Roast Chicken with Bread Salad San Francisco’s Zuni Café serves perfect roast chicken with a chewy-crisp, warm bread salad that has a cultlike following. We pay homage to the dish with a streamlined take. j BY ANNIE PETITO k
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PHOTOGRAPHY: CARL TREMBLAY (TOP), KIM KULISH/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES (BOTTOM)
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wads, and a few downright crispy ones.” ew dishes are as beloved and I wondered if I could streamline things crowd-pleasing as roast chicken. by cooking the bread with the chicken, Perhaps no one knew this betwhich would also allow the bread to directly ter than the late, renowned soak up all the bird’s juices and fat. The test chef Judy Rodgers of Zuni Café in San kitchen has recipes that call for butterflying Francisco. When she put her roast chicken poultry and draping it over stuffing prior to with warm bread salad on the menu in roasting, and I thought a similar technique the late ’80s, it was a real hit. Now, some could work well here. The pieces touching 30 years later, it still is. the skillet would crisp just like Rodgers’s I recently prepared Rodgers’s recipe broiled bread, and the chicken juices would from The Zuni Café Cookbook (2002). The keep the remaining pieces moist. chicken was beautifully executed: the skin Rodgers called for an open-crumbed deeply bronzed, the meat juicy and well loaf such as ciabatta; I wanted something seasoned. And the salad? The bread itself was sturdier to hold up under the chicken, so a lovely mix of crunchy, fried, chewy, and I opted for a denser country-style loaf, moist pieces, all tossed with savory chicken which I cut into 1-inch pieces and placed in drippings. Currants, pine nuts, just-softened the skillet before arranging the butterflied scallions and garlic, salad greens, and a sharp bird on top. When I removed it from the vinaigrette completed the salad. Served with oven, I was pleased: The bread beneath the the chicken, it was a perfect meal. chicken was saturated with savory chicken But the recipe for this rustic dish juices on one side and was deeply golden, is anything but simple. It’s a meticulously crispy, and fried on the other side where detailed four-page essay that calls for preit had been in contact with the pan. The paring the chicken and bread separately only problem was that the pieces around (the latter in two stages), so their cooking the edges of the pan that had not been has to be coordinated, as do the salad’s tucked under the chicken had dried out many components, including vinegar-soaked This salad is saturated with chicken flavor, from the bread pieces that are and burned slightly. Plus, a lot of the bread currants, sautéed aromatics, and toasted cooked under the chicken to the dressing, which also contains drippings. had stuck to the pan. nuts. This could all be tackled easily in a For my next batch, I moistened the bread with professional kitchen, but at home it seemed taxing. The next day, I placed the bird skin side up in a 12-inch skillet (rather than a large roasting pan, so the ¼ cup of chicken broth. I also spritzed the skillet juices could pool without risk of scorching) and slid it, with vegetable oil spray and stirred a little olive oil Roast Chicken Rules Before I did anything else, I wanted to nail the brushed with oil to encourage deep browning, into a into the bread before arranging it in the skillet. I chicken cookery. I butterflied a chicken by snipping 475-degree oven. Because the chicken was butterflied, hoped this would help the edge pieces fry and crisp out the backbone and then pressing down on its I was pretty sure I could roast it at a high temperature without sticking. Finally, I didn’t trim away any of without the breast and thigh meat cooking unevenly. breastbone to help the bird lie flat. Rodgers called for salting her chicken overnight, Sure enough, 45 minutes later I had a mahogany which is a trick we often use as well. The salt draws brown, crispy-skinned, succulent chicken. moisture from the flesh, forming a concentrated brine that is eventually reabsorbed, seasoning the Breaking Bread Zuni Café opened meat and keeping it juicy. I lifted up the skin and On to my favorite part: the bread. What makes its doors in 1979; rubbed kosher salt onto the flesh; I then refrigerated Rodgers’s bread salad unique is its mix of crispy-chewy in 1987, the late the bird for 24 hours. This would give the salt time textures, achieved by removing the crusts from a rustic Judy Rodgers to penetrate the flesh as well as dry the skin so it loaf, cutting the bread into large chunks, coating became the would brown and crisp more readily. the chunks with oil, and broiling them. The bread head chef. On an chunks are then torn into smaller pieces and tossed average day, the with currants, pine nuts, cooked scallions and garlic, restaurant serves Watch: Chicken, Zuni-Style broth, and vinaigrette. Finally, the mixture is baked in about 100 of its A step-by-step video is available a covered dish so that the bread emerges, as Rodgers whole chickens at CooksIllustrated.com/jun18 described it, “steamy-hot, a mixture of soft, moist with warm wads, crispy-on-the-outside-but-moist-in-the-middle bread salad.
