Friday, February 25, 2005
Bitterness becomes no one, dear friends, and I promise that I am not bitter. What I am is sad, and puzzled, and puzzled because I am sad and should not be. Of all the problems facing the world today, the ubiquity of takeout roast chicken is pretty small potatoes, so to speak. After all, isn't it better to have roast chicken for a week's worth of meals than to rely on a week's worth of fast food? If the price gap between a raw chicken and a rotisseried home-meal-replacement chicken is closing, where is the harm in spending a few extra cents? And didn't Laurie Colwin once write that while you want to procure the best chicken that you can, ultimately any roast chicken is better than no roast chicken?
Well, yes, except that she then followed it up with directions on how to roast your chicken yourself, and according to Julia Moskin's New York Times article, roasting a chicken is another one of those things that we fabulous urbanites are supposed to be too busy to learn how to do:
"I consider the perfect roast chicken my own Holy Grail," said Ly Phan, a Vietnamese-American living in Brentwood, Calif. But, she said: "I don't want to learn to make it. I just want to be able to buy it."
A reliable place to buy a good roast chicken has become an important quality-of-life matter for those too busy to cook. "I buy a chicken here every Sunday, and I eat it all week," Paul Griscom said at the Whole Foods Market at Columbus Circle. "I used to live close to Fairway, and I was nervous about moving away from those chickens. But the ones here are even better." At Whole Foods and elsewhere, the price of a whole roasted organic chicken is almost the same as a raw one.
Roasting a chicken at home may become a domestic throwback, like darning socks or putting up peaches.
Mr. Griscom said that he doesn't know how to roast a chicken. "I know, it's supposed to be so easy," he said. "But how would I know when it was done?"
Now, I know that two anecdotes do not a social movement make, and it's entirely possible that I am not a relic. From where I sit tonight, though, I'm not so sure.
Oh, Snow, I’m with you all the way. I have bought my share of takeout when I’ve had too much going on to cook—usually this involves working late or being in the midst of some big baking project—and I would take the roasted chicken from Wild Oats over the home-roasted Tyson chicken any day of the week. I think I was just feeling punked out last night because once again I find myself reading an article that relegates home cooking to a time sink, a frittering away of energy best spent elsewhere. It is hard enough to read this in “straight” news pages and feature articles, but when I read this in a newspaper food section—and not just any food section, but arguably the most influential food section in the country—I get a bit despondent, probably more than I should.
I do think I’m going to take ejm’s advice and make that tagliatelle and chicken recipe, though. I’ve made it dozens of times, with all different variations, and it never fails to make me happy. I make it with pasta sheets from our local pasta place, which I cut into ribbons for pappardelle. Add an endive salad and a bottle of wine, and despondency melts away. 
Oh, sweet jen, you have done nothing that requires forgiveness. If anything, you have earned your reward in a thousand afterlives, buying chickens for that darling Clyde even though you are a vegetarian. He must have been over the moon at every meal.
Dear friends, I’m feeling a bit sheepish about all this. Let me clarify: there is absolutely, positively no reason to apologize for buying a roasted chicken from the market of your choice. When I first moved to New York, I was a regular takeout customer at the Dallas BBQ on 8th Street and University Place; I would buy their barbecue chicken, skip the barbecue sauce and just eat the chicken with a baked potato or cornbread. Eventually I worked up the nerve to try roasting a chicken in my tiny scary oven in my tiny scary kitchen, and only then did I regularly buy my birds raw.
My point wasn’t that buying pre-roasted chickens is a bad thing, honestly. My point was that it’s getting a little dispiriting to hear the food press announce the Death of Home Cooking. This isn’t the first time, and it won’t be the last, but for some reason, this week it really landed a blow on my whiny self. But now that I have a nice fat (13-pound!) capon sitting in my fridge, waiting to be stuffed (maybe with the dried fruit that Elizabeth recommends?) and high-heat-roasted, I’m getting my good thing back.
nmi, sweetheart, I’m afraid that there just isn’t a steak book in me. I can recommend this one, though.
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Oh, Snow, I’m with you all the way. I have bought my share of takeout when I’ve had too much going on to cook—usually this involves working late or being in the midst of some big baking project—and I would take the roasted chicken from Wild Oats over the home-roasted Tyson chicken any day of the week. I think I was just feeling punked out last night because once again I find myself reading an article that relegates home cooking to a time sink, a frittering away of energy best spent elsewhere. It is hard enough to read this in “straight” news pages and feature articles, but when I read this in a newspaper food section—and not just any food section, but arguably the most influential food section in the country—I get a bit despondent, probably more than I should.
I do think I’m going to take ejm’s advice and make that tagliatelle and chicken recipe, though. I’ve made it dozens of times, with all different variations, and it never fails to make me happy. I make it with pasta sheets from our local pasta place, which I cut into ribbons for pappardelle. Add an endive salad and a bottle of wine, and despondency melts away.