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 B Y A N N I E P E T I T O k

Few dishes are as beloved and crowd-pleasing as roast chicken. Perhaps no one knew this better than the late, renowned chef Judy Rodgers of Zuni Café in San Francisco. When she put her roast chicken with warm bread salad on the menu in the late ’80s, it was a real hit. Now, some 30 years later, it still is.

I recently prepared Rodgers’s recipe from The Zuni Café Cookbook (2002). The chicken was beautifully executed: the skin deeply bronzed, the meat juicy and well seasoned. And the salad? The bread itself was a lovely mix of crunchy, fried, chewy, and moist pieces, all tossed with savory chicken drippings. Currants, pine nuts, just-softened scallions and garlic, salad greens, and a sharp vinaigrette completed the salad. Served with the chicken, it was a perfect meal.

But the recipe for this rustic dish is anything but simple. It’s a meticulously detailed four-page essay that calls for preparing the chicken and bread separately (the latter in two stages), so their cooking has to be coordinated, as do the salad’s many components, including vinegar-soaked currants, sautéed aromatics, and toasted nuts. This could all be tackled easily in a professional kitchen, but at home it seemed taxing. Roast Chicken Rules Before I did anything else, I wanted to nail the chicken cookery. I butterflied a chicken by snipping out the backbone and then pressing down on its breastbone to help the bird lie flat.

Rodgers called for salting her chicken overnight, which is a trick we often use as well. The salt draws moisture from the flesh, forming a concentrated brine that is eventually reabsorbed, seasoning the meat and keeping it juicy. I lifted up the skin and rubbed kosher salt onto the flesh; I then refrigerated the bird for 24 hours. This would give the salt time to penetrate the flesh as well as dry the skin so it would brown and crisp more readily.

The next day, I placed the bird skin side up in a 12-inch skillet (rather than a large roasting pan, so the juices could pool without risk of scorching) and slid it, brushed with oil to encourage deep browning, into a 475-degree oven. Because the chicken was butterflied, I was pretty sure I could roast it at a high temperature without the breast and thigh meat cooking unevenly. Sure enough, 45 minutes later I had a mahogany brown, crispy-skinned, succulent chicken. Breaking Bread On to my favorite part: the bread. What makes Rodgers’s bread salad unique is its mix of crispy-chewy textures, achieved by removing the crusts from a rustic loaf, cutting the bread into large chunks, coating the chunks with oil, and broiling them. The bread chunks are then torn into smaller pieces and tossed with currants, pine nuts, cooked scallions and garlic, broth, and vinaigrette. Finally, the mixture is baked in a covered dish so that the bread emerges, as Rodgers described it, “steamy-hot, a mixture of soft, moist wads, crispy-on-the-outside-but-moist-in-the-middle

wads, and a few downright crispy ones.” I wondered if I could streamline things by cooking the bread with the chicken, which would also allow the bread to directly soak up all the bird’s juices and fat. The test kitchen has recipes that call for butterflying poultry and draping it over stuffing prior to roasting, and I thought a similar technique could work well here. The pieces touching the skillet would crisp just like Rodgers’s broiled bread, and the chicken juices would keep the remaining pieces moist. Rodgers called for an open-crumbed loaf such as ciabatta; I wanted something sturdier to hold up under the chicken, so I opted for a denser country-style loaf, which I cut into 1-inch pieces and placed in the skillet before arranging the butterflied bird on top. When I removed it from the oven, I was pleased: The bread beneath the chicken was saturated with savory chicken juices on one side and was deeply golden, crispy, and fried on the other side where it had been in contact with the pan. The only problem was that the pieces around the edges of the pan that had not been This salad is saturated with chicken flavor, from the bread pieces that are tucked under the chicken had dried out cooked under the chicken to the dressing, which also contains drippings. and burned slightly. Plus, a lot of the bread had stuck to the pan. For my next batch, I moistened the bread with ¼ cup of chicken broth. I also spritzed the skillet with vegetable oil spray and stirred a little olive oil into the bread before arranging it in the skillet. I hoped this would help the edge pieces fry and crisp without sticking. Finally, I didn’t trim away any of

Watch: Chicken, Zuni-Style A step-by-step video is available at CooksIllustrated.com/jun18 Zuni Café opened its doors in 1979; in 1987, the late Judy Rodgers became the head chef. On an average day, the restaurant serves about 100 of its whole chickens with warm bread salad.

Making the Most of the Star Ingredient

We think the roast chicken in this recipe is terriic, but the crispy, chewy, ultrasavory bread is our favorite part of the dish. Here’s how we make it so great.

Stack It Up: Roast untrimmed butterlied chicken on top of bread so juices and fat can be absorbed.

Choose a Sturdy Loaf: Use country-style bread, which has heft and can stand up to cooking. Remove bottom crust but leave top crust attached for some chew. Position It Right: Arrange bread with crust side up so tougher parts are beneath moist chicken.

Avoid the Burn: Add oil and broth to bread so it stays moist and crisps nicely without drying, burning, or sticking.

the bird’s excess fat or skin. This way, I would be capturing every last drop of the drippings—arguably the most flavorful element a chicken has to offer. These were good moves: The bread boasted a mix of textures and tasted intensely chicken-y, and nothing burned or dried out. That said, the crusted pieces were still tough.

I started anew, this time removing all the crust so I was left with only the soft inner crumb. This eliminated the tough parts, but now the bread had no structure and collapsed into a single mass.

I prepared another loaf but this time removed only the thick bottom crust. So they would be sure to soften, I arranged the remaining crusted pieces directly under the bird, crust side up. To say it worked well would be an understatement: This bread offered a little of everything: crunchy, fried, chewy, and moist pieces. There wasn’t a tough piece in the mix. It was time to pull the dish together.

Salad Days

As I examined the salad components, I decided to make a couple of adjustments: Instead of sautéing thinly sliced scallions with garlic, I decided to skip the garlic and keep the scallions raw, which I mixed, along with sweet currants, into a sharp dressing of champagne vinegar (Rodgers called for this type, and I liked its bright, balanced flavor) and extra-virgin olive oil. For body and more punch to cut the dish’s richness, I added a spoonful of Dijon mustard. And because the bread would provide plenty of crunch and richness, I left out the pine nuts, too. Finally, I poured the accumulated chicken juices into the dressing before tossing it with the bread and a heap of peppery arugula. Instead of arranging the carved chicken on top of the salad, which caused the greens to wilt, I served it alongside.

My streamlined rendition of the Zuni chicken and bread salad hit all the right notes: salty, savory, sweet, fresh, and bright. I only hope that it will be as memorable and enduring as the original.

ROAST CHICKEN WITH WARM BREAD SALAD

SERVES 4 TO 6

Note that this recipe requires refrigerating the seasoned chicken for 24 hours. This recipe was developed and tested using Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt. If you have Morton Kosher Salt, which is denser than Diamond Crystal, put only ½ teaspoon of salt onto the cavity. Red wine or white wine vinegar may be substituted for champagne vinegar, if desired. For the bread, we prefer a round rustic loaf with a chewy, open crumb and a sturdy outer crust.

1 (4-pound) whole chicken, giblets discarded Kosher salt and pepper 4 (1-inch-thick) slices country-style bread (8 ounces), bottom crust removed, cut into ¾- to 1-inch pieces (5 cups) ¼ cup chicken broth 6 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons champagne vinegar 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard 3 scallions, sliced thin 2 tablespoons dried currants 5 ounces (5 cups) baby arugula

1. Place chicken, breast side down, on cutting board. Using kitchen shears, cut through bones on either side of backbone; discard backbone. Do not trim off any excess fat or skin. Flip chicken over and press on breastbone to flatten. 2. Using your fingers, carefully loosen skin covering breast and legs. Rub ½ teaspoon salt under skin of each breast, ½ teaspoon under skin of each leg, and 1 teaspoon salt onto bird’s cavity. Tuck wings behind back and turn legs so drumsticks face inward toward breasts. Place chicken on wire rack set in rimmed baking sheet or on large plate and refrigerate, uncovered, for 24 hours. 3. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 475 degrees. Spray 12-inch skillet with vegetable oil spray. Toss bread with broth and 2 tablespoons oil until pieces are evenly moistened. Arrange bread in skillet in single layer, with majority of crusted pieces near center, crust side up. 4. Pat chicken dry with paper towels and place, skin side up, on top of bread. Brush 2 teaspoons oil over chicken skin and sprinkle with ¼ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper. Roast chicken until skin is deep golden brown and thickest part of breast registers 160 degrees and thighs register 175 degrees, 45 to 50 minutes, rotating skillet halfway through roasting. 5. While chicken roasts, whisk vinegar, mustard, ¼ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper together in small bowl. Slowly whisk in remaining ¼ cup oil. Stir in scallions and currants and set aside. Place arugula in large bowl. 6. Transfer chicken to carving board and let rest, uncovered, for 15 minutes. Run thin metal spatula under bread to loosen from bottom of skillet. (Bread should be mix of softened, golden-brown, and crunchy pieces.) Carve chicken and whisk any accumulated juices into vinaigrette. Add bread and vinaigrette to arugula and toss to evenly coat. Transfer salad to serving platter and serve with chicken.

Skip the Trimming

Most of our chicken recipes call for trimming away any excess fat and skin. But since those elements produce hugely lavorful drippings, we decided to leave them intact for this recipe. This meant that more savory, chicken-y drippings would be available for the bread to absorb.

L I Q U I D G O L D An untrimmed 4-pound chicken exudes 1/2 cup of drippings.