spatchcocks and bricks

I bet that first word got your attention, didn't it? Hmmmm. C'mon, don't lie. It's like "kumquat" for some of you.

Ah, but now I'm gonna take away the fun. It's sort of like when you were in grade school, and one of your vocabulary words was "masticate." Remember how much fun the teachers would have with asking "how many of the boys masticated last night?" They'd all turn red and no one would raise his hand and the teacher would say something smart assed like "then I guess you're all very hungry." Well, in one of the few times my sister made me proud, when HER teacher asked the class that question, she raised her hand proudly, and as everyone laughed she said "yup. I masticate every night. For at least twenty minutes. And I can't get along without it."

More kids should call teachers' bluffs like that.

Well, of course, you all know that masticate is just a fancy way to say "chew," and unfortunately, "spatchcock" is just an old word meaning "to butterfly," or "to remove the backbone" from a bird, like a chicken, a quail, a squab, whatever. I'm bringing it up today, because it's a neat thing to know how to do, and it will expand your cooking repertoire so mightily, because now, you will be able to serve a whole chicken, in twenty minutes.

You don't believe me? Well, have I lied to you yet?

No one is quite sure where the word comes from, but the best guess is that it's a contraction of the phrase "dispatch the cock" (QUIET DOWN BOYS), as used in Scotland. Maybe, I dunno. But it sure sounds fancy when you put it on a menu. Here's what you do: ready? This aint' gonna be hard. Get a pair of poultry scissors. A really GOOD, strong set. They're not that expensive, and if you like chicken, they're invaluable. Turn your bird, breast side down (for sanitary reasons, it would be good to do this on paper), and then cut along the b ackbone. It won't be difficult. Cut all the way down one side. Then, do the same thing on the other side of the bone. You'll have the backbone in your hand, and a splayed out chicken.

What you've just done is to have enabled yourself to cut the cooking time in half, because now you can put that bird "al mattone," or "under a brick.

The reason why chicken takes so long to cook is because most of the bird is not contacted directly to the high heat of the oven. That's what "baking" is all about, i.e, the slow penetration of heat, into a kind of food, to cook it slowly. Well, when you're using the spatchcock and mattone technique, you are essentially doing a combination of grilling, and frying, except you're not going to use much oil. What you do, essentially, is take your bird, flatten it out on a grill pan, or a frying pan, with just enough oil on the bottom to coat it. Get that pan HOT before you put the bird , breast side down on it. Then, take a heavy object: I use a Creuset soup pot, with two or three big cans of tomatoes in it, to weigh down my birds, when I do them on the stovetop grill. You can also do this in the oven, but you have to adjust your weights of course. If you do it in the oven, use a 400 degree temperature, and try to heat the oven for a good half hour before you put in the bird (This is a place to use a pizza stone, if you have one. Put the pan on top of the stone, which retains heat, and passes it to the pan and then the bird).

If you do this in the oven, with a 3-4 pound chicken, it will take about 2o minutes to cook. If you do it on the stove top grill, at medium heat, it will take about 12 minutes. If you use a game hen, or quail (like I'm doing tonight), or a squab, you will have to adjust the time down, since these gals take much less time to cook. You probably need no more than 7 minutes for a quail, five for a squab (which should always be served red), and maybe 7-8 for a game hen (I'm not a fan of these, so I can't speak to them from experience).

Traditionally, a spatchcocked, bricked bird is marinated overnight in some spicy combination of wine or vinegar and herbs and spices, but you know what? I prefer to just use Judy Rodgers technique and salt the birds overnight, and then cook them as they are. Sometimes I'll glaze them at the end with some jam or other sauce that I have around, but again, that's subject to my whim du jour. I think we will be glazing the quail tonight with some marmalade, but then again, I may change my mind.

So, now you have a new technique and a great new word. Just make sure your guest is not disappointed. If you tell him or her, "I'm gonna serve you something spatchcocked tonight," well.. you may be promising him something more than you can deliver. If the two of you put away a whole chicken, well, you just may wanna watch TV. And I don't know any tricky words to describe that.