The Schmaltz Waltz

Some workdays end with dinner still a mystery. I might see a recipe in my inbox that whets my appetite. I might cave and call in pizza delivery on the way home. Other evenings, there’s a dance I know by heart.

Spatchcock the chicken.

 Well, have I bought the chicken yet? If no, then I head straight for Calandro’s, down the road from my office in Mid City Baton Rouge. I can make this trip in minutes and maybe even without the costly and caloric additions of ice cream, rice, fruit snacks, and several of the scrumptious, regionally made Anna’s Pies stacked at the register—they’re from Lake Charles, which is something I always have to say, being prideful and being from Lake Charles—but only if I go before picking up my toddler. I circle back to grab the dear from daycare and race home to the sultry sounds of Elmo throttling the Beatles, their mop-tops swishing in distress. If we catch mostly green lights and fewer than half of the other drivers are texting while they steer, the toddler won’t have time to notice us blaze past the library or the humid park or to remember the tall towers and bubble tanks of the Knock Knock Children’s Museum. It’s over a mile away but looms large over the Garden District’s lush live oaks and in her imagination. Sometimes we can squeeze in an hour there in the evenings. Not on a roast chicken night.

Picture a mid-century magazine ad, the somehow-trim-waisted mother (does she eat alone, earlier in the kitchen?) presenting the emblazoned bird to her tow-headed brood. Roast chicken is the plump, cheerful mascot of the home cook—excepting vegetarians, vegans, and all others with more dietary discipline than I have. Variations abound in how you can cook it. I’ve rubbed the chicken with herb butter some nights and marinated it with ginger, garlic, yogurt, and dried mango on others. I’ve tied it up with kitchen twine. (“I trussed the chicken,” I told my husband. “But you guys just met,” he cracked.)

. . . still I roasted chickens. I could do it with the newborn in a sling and the three-year-old calling out song requests to the Google Home. I could do it, practically, with my eyes closed.

 In the early years of my cooking, I never did the same recipe twice. Creative stagnation would surely follow, then some time later, death. Now a decade in, I’ve learned to refine. Successive successes may not surprise anyone, but they nestle somewhere above my often-rumbling stomach in a place I suspect is my heart.

 At last, we’re home. I wrestle the backbone from the beast with my kitchen shears, stopping to wash my hands upwards of forty times, and lay and splay it skin-side-up on the rimmed baking sheet. This is called spatchcocking. The chicken cooks evenly, beautifully. After too many birds that were raw within and burnt without, I realized salmonella is not a seafood pasta dish but a regular possibility in my terrifying kitchen. No more—now I spatchcock.

Preheat the oven to 450 F. Meanwhile season the chicken. The chicken needs thirty minutes out of the refrigerator and an hour in the oven. 

That’s time I had in spades during the long, long spring, when my office became adjacent to my kitchen. I didn’t stress about Baton Rouge traffic snarling my route home. I did worry that my daughter would bring up the Knock Knock, or the library, or all the other bright places doing their best to become digital as the world got sick and small.

I’ll let you in on a secret: the cook’s allowed to eat more of that crispy skin than anyone else. Just pretend to be checking the chicken’s temperature and ignore all questions about why you keep licking your fingers.

 Months into this mess, you’re sure to have seen several articles about how quarantine unfolded in the kitchen. As my friend and Country Roads contributor Chris Turner-Neal put it, “Yes, Joyce, we ALL cooked while thinking about oblivion.” I’d rather cook to reach oblivion, blissful productivity free from health stats and medical-grade masks.

 Many steps of my chicken dance remained the same on lockdown. Cluck, shuffle, flap flap, cluck. With quickly blushing wads of paper towel, I dab and blot the chicken skin till its puckered, matte, and dry. Then I rain down salt. Robbed of its moisture, the skin will crisp in the oven.

Toss potatoes in olive oil and arrange cut-side-down around the chicken.

I’ll let you in on a secret: the cook’s allowed to eat more of that crispy skin than anyone else. Just pretend to be checking the chicken’s temperature and ignore all questions about why you keep licking your fingers. The answer to that is schmaltz, the feel-good word for the feel-guilt ingredient: chicken fat. But you should only feel guilt if you fail to put potatoes on the pan to absorb all that dripping fat. I halve baby yellow potatoes, toss them in a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, and arrange them cut-side-down in a single layer around the mountainous chicken. I nearly flunked physical geography in college, but I know with frightening precision where the rivulets of fat will run on the pan and thus plot my potatoes accordingly. I have renamed my Chicken Dance the “Schmaltz Waltz” so you don’t think I’m just here to wiggle at your wedding.

Cook the chicken and potatoes for 1 hour.

For an hour, the chicken needs nothing from me. Normally, I catch my husband’s car coming up the driveway at this time. During the lockdown, I’d still find him outside, spending an hour with our daughter in the evening sun. She’s now our older daughter, in the vague sense that time has passed–in fits and starts–and the specific sense that she turned three years old (well wishes came via video calls and weeks of Amazon arrivals) and got a baby sister too.

In the first weeks of quarantine I baked everything I could from scratch: sourdough boules, pies, and tarts, even an elaborate bunny birthday cake with candy ears that looked decent and tasted far better. I reached May with less energy and more stamina. My sourdough starter hibernated in the fridge, the vegetable garden went fallow with the shift in seasons, but still I roasted chickens. I could do it with the newborn in a sling and the three-year-old calling out song requests to the Google Home. I could do it, practically, with my eyes closed. But the furtive masked visits to the supermarket or the convenient but unsatisfying grocery delivery apps had me reminiscing on the first time I cooked a whole bird myself, after a visit to the Red Stick Farmers Market.

[Read more from Lucie Monk Carter, here.]

“I went to the farmers’ market yesterday,” I wrote on my now defunct food blog in 2012, “and watched a cooking demonstration in which the brilliant, confident chef [that’d be Celeste Gill] stuffed her chicken with a sausage mixture and then grilled the whole bird up. The presentation just made me so happy and inspired that I had to rush home and turn my market bounty into a damn good dinner.”

Repeat until perfect. Then, whenever you’d like.

I’ve rushed home because I was tired, because I missed someone. And I’ve often rushed home to make dinner, whether it’s a new or foreign recipe I’d like to take a whack at or an old favorite I know we’ll all love. I long to be out in the world and feel that tug. To come home and cook. Is that too schmaltzy?