Green Plum Cooking School – Sat, Nov 21st
For this class, I chose “chicken under a brick” and celery root potato puree. I thought chicken under a brick was the entire chicken, slightly deboned and cooked under a brick, but Alice’s version uses legs connected to thighs, deboned (but not skinned), salt and pepper and seared, for the most part, on the skin side with the brick on top. I don’t have a brick so I put a heavy pot on the chicken with something else in the pot to weigh it down and tried to do justice to the dish, which is meant to have a very crispy skin. Sarah, my young sous chef, makes a valiant effort at deboning a chicken leg.
I love the smell of celery root. I would like an eau de celery root to wear. We’re following Alice’s directions for the ratio of potato to celery root. Celery root, in the role of puree, needs a little potato to bind. I think we usually do 2 parts celery root to 1 part potato, but I’m wavering. Alice’s ratio looks like 2-1 potato to celery root. Seems like an early Thanksgiving really.
The deboned chickens aren’t particularly pretty-looking, but I’m assuming the end result should be smushed looking. I snip the tendons and trim the fat a little and add a nice amount of salt & pepper. I end up having trouble with my pan. I tried to balance the pan across the two campfire stoves but it’s proving precarious, so I go back to one stovetop, but some of my chicks-under-a-psuedo-brick are sticking and ruining the crispy skin part of the assignment.
