Brick Chicken

It’s been a busy few weeks with trips to Sydney and a weekend on the Hawkesbury.  We have farewelled friends from Orange and work for both of us has been a busy.  This week we are both in Sydney for work  then hope to see a quiet weekend.  Maybe time to book a couple of short holidays we have planned.  Later this month we will also be in Brisbane, great timimg to catch up with Joe and Meg who have arrived for their three year stint there.  It will be nice to have a few more family members close by.

The garden continues to provide us with fresh produce.  What looks to be the last of the tomatoes where enjoyed after slowly cooking them in a pan with a little olive oil, lots of finely sliced garlic and some thyme.  Just as they where ready I splashed some verjuice in the pan and they where perfect with a simply grilled piece of Atlantic Trout.  Delicious and couldn’t have been more simple.

On a fun note we decided to try a recipe I had found in an American cook book ‘Brick Chicken’. 

I took a chicken, cut in half through the breast and back bone then removed the back bone , rib cage and thigh bones.  After seasoning really well with salt and pepper I placed the chicken, skin down in a very hot pan with a little oil.  On top of the chicken I placed another pan and in this I stacked all the tins I could find in my pantry.  The recipe had called for a couple of bricks but they weren’t available at the time.  Made for an amusing sight as you can see below. 

After about 10 minutes of cooking at a moderate heat we removed most of the tins and decided instead to use a couple of weights from the gym  (not getting much use in there anyway) and continued cooking for another 8 minutes.  I then removed the weights and the  top pan and turned the very flat, gold brown chicken over.  At this point remove any excess fat from the pan and add a ½ cup of stock and a good squeeze of half a lemon and cook for a further 3 minutes or until cooked.  The end result was a crispy skinned, really moist and tasty chicken, served with some simply cooked spinach, tossed in a pan with a drizzle of olive oil and a taste of white wine vinegar – it was a great, fun method to quickly cook a very tasty chicken.  

Enjoy

Love Mary

PS The full recipe for Brick Chicken can be found in 'The New Brooklyn Cookbook' by Melissa Vaughan & Brendan Vaughan or visit Marlow and Sons in Brooklyn New York apparently its been on the menu there for years.