My mother would call home from work when I was 11. She had forgotten to take supper out of the freezer, and she needed me to cook.
I was 11; I hadn’t learned anything about food except that it was often put on the plate following some application of heat.
The family was on a tight budget, and economies were everything. Supper was a split chicken breast: inexpensive, nutritious and pretty simple.
But not bullet-proof. My mother traded temperature for time, and told me to put the frozen breasts in the oven at 425 degrees.
It’s never a good idea to trade temperature for time. The result was a tough, stringy piece of meat that was so dry one wanted to dust the plate. No amount of barbecue sauce, ketchup or any other flavor could rescue it.
To this day, chicken remains just a way to deliver another flavor.
Nearly 50 years later, I’m staring into the bottom of the freezer. The spouse and I buy 10 whole chickens a year from a nearby farm, part of our desire to support our neighbors (tastier, too.) But with just the two of us in the house for most of the year now, a whole chicken is an awful lot of eating.
And what flavors to give it? We’ve done brines, marinades and glazes. We’ve done gravies and sauces. We’ve coated them in a spiced breadcrumb, a collection of Indonesian spices. We’ve oven-fried, skillet fried, poached and grilled. Everything.
Well, nearly everything.
I rummaged through my collection of cookbooks and found something that looked tasty, with a bit of modification. It’s a simple herb sauce.
The result was tasty, worth putting in the lunch bag for a week.
And it was so simple, I could have done it when I was 11.
HERB-SAUCED CHICKEN
1 chicken, cut up
3 Tbs. butter
1 Tbs. minced garlic
2 tsp. oregano
½ tsp. sage
½ tsp. thyme
1 tsp. tarragon
1 cup white wine
1/3 cup grated Parmesan or Romano
2 tsp. smoked paprika
Melt the butter over medium heat. Add garlic and cook 20 to 30 seconds to infuse the butter with flavor. Stir in all the spices and herbs except the paprika.
Add the wine, and boil about 5 minutes, until the sauce has reduced by about a third.
Arrange chicken pieces in a 13-by-9 baking pan. Brush on the sauce, sprinkle on the cheese and paprika. Bake in a 350-degree oven for about 45 minutes until tender.
Play with it: Swap out the herbs, perhaps using rosemary instead of oregano. Add some marjoram, maybe. Or use cumin and coriander instead of sage and thyme. A splash of balsamic may bring a nice acidic touch to the sauce, but make sure it balances with the wine.
