Category: Dinner

scrub ginger and slice,

strip lemon grass and smash stalks,

stuff both in chicken*

*(a couple of garlic cloves inside, too, though rest of head in the water along with another section of cleaned just-harvested ginger, a few fresh Puerto Rican thyme stalks, parsley stems and let them swim with the carrots, celery and onions – chicken dunked in boiling water and returns to the boil, skim scum, and toss in the veg and herbs and let steep for an hour…check temp with instant-read until 165 for breasts and 180 for thighs – remove bird, skin and save in one bowl. Strip (pull) flesh from bones and cartilage (which you save with the skin-bowl and return all to the bot but the cooked chicken to reduce (saved chicken fat is fine here, too, its rendering will give the reduced – and if you had some chicken legs which to toss into the pot at the start along with necks, hearts and gizzards you will get a jellied broth that can stand on its own on a soup plate with shaved radishes, thin-sliced onions and celery and carrot and still unpeeled now-sweet garlic rescued from the first cooking for a fancy somewhat consommé salad.  The rescued from overcooking chicken loves fresh-baked bread (now cooled) with generous butter, fresh-ground black pepper and kosher or sea salt and some butter or romaine lettuce – all on both sides.  The lemongrass and ginger stuffing tricks did keep the time-to-temp a bit high so I kept checking whilst opining the beer seemed in need of several quality control checks as well. When my wild garlic gets better established, the leaves will garnish the salad: commercial garlic leaves – much wider and softer – will float atop the soup. A sliced hard-cooked egg adds color and taste to the salad.)