Sinner Sinner, Chicken Dinner

This is a nod to FL Fowler, if such an author exists.  Because Fifty Shades of Chicken had me cracking up one cold winter's day.  And, it led me to read a bit of the original.  I was to never read Fifty Shades of Grey.  No literary merit, I clucked.  Past winter, women in the workplace were spreading it around like it was Luther's Bible in the Holy Roman Empire. 

I'll skip this trilogy I'd tell the ladies.  My fifty cents on fifty things:  I don't need to pour over several hundred pages to know what I know.  It's about Novice and Master;  Cat & Mouse;  Dumb & Dumber.  I get it.  I'm sure it's about some control-freak and all his pervy, sordid ways.  Squalor is okay, it's the unimaginative that brings out my ornery temper.  I ended my diatribe.   

Well, it was a grey February and I paid a visit to my neighborhood bookstore.  And there it was, the parody cookbook.  Fifty Shades of Chicken.  Fifty ways to cleave your lover.  The cover was genius.  A chicken tied up.  I could relate.

Thanksgivings, I make a Contingency Bird.  It is some type of fowl prepared in case the first plan falls through.  The past year was a Cornish hen.  I had nothing to tie the hen with, so I made do with a pair of black, thin shoelaces (never used).  At the end, it looked like a dish for an S & M theme party.  It was weird, it was great.  And I suspect it went to Milano, my neighbor's greyhound.

To laugh at a parody, one must of course, know the original very well.  Aye yey, I will have to read Grey after all.  I stood in the bookstore, opened up both Chicken and Grey and started to compare notes.  It was hilarious.  I was snickering at the self-effacing Chicken and the self-effacing Grey girl.  I looked at the jacket of Grey to see how it was catalogued and it read Erotica.

Erotica?  Noooo.  Fifty Shades of Grey is hardly arousing in that manner.  The publisher must have had a boozy lunch.  It was better filed under Comedy.

Flipping between pages of Chicken and Grey, I was enjoying myself way too much for a bookstore.  I felt a pair of eyes from my 5 o'clock.  It was an older gentleman.  I felt a bit of unease one has when spotted in the Adult section of a video store.   (Gosh, kids today who stream Netflix for Dora or Diego will never know that feeling).

Accustomed to looking peculiar, I flashed a smile at 5 O' Clock, "My mother told me never to truss an old bird."  Good riddance.

The recipe names in Chicken alone are funny.  But they are really good recipes.  Suffice it to say, chicken dinners have now moved on from wholesome Americana to exotic Erotica.

I remember having lunch at a diner in Burbank years ago with a cousin.  She came to the States in her teens and quickly became an expert illustrator for children's animation features.  Spielberg had approached her to see if she would work for his then newly formed animation company.

She was regaling me with how she chose between Disney and this new thing called Dreamworks based on flow conditions of freeway traffic.  Life can be very simple for citizens of Los Angeles.

The waitress came to take our orders.  As English was very much her second language, my cousin ordered "Finger Chicken".  The waitress, in her impertinence, hissed, "It's Chicken Fingers!"

"Whatever it's called, just bring it over."  I had to smile, because it was so her to never suffer fools. That, and chicken fingers - when you think about it - makes less sense as chickens have no fingers.

As a tribute to EL Fowler and all former ESL students who are forever changing our dynamic vernacular, I give you  # 51.

FINGERED CHICKEN 

"Turn off your Samsung Galaxy, Chef.  The only things digital I care for are fingerlings and nothing else will do. "

"Why Miss Hen, aren't we demanding."

 

You will need:

1 three pound chicken

2 teaspoons of Himalayan salt

1 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons of soft organic butter, unsalted

3 teaspoons of grated garlic 

2 tablespoons of olive oil
5 fingerling potatoes

2 tablespoons of fresh rosemary, thyme, and parsley, snipped into tiny bits

1 long piece of twine

Instructions:

1.  Cut up the fingerling potatoes into cubes.

2.  Rub olive oil over the fingerlings cubes.

3.  Sauté in a pan and add olive oil along the way to prevent burning.

4.  When the potatoes are still a bit hard to the bite, turn off range.

5.  Cover potato cubes with butter, salt, and some of the herbs.

6.  Rub the chicken, cavity and all, with the butter.

7.  Rub the chicken, cavity and all, with salt, pepper, and rest of the snipped herbs.

8.  Pack the herbed fingerlings into the cavity - as much as possible.

9.  Truss tightly and refrigerate overnight.

10.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  Place a rack in roasting pan and rest chicken on top.

11.  Roast 30 minutes on each side.  Drizzle olive oil throughout roast as needed.

12.  Continue to roast up to an additional 30 minutes until the chicken is fully cooked.

Here comes summer.  Baste yourself with SPF 30 and don't forget to turn over   ~e