In the Spring, it's like the
first peak of vegetables after the Winter when it's like potato,
potato, carrot, potato, so... What? Stop! No, I like that. This
is gonna be a long day of laughter. Hello, welcome to Home Movies. I'm Alison Roman
and today I am going to be roasting a chicken, but not just any chicken, a Spring chicken.
What's a spring chicken? A spring chicken is a chicken that you roast in the Spring-ish time
but to me it's like equal parts celebration of the chicken and the vegetables that are around in the
Springtime. It's asparagus, it's teeny potatoes, it's beautiful radishes, and it is leeks. It
is leeks? So I love this recipe because it is less about like roasting the chicken and
more about what you eat it with. The things that I like to serve it with I feel like
really make it feel like a full special spring dinner. It's like spring chicken dinner
rather than just like a chicken with some stuff. Basically the things that we're going to
serve our chicken with are a garlicky aioli, our leek top sort of saucy salsa verde e
situation, and then whatever kind of spring vegetable you have on hand and you can serve it
raw or boiled. I'm gonna boil the potatoes, blanch the asparagus, the radishes I'm gonna serve raw
because they're gorgeous, and they want to be raw and that's that. At a time when vegetables
start to come out, you need to do so little to them that all they want is to just be like
eaten with little bits of like perfectly salted, very juicy chicken and that's exactly what we're
gonna do. I feel like just generally speaking this whole thing is a celebration of simplicity.
I would say that this is actually Nothing Fancy. Yeah it's truly Nothing Fancy. It's not in the
book, which you can buy here, no I'm just kidding. Another reason I like this is because while you're
doing it, you really kind of can't do anything else. Like your attention should be focused on
this dinner, there's not a ton of down time, it's like a genuine Sunday activity um but
it could be done on any day of the week. First things first, going to preheat our oven
to 425, we'll talk about our chicken and then we'll move on to our vegetables so I'm just gonna
set these aside. The chicken is gonna get roasted with leeks because leeks just like to me really do
it all. They have texture, they're deeply savory, they get really tender, but they also get
really crispy on the edges so to roast this along with the chicken I think is fulfilling
its true destiny. We're gonna roast this chicken in a cast iron skillet. Um it doesn't
really matter the size of your skillet as long as your chicken fits. This
is a uh just shy of four pound bird um and it's definitely going to fit
in the skillet along with our leeks. I originally call for one large leek, which looks
something like this. This is a large leek. This is something else entirely. I don't even know what
to call it. I'm honestly shocked and surprised this leek is literally the size of a small infant.
The fact that I was able to procure two of these size leeks is even more shocking and this is not
a joke, this is not a bit, I didn't seek these out. This wasn't, this isn't like a gag, like
I ordered leeks from a grocery delivery service and this is what came my way. These are
organic, they're local and they're large. We made a joke earlier that I was
going to use these on my Peloton. I'm going to attempt to use just one of these
leeks. I'm going to use the big leek. For whatever reason in a lot of recipes, they'll tell you
only to use the white and light green parts, but I really enjoy using the dark leafy green
parts and that's not just for potato like soup, you can watch over here it's for roasting too
or sauteing, like I think the green has a really interesting texture, it definitely doesn't get
as soft as the white and light green parts, but that's why I like it especially in the context
of this dish. We are going to trim these off, but we're going to save them and we're going to treat
them like an herb and we're going to turn them into a salsa verde. So half the leeks get roasted
with the bird and the other half are gonna get turned into a sauce. I'll save that, that'll be
for our thing later. So they should be about this thick. I like to leave the root intact
so they stay intact while I wash them. We're taking this chicken out of its little
bag. She's a beaut. She's a beaut. She's like very like well bdsm. The reason I like to take
off the string if it comes with the chicken is because there's a lot of chicken that is sort
of bound tightly by the string that is not going to get seasoning unless I undo the string and redo
it. So that goes for leg of lamb for pork shoulder for any type of meat that you purchase from a
butcher or a grocery store that is pre-tied. I always recommend untying it and re-tying because
otherwise there's going to be like a lot of that meat that isn't getting properly seasoned
in my opinion. I'm just uh patting it dry. My little son. This actually
has a lot of very funny visuals. Grow up David. The nice thing also about
roasting a chicken in like a very casual way, you can just kind of roast it with whatever
it is that you have on hand. I have like this weird piece of lemon and like a
shallot that I peeled and never used and this old fennel bulb and instead of wasting any of
these things or letting them go bad in the fridge, I'm going to use them to stuff my chicken. Maybe
I won't use the funnel, the fennel I don't feel like it's actually going to do anything. This
maybe like a dumb question, what is stuffing a chicken do?Cutting this lemon open, putting in the
chicken, the lemon's gonna give off its juices. Those juices will infuse the chicken fat and like
season the leeks and like when you use that to spoon the chicken like it you're gonna taste it.
I can't wait. It's gonna be great. Same thing with the shallot. Roasting a chicken is one of those
things that people have so many opinions on: this is what you do for a crispy chicken, this is what
you do, you have to grind, you have to salt it, you have to do this, you have to do temperature
for this, you have to flip it, you have to do this, it's like you have to start it with a
hot cast iron and then put it on. It's like okay, I'm sure any of those things will give you
a very good chicken. Chicken is stuffed. I'm gonna season with salt and pepper on all sides. Not to
sound like a broken record but teaspoon per pound and I like to like open the wings really kind
of get in to each little crevice. Open the legs. And we'll flip her. So I am going to twine
this because I want to and I feel like it is not something that anyone should have to
do, but I think for this specific dinner because chicken is like truly like the celebrated sort of
guest of honor here, I feel like we should make it feel special. There's a bunch of fancy ways
to tie or truss a chicken. I don't care, like I'm not that interested to be honest. So I take
the string and I just tie it around the chicken and then I tie a bow like that. By tying the legs
like that, you lift up the thighs and give all of this a better chance to get brown in the oven.
Some people will take your wings and they'll tuck them behind the bird like that, which can be
nice. I really like the way that these wingtips get crispy so I like to let them loose. And then
the leeks get scattered around your chicken. These will shrink slightly so you can kind of like fill
it. Loves washing. I'm going to roast this chicken at 425 and the reason I'm doing 425 is because
the inclusion of vegetables under the chicken is gonna slow down the roasting process. If I just
put a chicken in the oven alone with nothing else, it's going to brown and roast much faster. There's
just no additional vegetables creating steam or that need more attention from the heat. That
sort of slows everything down. So by doing 425, everything gets as brown as it can be and
everything stays as juicy as it should be. To me it is like a very foolproof way to not only
roast chicken but roast vegetables along with your chicken at the same time. Everything's gonna get
drizzled with some olive oil. If you wanted to prepare this in advance, you could just prepare
this and like throw it in the fridge and then put it in the oven in six hours and that way when you
get home from wherever you are, you can just kind of drizzle with olive oil and throw in the oven
and everything's done and you want to give like your chicken and your leeks all something to talk
about here. You don't need that much oil because your chicken is going to give off some fat, but
I always like to give my chicken a head start. Now I'm out of pepper. Yeah I don't have any in
here. Into the oven it goes. And I'm not gonna even look at it for 30 minutes. Nothing's gonna
happen, I don't need, it's gonna start smelling good and you're gonna want to be tempted to
like fuss with it but you really don't need to. I'm gonna boil potatoes and asparagus
separately. While I'm doing the other things, I'm just gonna get a pot of water on,
salted water. I'm gonna go with this guy. I'm gonna do the leek top salsa verde thing, so
I'm gonna rinse these just like I did the bottoms. And if for whatever reason you were finding
leeks that didn't have the tops, you could just compensate with something like chives or
scallions. The idea being that like you're doing like a garlicky raw number ramps if you've had
them if there's any pieces of the leek top that look a little worse for wear, you don't have to
feel pressure to consume them, but this feels good to me. I like these and typically I'll cut them
into really thin strips. You do want this to be pretty small but this is like just you know, just
like you're chopping an herb or anything, you're not looking for like perfect little squares. And
you can also just go a little bit more rustic with it by thinly slicing and chopping like that.
These leeks I'm gonna put in the freezer and next time I make sock, sock, the next time I make
soup or stock, I'm gonna add this to the broth. I like to serve this chicken with anchovies these
are Cantabrian anchovies. I would call this a nice tin. Nice tin. They're a little bit more expensive
than the anchovies that I typically just cook with but again like just like I trust the chicken,
I'm sort of like springing, no pun intended, for the nice tin of anchovies. I'm gonna be
eating them raw, we're celebrating the chicken, I feel like this is a gift to the chicken.
This shows how much I respect the chicken. The fact that I'm willing to open the nice tin for
the chicken. But if you have regular anchovies this will also work beautifully in here. Also
if you hate anchovies, just leave them out. Wow these anchovies were packed by Monica,
that's tight. I'm gonna save most of them to eat raw with chicken but I'll take, you know,
two or three fillets. You can tell a good anchovy because they're like firm and pink
and uniform. They don't smell fishy, they just smell meaty and salty, they're
fantastic. I'm gonna finely chop these. If you want to include a little
finely grated raw garlic in this, I highly recommend. You could also use a bunch
of chives you could. Like I feel like the more allium flavor here the better. We're gonna
sort of treat it almost like a really saucy like thicker vinaigrette by adding some
vinegar and some olive oil but before that, I'm not gonna use regular garlic. I'm gonna use
Spring garlic because it's a Spring chicken. This is not a must-have ingredient. So in the
ground garlic grows. In the ground garlic grows, gather around children. In the ground, when garlic
grows, it starts off like this and as it grows up it turns into this, so this is basically baby aka
spring garlic typically once the garlic grows, the stock no longer becomes edible. Becomes really
fibrous. It dries out and that's why you never see it sold with the stem. You only ever see it sold
as a bulb. But while it's still young enough, basically the whole thing is kind of edible. Even
like these you know more fibrous tops like this. So these are just going to get thinly
sliced. I think that like the ability to grow interesting things that you cannot find in grocery
stores and like just seek them out at a farmer's market is so special. Season with salt and pepper.
I'm out of pepper so I'm just gonna season it with salt. I'll use a little bit of this pepper,
we're improvising here. You could use fresh lemon or white wine vinegar but because I'm gonna
season my aiolI with white distilled vinegar. I'm gonna use it in this as well. And some olive
oil. This is a very olive oil positive dinner but as you know, I'm very olive oil positive,
if you want more olive oily you can, but to me that's like beautiful and perfect. This
can also stay for a few days so like if you were gonna do that chicken tomorrow, you could still
make this today and set it aside it'd be great. I bought some asparagus this
morning at the farmers market. These are from two different farms. Basically like
what you can find and what you have access to, I'd say this is on the you know medium side. This
is on the thinner side. I'm more of a fan of like a small elegant, thin asparagus but both are fun
to eat here. I'm actually gonna blanch both of these because I'm gonna eat them later for dinner.
To prep asparagus, you can snap off the ends and if you want to just sort of snap them where they
naturally bend. That's a good way to determine, you know like a thick fibrous stem. If you want
to also just do it this way, that works too. I'm not gonna peel it or anything, that feels silly
to me. This isn't Le Cirque. So I just I tried to like find like the most outdated restaurant I
could possibly find. Gonna blanch this asparagus for like literally 30 seconds. You're looking for
them to be like super nice bright the green. The salt in the water does it. That's why you blanch
in salted water. You're basically seasoning it as you blanch it. Of course like squirting lemon
over it and a little flaky salt afterwards to serve it is what we'll do but when it comes
out of the water there's no need to season it. No, I don't have an ice maker, I don't have
an ice machine, I'm not buying ice just to shock a vegetable so spreading it out on a sheet
pan letting them cool as quickly as possible, that's sort of my answer to a ice bath and that's
year round. And if you're not using asparagus, you could use green beans, same thing. Just blanch
them until they're like very al dente, pull them, spread them onto a sheet pan, you're
good to go. Potatoes on the other hand are gonna actually get boiled, so I'm
gonna put them in the same pot of water, I'm not going to change it, there's
no need and I'm going to boil them for 10 to 15 minutes. These are pretty small so
I think these will go closer to 10 minutes. Oh there's a piece of garlic skin in there,
cool. The chicken timer just went off. For what, was that 30 minutes? Yes, you want to
see what it looks like after 30 minutes? Nothing's gonna happen. She's browning but she's definitely
not ready. Can you set it for another 20 please? See these are already pretty like cool and they
still have enough snap to be considered al dente. As for you little radish, typically to like
serve radishes I will always leave the tops on. I will kind of break away some of these leaves
if they're looking a little worse for wear or they feel like especially thorny. I think the tops are
delicious, that said, I'm not asking you to like eat the entire top of this but the leaves are
good to nibble on I think. So I'm just going to set these aside, our potatoes will go here or
whatever. We'll deal with those later. These can also get saved. I happen to have a lot of radish
tops right now so I'm just going to compost these. And our third and final sort of step here
is to make an aiolI and I'm going to do that with an egg yolk, a little bit of mustard, some
vinegar, garlic, and of course oil. I'm going to use a blend of olive oil and neutral oil. For this
particular dish, I'm not going full classic aioli, which I think would be like heavier on the garlic
and heavier on the olive oil to neutral oil ratio. Because everything that I'm serving with
it is kind of delicate. It's like raw asparagus, boiled potatoes, simple chicken like everything
is kind of more quiet so I'm not gonna make this like an especially loud aioli. I'm gonna
start with a little bit of finely grated garlic and by a little bit I mean an entire clove. If
you're sensitive to raw garlic, this is not the meal for you because it appears nearly everywhere.
I'm using a spoonful of dijon mustard for this. It really helps the aiolI stay together. Mmm I
love mustard. And then an egg yolk. So garlic, dijon, and one egg yolk. The biggest mistake you
can make when making an aiolI is adding too much oil at the beginning. I'm going to do about three
quarters of a cup of neutral and a quarter cup of olive oil. Sometimes if I'm doing something like
a grilled lamb or something that I feel like has more assertive flavor, I want more olive oil-iness
to the aiolI and I'll use a higher ratio of olive oil to neutral oil. For this particular dish I'm
using more neutral oil. That said, one cup of oil one egg yolk is my general aiolI ratio. you would
literally start with like a tiny, tiny drizzle at a time. That's like half a teaspoon. You make sure
that it's completely incorporated before you even think about adding the other tiny, tiny drizzle.
By the time we've used about half of this oil, we will be able to start adding more at a time, so
don't worry it's not going to take you forever to make this but it is something that you need to be
taking your time with. You can see it's lighter in color, it's thickening up, but it doesn't look
greasy or grainy or broken. The reason I like this bowl for aioli is that it's taller than
it is wide. So at this point we've added about a third of a cup of oil and it's looking really
thick. It's looking like you know gloopy gloppy like mayonnaise. In an effort to make
sure that this doesn't break, we're actually gonna counter-intuitively add some liquid
in the form of white distilled vinegar. It's about a teaspoon. And this is gonna smooth it out.
And it's gonna allow us to keep adding more oil. So it's looking a little thick again right?
Great. And taste it. Definitely needs to be tangier. Definitely need salt. Another splash
of vinegar. And I'm gonna keep adding my oil. To me this is like one of the more
satisfying things you can do in your kitchen, it's like truly magical.
And that is the last of our oil. I'm gonna add a little bit more
salt and actually splash my vinegar. I think it actually wants another garlic clove
personally. Personal preference. You could use the green garlic that you got to use for the salsa
verde but it's just harder to chop really finely and it's honestly not as pungent as real
garlic or adult garlic rather. Oh my god. Yum. I love this vinegar. I love this product. I
think it is so underrated in seasoning your food. I texted my friend Lauren who makes a perfect
aiolI and I texted her I said oh my god, I started seasoning my aioli with white distilled vinegar
and she's like yeah that's how I do it and like that's what I've been and I was like oh that's
why I thought it was like, I'd seen her do it and I was so obsessed with her aioli, that I then was
like I absorb, I don't know it's like I dreamt it, incepted it, yeah I incepted it but it's not an
original thought. But seasoning your aioli with white distilled vinegar is really wonderful
because it gives you acidity without flavor so it doesn't taste overly lemony and sometimes
when you season aioli, even if there was a little bit of lemon juice in it, I would cut it with some
distilled vinegar if you wanted like lemon flavor but without so much acid. Big shout out to Lauren.
Lauren Schaefer, one of the best cooks I know. All right, aioli is done,
this green sauce is done, our vegetables are blanched, our potatoes
are ready, so I'm going to take those out. They're tender, they're creamy, they're
going to be really good with this aioli. I was right. And our chicken's
ready let's take it out of the oven because it needs to rest, we're not going to
like go straight from oven, oven to table, we're gonna like let it rest for a minute. So I
have not touched this chicken, this chicken has just been in the oven for about an hour. Oh. This
chicken looks so good, are you kidding me? NSFW. What I want to do is walk you through these
leeks also. Some of them are like crispy like a chip and some of them are like tender
and jammy and very melty. This chicken did exactly what I wanted it to do. This aiolI
performed exactly how I wanted it to perform. I feel like everything is happening here for
me today. This just needs to kind of hang out for like 15 to 20 minutes. It's too hot to carve.
I'm not gonna risk it. My hands are already, I've seen, it's I've been through a lot. We're just
gonna let this rest here for 15 to 20 minutes, let it cool down a little bit and then we'll
carve it and serve it with all of our bounty. It's like a little rock. Rock? Just ate a rock.
That was a peppercorn. So our chicken's out of the oven, our sauces are made, our vegetables are
prepped, we're ready to go. I've been letting this rest for a little bit and that brings me
to something that I want to talk about. I think a lot of you are going to be upset about what I'm
about to say. Many people spend their whole life roasting a chicken for crispy skin.
When this chicken came out of the oven the skin was arguably crispy. As the skin sits,
even for the past 10 minutes, it softens because this chicken is juicy. At the end of the day
once you carve it and put on the plate, the skin is not crispy. If you want crispy chicken, eat
fried chicken. Thank you for coming to my talk. I'm just gonna put the vegetables on their
own plate assuming you don't have a plate big enough. This doesn't have to be fancy or
artfully arranged or anything, I'm literally just taking a regular size dinner plate and
putting asparagus on it and the radishes just so, encouraging people to snack on them. This is a
serving platter. I'm going to keep the potatoes in the bowl. I'm going to keep the sauces in the
bowls that I made them in because why not. Um the anchovies can go right there maybe. I'll take the
I feel like I'm going to cut myself on this tin. Tins are scary. I'm going to transfer this chicken
to the cutting board. In this instance where I know that I'm gonna be eating everything in the
skillet, like all the chicken juices, all of the fat, all the leeks. I'll tilt my chicken and kind
of let any juices from the inside run out of the bird because otherwise they'll end up on your
cutting board and they're harder to wrangle, so this little juicy friend will stay there. These
parts of the leeks are almost like a braised leek, they're really tender, they're juicy they're super
like jammy in texture, and then the leeks on the outside here are like papery and almost chip like
and crispy and that's like to me the best of every single world. Not necessary but I do like to use a
fish spatula to kind of make sure that I've gotten all of the bits. I'm just gonna let that sit well.
The twine is really easy to just kind of snip off. Use your scissors or just peel it off depending
on how tightly you bound this chicken. And the way that I like to do this no matter how I've
roasted a chicken or what I've rubbed it with, I do the legs first. Oh you know what? Something
that I forgot to do. Slicing the legs open in the skillet and let that juice come out rather
than it running all over the cutting board. So I'll do the legs first, the nicely cooked
roast chicken should just kind of let you know where it wants to be broken down but if
you want to separate the leg from the thigh. And then carving the breast. Again this skin
is delicious. It is brown. It's not crispy and that's fine. I'm not upset about that this is so
much easier to do when the chicken is not hot. This is why I'm hot. It tastes really good. And obviously we're going to save this chicken
to make broth with. These are all going in this pot because I'm going to stock up. Deal with
that later. And then the breast I just slice. Then our leeks nestled in and around the
chicken. We're taking care. We're caring. The reason I also like to use this fish
spatulas because I can make sure that all the juices are kind of accounted for. Nothing's
getting left behind. And then you can take this jus. Another reason why you
shouldn't actually care that much about crispy chicken because we're
just pouring liquid over it at the end. This looks great. and there she is there's
our beautiful Spring chicken with our stunning spring vegetables. If I were serving
this to like one person or three to four people, I'd just put out plates, everything can kind of
like be served family-ish style. But I'm a wing person. I'm gonna get a wing for myself. I'm gonna
get this leek which is both crispy and tender. This is a personal preference. And then maybe
I'll put a few pieces of asparagus on my plate. And then maybe a radish or two. But I feel like the radish and the asparagus plate are
almost like a chips and dip situation. You just sit at the table and snack from the
plate. I guess it depends on how well you know the people you're eating with. This get spooned over
your chicken. This I would just sort of serve. Next with the cute little potatoes. And then
obviously an anchovy or two, to eat with the chicken. I feel like I'm ready to go. Like to me,
this is the exact thing that I want. Maybe you give somebody a knife so they don't have to tear
the chicken with their bare hands like I did but it's so good, it's so simple, but it's like any
other introduction of flavor in like the form of a spice or an herb, I think would just honestly
be too much. Like there's so much going on. And to me like eating this entire meal is almost like
an activity, it's like playing cards. Like like we're eating dinner, it feels like an activity,
it feels like theater, it doesn't feel like we're just feeding ourselves, it feels like this is
something that we're like engaging in and this is, this is the entertainment, this is the activity.
I hope you all make this chicken, I hope you make it all year long not just in Springtime. And we
can talk about other vegetables swap with it, but like leeks and chicken together forever.
Oh yeah they're having like a brunch. A brunch? Yeah they're definitely brunching. We're at
home and part of being at home is hearing your neighbors having a bbq, children screaming,
I mean laughing, children laughing. I love kids.
