The first time I roasted a chicken was in a small oven in the narrow galley
kitchen of a sailboat. It was the first night of a journey across the
Atlantic Ocean from America to Portugal and, because I had never sailed
before, it was assumed by my four male companions that I would be the chef.
I didn’t tell them I had never actually cooked before, either.
“Have you made a shopping list?” Michael, the skipper, asked me, a week before
we set sail. The men were spending their time drilling holes to make sure
our lifeboat was secure, and doing other important tasks. I was happy to
scrub the deck and run errands, but make a list? I’d assumed we’d make a
list together, or better still, they’d make a list and I’d nod in agreement.
What do you buy for a month at sea to feed four people three times a day? “A
list?” I replied. “Yes. Sort of. A sort of list.”
Michael looked mildly irritated. “Very amusing,” he said. “Remember, you need
to think about amounts. Remember, everything has to be stored. Remember, two
of us will be working night shifts every night, so we’ll need things to keep
us awake. And remember to get a chook so you can roast it on the first
night.”
I hated the idea of cooking. I believed myself to be a born sous-chef: happy
to be in the kitchen, thrilled to help, first to wash up. But to take
responsibility for turning out a meal? I once watched an artist friend
trying to turn over a fish that he had been co-opted by his wife to
barbecue. “Oh God,” he said, as the fish collapsed in his tongs and fell
into the embers of the fire. “Typical,” he snapped. “This is why I should
never be put in charge of the barbecue. A) I can’t do it and B) I hate it.”
That’s exactly how I felt as I stared at the raw chicken on our first night at
sea. It had string wound round it. Was I supposed to put it in the oven in
its bondage or should it be released? Lighting the oven seemed to require me
to turn on the gas, put my head very far inside, and waggle a lit match
around. It wouldn’t light.
A) I couldn’t do it and B) I hated it. I tried so hard and for so long to
light the oven that the kitchen began to fog up with panic. A storm had just
ended, the men were getting hungry, we didn’t want to eat in the dark, and
if I asked for help so long after descending to the kitchen to start supper,
then they’d know my failure, and I didn’t think they’d laugh. I cried. Then
I called up to the deck. “Dave?” Dave was, in effect, Michael’s first mate
on our journey, as well as his brother-in-law. He is an endlessly patient,
sweet-natured man, who consistently finds the fun in anything: a lightning
storm, say, or a broken loo. An unlit oven, I hoped. “Dave? The oven? Am I?
Is it? I think . . . perhaps? Would you . . . ?” Dave did.
Three times over three nights he had to light the oven for me (and we did
begin to laugh) before I mastered it on my own, but, in fact, that first
befuddlement, with its tears of frustration and panic, was the worst thing
that happened to me as a first-time cook.
All you do to cook, after all, is cook. It’s not trigonometry. There’s no
secret about it. If you can turn the oven on and get the chicken in, it will
cook. If it’s not done, you put it back in for longer. The rest is a
question of degree: how tender do you want your chicken? How tasty? What do
you want to eat it with? How do you want those things cooked? Or a question
of ambition: how delicious can you make it? What best to accompany it? How
to follow it?
I’d seen other people put a chicken in the oven and it come out an hour or so
later, brown and glistening. I knew it needed some butter or oil somewhere,
and I knew it couldn’t be pink when it came time to eat it. It was Michael
who came down the galley stairs just as I was about to put the bird into the
at-last hot oven. “Oh,” he said, looking at the chicken. “You roast it
breast side down first, do you?” Did I? I hadn’t noticed. It seemed I did.
That’s how I roasted my first chicken — blindly. I also peeled some potatoes
and put them in the oven with the chicken about halfway through. That’s how
I learnt that potatoes take at least as long as a medium-sized chicken to
roast properly. Apparently, I was “resting” the chicken as we waited for the
spuds to cook.
I asked Dave to carve and he pretended not to notice the slashed carcass (I’d
stabbed and poked it all over to check it was cooked). Then, because the
meat looked dry, I poured the juices from the pan over each plate.
We were all pleased to eat. We’d set sail hours before and had already watched
a lightning storm on the horizon, then sailed through it, changed into
foul-weather gear, hoisted in sails, been shouted at and proved a clumsy
crew. Finally, sitting down to dinner, we were dry, we were drinking beer
and the sea was calmer. We were very hungry and very tired. The food could
only have been good. Except it wasn’t really.
“Mmm,” said Michael, as he ate. “Dave carve, did he?” He chewed his meat for a
bit longer and raised his eyebrows. “Next time, we might encourage him to
spoon the fat from the gravy before chucking it over the chicken, so our
supper isn’t spoilt by congealed grease.”
So, that's how I learnt:
1 To spoon the fat off the juices at the bottom of the roast-chicken
pan before “chucking it over the chicken”. (Advanced gravy skills would come
a little later on.)
2 That cooking is not the job of a martyr. Eating food that someone has
cooked for you is only enjoyable if that someone has enjoyed the process of
cooking it.
How to cook a really good roast chicken
Buy the best chicken you can find. Wash it inside and out and pat it dry, then
season and flavour the inside cavity — with a lemon cut in two and a bunch
of tarragon, or use thyme, half an onion or a few cloves of garlic (slightly
flattened), or a combination. Rub butter over the outside of the chicken and
season with salt and pepper.
Roast the chicken in a hot oven (200C/400F/Gas Mark 6), breast side down, so
that it stays juicy, and turn it over halfway through its cooking time,
which is about an hour and 15 minutes for a large bird. (Test it by sticking
your knife in its thigh and if the juices run clear, it’s done; if they are
pink, it’s not.)
About an hour into cooking, pour some white wine into the bottom of the tin,
so that the chicken steams a little bit and you have more liquid for gravy.
Take the cooked chicken out of the oven and let it rest, covered to keep warm,
so the meat relaxes. Now make the gravy. First, spoon the fat from the
bottom of the pan — though it doesn’t matter if you don’t get absolutely all
of it. Scrape up any bits of chicken stuck to the bottom of the pan, and add
some water, more wine or a little stock, depending on what you’ve got, and
let it sizzle on top of the stove. The longer you leave it to cook, the
thicker the gravy will get.
Extracted from Cooking Lessons: Tales from the Kitchen and Other Stories by
Daisy Garnett (Quadrille £12.99). To order for £11.69 (inc p&p),
call The Sunday Times BooksFirst on 0870 165 8585 or visit timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
