The Feather Experiment
Dressing Henrietta for Her Big Day.
Today's idea is to quarter a chicken and experiment with 4 methods to "outfit" Henrietta so she springs off the platter with a lively cluck. We begin.
Shopping at Pike Place Market: with the cheese shops and the pepper shops and the butcher and grocer of greens and the wine tasting at the shop with proscuitto. $50 or so. Mostly we spend money on wine and cheese of very fine qualities that have nothing to do with Henrietta. Using Henrietta’s much smaller and younger sister for experiments. She is quartered.
Shopping at Pike Place Market: with the cheese shops and the pepper shops and the butcher and grocer of greens and the wine tasting at the shop with proscuitto. $50 or so. Mostly we spend money on wine and cheese of very fine qualities that have nothing to do with Henrietta. Using Henrietta’s much smaller and younger sister for experiments. She is quartered.
Back in the kitchen, there's a little trouble with the quartering. Not in the groove yet.
Again w/ the beer straws. We need beer straws when working with raw chicken. And more practically- new, sharp knives.
Method #1- The pancetta method. Layers of thin pancetta (5 to quarter bird) and in at 425. What shape will the meat take? Curly? Feathery? Looks like a small, flayed cow head.
Method #2- The ratty old filo approach. We recommend buying new filo. We have unbehaving filo. Broken up into squares 6 or 7 pieces thick. Smoshed. And that’s it. What will happen at 425?
Yvette wants to know, what is the point of the feathers? My opinion. It is to add life, the bird should look as if it is cared for, fluffiness is needed. This is a fine meal rooted in contorted love . Hence the greens. At least as a bed. But Yvette has an aversion to spinach and all its ilk. Slimy turns her off. She’s willing to try as long it is bacon or tastes like pancetta. We have a small impasse.
Yvette wants to know, what is the point of the feathers? My opinion. It is to add life, the bird should look as if it is cared for, fluffiness is needed. This is a fine meal rooted in contorted love . Hence the greens. At least as a bed. But Yvette has an aversion to spinach and all its ilk. Slimy turns her off. She’s willing to try as long it is bacon or tastes like pancetta. We have a small impasse.
15 min later Method #1 looks like a very dead thing.
Method #3 -The radicchio method. Cook a blank chicken- no flavor. Saute garlic and pancetta in olive oil. Add chicken stock. And steam the veggie.
Method #1 looks like food in Portugal. Smells Portuguese. Meaty.
Method #2 has promise. Country Style Greek Chicken. Fluffier and with a pastry shell. I wonders aloud to Yvette, do you really want to serve that? Yvette looks stunned, perhaps offended.Method #1 produces an amazing chicken. Moist. Salty. Wonderful. Awesome meat on meat. Yvette is amazed with herself. But may not be the right thing. Not quite the look. It would be too much with the stuffing planned.
Method #2 is very lifelike. Crusty. But buttery. And it insults my intelligence, Yvette's words. Philo as feathers=the shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line.
And Method #3 is bad in every way it could be bad. Bitter greens. It is unaminous. Radicchio is not what we want here. A sad, sad state of affairs. Terrible. The greens must be more raw and less murdered. It must be a good green and with more crunch. And for the sake of politics, it may need to be a bed of greens for those who like such things. This is called reaching across the aisle. 
I hate them all, Yvette says. A bust.
Experiment #3 - Cosmetics and Fashion- could be called Good chicken with Bad things done to it. Its not the chicken’s fault.
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