The Chinese lacquered roast chicken that changed my life

Now and then, a recipe comes along that feels truly life-changing. The short crust pastry for the lemon-raspberry tart I wrote about earlier this week was one for me. It wasn't a new recipe when I discovered it a few years ago – it had been right under my nose in the Chez Panisse Desserts cookbook forever, but it was new to me when my friend Michalene pointed me to it. Today it's my go-to recipe for tart crust.

Now a Chinese lacquered roast chicken has changed my life.

There's nothing more delicious than roast chicken, and every cook should have a favorite recipe for it (at least one!) in his or her repertoire. For years, my go-to roast chicken has been the Judy bird – that is the Zuni Roast Chicken from Judy Rodger's The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. It's the spectacularly flavorful, crisp-skinned chicken you have swooned over if you've ever gone to San Francisco's Zuni Cafe and ordered roast chicken for two. I will write about the Zuni chicken soon here on the blog and give the recipe, but the technique is basically this: Tuck fresh herbs under the chicken's skin, rub it all over with a lot of kosher salt, and let it sit in the fridge like that for one or two days. When you're ready to roast, wipe the chicken dry, heat a skillet on the stove, plop in the chicken, transfer it immediately to a very hot oven, and let it roast. No basting, but you  have to flip the chicken a couple times and fiddle with temperature. It always results in a fabulous bird.

When I don't plan ahead, I've used the Judy technique without the advance salting, and sometimes even without tucking herbs under the skin. It's still always excellent. I thought my abbreviated version was the simplest great roast chicken possible without a rotisserie.

So when I read about author Peter Meehan's roast chicken approach in the new cookbook Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes, I sat up and took note. "We are advocates of a hot-and-lazy approach: one high temperature, one pan, one position, one great result." He talked about how seasoning a bird ahead of time and letting it sit uncovered in the fridge lets him have an easy dinner to pop in the oven anytime in the next three days, and now I was really sitting up straight. This man is sensible! When he wrote, "I started doing this after I fell under the spell of Judy Rodger's Zuni Cafe Cookbook," I dropped the book and ran out to buy a chicken. Invoking Judy's name confers instant credibility.

In the Lucky Peach Presents 101 Easy Asian Recipes cookbook, Meehan offers three roast chicken recipes. For me, it was a no-brainer: Lacquered Roast Chicken.

Irresistible, right?

Here's the deal. This is the easiest roast chicken recipe in the universe, and the result is magnificent. 

All you do is this: Paint a chicken with a mixture of half-honey, half soy sauce, then sprinkle it with salt. Let it sit uncovered in the fridge for one or two days, then roast it in a 400 degree F. oven for 50 minutes. That's it. No basting, no flipping, no lowering and raising temperatures. Let it rest 15 minutes, then carve it and here's what you get:

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I kid you not. The skin was wonderfully crisp, the meat super-flavorful and both dark meat and white meat were perfectly cooked. The white meat was moist, juicy and delicious as the dark meat. A miracle!  I can't wait to try it again.

Here's the recipe:

Want something smashing this weekend? Pick up a chicken tonight or tomorrow, paint it with lacquer and it'll be ready to pop in the oven Friday or Saturday evening. Or paint a bird with the lacquer on Sunday afternoon and leave it in the fridge so you can roast it for an easy weeknight dinner next week. And please let us know – in a comment here – how you love it!

Meanwhile, I told Michalene about it, and what she said glued me to the ceiling: "Have you tried it on a duck?" Oh, man.

NOTE: I later made the chicken again, and it required ten minutes longer to cook – about an hour total roasting time. When it's done, the skin will be mahogany, and the legs will wiggle freely at the joints "like you could almost tear them off," as Meehan writes. The internal temperature should be 165 degrees F at the thickest part of the breast and where the thigh meets the breast. Also, when you're preparing the bird, don't worry if some of the glaze falls off the bird – it doesn't matter. That's why we have foil lining the pan.

Dreaming of spring, I cook – and eat – an entire bunch of stir-fried asparagus

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My friends will tell you I'm a little bit crazy. 

OK, maybe more than a little. This day and evening are a case in point. At 8 a.m. I was at my home computer, fiddling with a story I was trying to post online for work. I made coffee. I launched into writing a review, fearing I'd be late for my noon deadline. At some point I made a salad (with Thousand Island dressing, which I deserved, as I was on deadline) and then at three thirty or four I filed, apologizing profusely to everyone involved. Caught up with emails. Jumped into another story I'm writing, this one for Palate magazine, which I'm editing and which has to be completely finished a week from today. (Insane!)

After a while, I looked at my watch and was stunned that it was 7:30. I got up from my desk and turned lights on in the other rooms. Thierry was out, and the house was empty. What would I do for dinner? Some people might just make some pasta or something else they had around, but I wanted something green. I've been craving asparagus. And I'd been eyeing a new cookbook I thought would be fun to review: Lucky Peach 101 Easy Asian Recipes. I flipped through to see if there was a recipe involving asparagus. Bingo! Stir-fried asparagus! I got in the car and headed to the market to buy a bunch.

Oh, but wait – as long as I was headed to the store, maybe I should see if there was something else I wanted to make. I went back inside. Flipping through the book again, I landed on something irresistible: lacquered roast chicken. "Lacquered" is like a magic word for me, no way not to succumb. Further, this looks like the easiest roast chicken recipe in maybe all of history. Four ingredients, including salt (a bird, some honey and soy sauce). You paint the bird with half-honey, half-soy, sprinkle with salt. Let it sit, uncovered in the fridge, 12 hours to 2 days. Pop it in the oven, roast 50 minutes, let rest 15, and carve. Had to try! 

Bought the chicken, bought the asparagus. The recipe called for one large bunch. Drove back home.

I brought a large pot of water to a boil, added salt, dropped in cut-up veg, blanched briefly and drained. Heated oil in the wok, added garlic, then asparagus, then chopped Thai chiles, and stir-fried. Then oyster sauce, sugar, white pepper. Stir-fried. Then chicken stock, and cooked till sauce thickened a little.

"Serve on a large platter," it said, and so I did. It should have said a small platter – not a whole lot of asparagus here. The recipe said it made four servings, but I'd say two or three. OK, maybe my bunch of asparagus wasn't that big, but it was the biggest one I saw. 

I took a few picture of it, then sat at the table, poured a glass of white wine, pulled out some chopsticks, and ate the asparagus. All of it. It was very good. Try it. See for yourself.

But wait. There was more: the chicken. Spring chicken! I mixed together two tablespoons of honey and two tablespoons of soy sauce, then painted a thin, even layer on the chicken. Set the time for 15 minutes, during which I did the dishes. Ding! I painted the chicken with the rest of the marinade, then sprinkled it with two teaspoons of kosher salt and put it in the fridge, uncovered. Tomorrow or Saturday (who can think that far ahead!?) I'll zip it into the oven. 

To all a good night.

Celery, endive and crab salad: a delicious way into a winter dinner party or Valentine's dinner for two

You're having friends over. You've planned your main course, and the nibbles over drinks for starters, and the dessert. But what, oh what, should you start with when everyone sits at the table? 

This time of year, it often comes down like this: For a main course, I'm making something rich or hearty – like a stew or braised meat or poultry, or a roast of some kind.  So to start, I want something light, but not inconsequential. It would be lovely if it could involve greens. A winter salad? 

This salad of celery, Belgian endives and radishes – with crab meat for a bit of luxury and lemony dressing to keep it fresh – is elegant, pretty and fresh: just the ticket. 

You can slice the radishes and celery in advance, so the salad comes together in no time flat when you're ready to dine. 

Or maybe you're cooking a Valentine's dinner for your sweetie? Make half a recipe, and serve it – with a glass of crisp Sauvignon Blanc (maybe Sancerre!) – as a prelude to a steak or roast chicken. Sound good? Let's do it!

Super bowl of soup: black bean with roasty veg

There's nothing more warming and comforting on a chilly winter evening – or a kicked-back Super Bowl Sunday – than a soulful black bean soup with a gentle zip of chile.  

I like to roast the soup's aromatic vegetables instead of sautéing them; roasting deepens and intensifies their flavor – so much that if you wanted to leave out the ham hock and go vegetarian/vegan, the roasted veg will carry the day. Grinding toasted spices – coriander and cumin – fills the house with a wonderful scent.

There's hardly any work involved: Just dice the roasted vegetables, toss them in a pot with beans, a can of tomatoes, a ham hock and the spices and let it simmer a couple hours. Debone the ham hock, whirr the soup a bit with an immersion blender, drop in the diced ham and you're in business. Serve the soup in small bowls, garnished with cilantro and sliced scallions. Try it! And tell us how you like it. 

The simplest soup in the universe — split pea — is one of the most delicious

This is the simplest soup in the universe, and one of the most heart-warming when it's cold outside. 

I try to keep its ingredients on hand all the time during the winter, so if a craving strikes, I can put it together without going shopping. If you buy the ham hocks two or three at a time, you can throw the extra(s) in the freezer. Of course if you happen to have a leftover ham bone, you can use that instead. Besides the ham and the split peas (which keep forever), all the ingredients are things a cook usually has on hand anyway: an onion, three or four carrots, a little olive oil. 

And it smells so good while it's cooking. 

Making it couldn't be easier. Just sauté diced onion and carrot in a little olive oil, add water, split peas and the ham hock, and let it simmer till it starts looking like soup. Take out the ham, discard its bone and fat, cut up the meat and toss it into the soup. Correct the seasoning and that's it – very little effort; time (about an hour and a half, maybe a little more) does all the work for you.

Start it in on a weekend morning, and you can eat it for lunch. Or make it in the afternoon and serve it on Monday or Tuesday night – with some good crusty dark rye bread and sweet butter, and maybe a salad – for a zero-effort dinner. 

Easy dishes to bring to a New Year's Day lunch with great friends

For the second year running, our dear friends Nicola and Habib (she's from England; he's Tunisian by way of Paris) invited us to ring in the new year with a lunch at their townhouse in downtown Dallas, next to the farmers market. Nicola and Habib served a couple of gorgeous poached Arctic chars they had made the day before, along with a zingy tarragon sauce – with duck-fat potatoes and white and green asparagus. Our friend Georges, a Belgian ex-chef, brought a rustic port pâté he'd made, along with some beautiful cheeses. To round things out, I brought a cucumber-dill salad to go with the fish, a log of goat cheese marinated in olive oil and herbs and some leftover Sevillian marinated carrots, a tapa I'd served on New Year's Eve.

The whole trick was to find a couple things to bring that wouldn't take long to put together, as I was busy cooking for friends the previous night (and we went to bed without having done the dishes!). The cucumber salad was easy – I just whisked together some rice vinegar, Dijon mustard, dill, salt, pepper and a little sugar, dropped in sliced red onions, let them quick-pickle while a sliced hothouse cucumbers using a mandolin, then tossed it all together. 

The goat cheese was even simpler – I just steeped fresh thyme and oregano in warm olive oil a few minutes, added lemon zest, poured it over the goat cheese with cracked pepper and Maldon salt, and it was ready to go. Impossible to get a fresh baguette, as it was New Year's Day, but I brought one along from the night before to cut into toasted rounds to scoop it up.

I was feeling a little guilty, as Habib had asked me to bring a dessert – I didn't have time to manage it. One of their friends brought a make-your-own sundae set-up (fun!). And another, Alicia (a Mexico City-born border-free cook!) brought a remarkable apple cake. 

It didn't look like much, but it was wonderful: Super vibrant with apple flavor, it had a marvelous texture, sort of crisp-tender-chewy on the edges and almost custardy inside, not overly sweet, with a gentle backdrop of rum. It reminded me of something. But what?

I asked Alicia about the recipe, and she recited ingredients: apples, rum, flour . . . .Where'd she get the recipe, I wondered? From a magazine a few years back, she said.

"What kind of apples did you use?" 

"Different kinds."

Suddenly it hit me: It was an apple cake I fell in love with from a cookbook Dorie Greenspan had published in 2010, Around My French Table. I'd written about it on Eats, the food blog The Dallas Morning News had at the time. I called up the old post on my phone and showed it to Alicia.

"Is this the recipe?" I asked.

"It is!" she said.

Mystery solved. Dorie, your recipe has legs!