The Global Kitchen

Once a week or so I roast a chicken and strip the meat for soups and salads. My normal method was to truss and roast using THOMAS KELLER'S PERFECT ROAST CHICKEN RECIPE. Sometimes I'll season it with different herbs or a sprinkling of Penzey's Mural of flavor. I occasionally make a PSYCHO CHICKEN.

But now I am a convert to spatchcocked chicken. And I like the word, "spatchcocked". It cooks faster and turns out incredibly tender and juicy. I think once the weather gets too hot to roast this will be a great way to grill a chicken.

I can't really describe the technique except to say it's deceptively easy. I just watched THIS VIDEO a couple of times. I didn't trim the fat-instead I cut slits and tucked the legs in. I roasted at 400 degrees until the thigh temperature reached 170 and let the chicken rest for 10 minutes. I do need a bigger roasting pan as mine isn't big enough for the flattened chicken. The foil lined baking sheet worked fine though.

Tom Kha Gai is my favorite soup on the menu of our local Thai restaurant. They serve it in one of those aluminum chimneys. It's usually the only thinkg I get.

Anyway I've been meaning to replicate it for a couple of years but never got around to it. I looked a lot of different recipes and took notes from each one but settled on measurements from THIS recipe on the Food Tastes Good blog.

I added a can of straw mushrooms, rinsed very well, and skipped the red bell pepper, salt and red pepper flakes. I made my own nam prik pao(Thai roasted red chili paste but I used a recipe from my Hot Sour Salty Sweet cookbook which doesn't call for palm sugar. My block of palm sugar was harder than cement and I would have needed a jackhammer to break it apart so I used brown sugar.

The end result was very close to what I get at the restaurant. The heat was just right for me. Gradual and flavorful.

I took the leftovers to work served over jasmin rice and it held up very well. I'm definitely making it again next week.