Bouchon #1 Roast Chicken

Bouchon is a type of Restaurant in Lyon France. It is also a Thomas Keller restaurant and cookbook! The focus of the food is very much Parisian Bistro fare which is not to be confused with American Bistro, which more often than not simply implies casual. From the Introduction in the book:

Whereas the French Laundry Cookbook is about using the ideas and techniques of classic cuisine as a springboard for the imagination to create new dishes, Bouchon is about maintaining classic traditions, renewing our respect for those great dishes, holding them up to the light to understand them, in order to perfect them.

Further on he states:

Bistro food is not about specialized ingredients, rather it is about precision of technique brought to bear on ordinary ingredients. It's easy to make foie gras and truffles taste good. But how do you combine lettuce, salt vinegar and oil in a way that is elegant and exquisite? Indeed the very fact that these dishes have fewer main ingredients, typically common and inexpensive ingredients- chicken and salt, let's say - only raises the bar.

No pressure there!   The full recipe can be found here, straight from the book. First you get a chicken and rinse and dry it inside and out.  Then you truss it.

Then you rain salt on it and pepper to taste.

Preheat the oven to 450 and when the oven is ready put the bird in a roasting pan and slide her in. I've never roasted a chicken in this way before..certainly never at 450.  But the key is the dry high heat; we don't want any steaming going on.  I hope my smoke detector doesn't go off!

No smoke detector! A win for me!  The skin was sooo beautifully crispy and the meat very juicy.

We ate this with steamed broccoli although I think a simple salad would have been better. Try this sometime, it's a wonderful roast chicken.

See you soon.