking, and served with the shallots and garlic. If you don’t have herbes de Provence, make your own by combining 1½ teaspoons each of dried thyme, dried oregano, dried rosemary, and dried marjoram or savory.
Remove the backbone of the chicken and press down on the bird to flatten it. Salt the chicken aggressively and put it, skin side up, in a shallow baking dish or, if it will fit, a large oven-safe skillet. Coat the skin side with the herbes de Provence. Scatter the shallots, garlic, and lemon around the chicken, add the wine, and
Remove the bird from the pan and let it rest on a cutting board for 15 minutes before carving. Serve the cut-up chicken with the pan juices, shallots, and garlic. (Usually the lemon gives plenty of flavor to the sauce, but if you taste it and it could use more lemon, squeeze more lemon into the sauce.)
© 2019 All rights reserved. Published by Abrams Books.