Fowl weather

Snow, ice, freezing temperatures -- what could be more comforting than a slow-roasted chicken with potato wedges sizzling in the fat. Especially if the chicken was smeared with a herb paste and stuffed with lemon, garlic and more herbs, resting on a bed of herbs as it roasted away for three hours at 300 degrees.

Photo by Epicurious

This was the recipe we culled from the latest issue of Bon Appetit. We picked our favorite plump roaster, the kosher chicken at Whole Foods, and rubbed the herb paste of coarsely ground fennel seeds and red pepper flakes, chopped thyme and marjoram, salt, pepper and olive oil inside and out. Then put a quartered lemon and a halved head of garlic in the cavity with a couple more sprigs each of thyme and marjoram and placed the bird on sheet pan on top of more sprigs and surrounded by the yukon gold potatoes, scrubbed, quartered and tossed in olive oil. This goes in the oven, the potatoes get turned and the chicken basted every hour while the house fills with this incredible aroma.

The chicken comes out beautiful, moist, shreddably tender, with a crisp, flavorful skin and dark potatoes that manage to be gooey and crisp at the same time. Too often we tear out these appealing recipes and lose track of them. The key here was immediate consumption. This one is a keeper.

We have gradually come to the conclusion that the old WF at Tenley has a better and more interesting selection of produce and perhaps even meat than the big, newer WF at Friendship Heights, where we usually shop. While buying the chicken at Tenley, I noticed that they had not only frozen guinea fowl, which I almost never see at Friendship, but also frozen pheasant. So I took the pheasant home and quickly found not one but two pheasant recipes in Roden's Food of Spain, one stuffed with apples and the other stuffed with duck liver pate. I opted for the healthier apple version and we roasted our pheasant for a festive Oscar night dinner, accompanied by a crunchy, healthy barley and cauliflower salad from Bon Appetit.

As is typical for game birds -- though this was certainly farmed -- the recipe called for larding with several strips of bacon. In addition to half an apple in the cavity, it also had sauteed apple rings in the pot with a sauce made from deglazing the skillet with Calvados (I used applejack). Our bird at 2-1/2 pounds was considerably bigger than the recipe's 1-1/2 pound, so it took considerably longer than the 30 minutes at 425 degrees prescribed in the recipe. No matter, we waited happily. The breast meat was tender, with a more delicate flavor than chicken, just a bit dry in spite of the larding. The dark meat was gamier, altogether different than a chicken thigh, and was especially delicious cold the next day (yes, there were leftovers from a bird that big).

Roden's book has a number of game bird recipes -- partridge, woodcock, quail, and squab in addition to pheasant. Who knew the Spanish were such avid hunters? That's along with a good assortment of chicken, turkey, capon, guinea fowl and rabbit recipes. So plenty to look forward to still.