Skillet roasted chicken on a potato bed

Although I have some of the key ingredients to make a garbage plate, I opted to make something a little lighter after yesterday’s barbecue. I was thinking of a dish a friend of mine had made once which was a simple roasted dish of chicken, potatoes, mushrooms, and fennel. It was simple, but perfectly done. The vegetables had cooked down and created a wonderful sauce. The chicken which sat on top of it, was moist, but had incredibly crunchy skin. It didn’t hurt that my friend is a professional chef and is the executive chef for a large Italian wine importing company on the Chicago area. He also served me some incredible wines (including a Gaja Sori Tilden Barbaresco, a Ch. Leoville Las Cases, and a limited bottling of a Guigal Gigondas), but in many ways, it was the incredibly simple but perfect food that I remember best.

I was also thinking about a widely used technique in Western Mediterranean food that roasts food on top of a bed of potatoes. Generally, it’s fish roasted over potatoes, but meat and poultry work fine as well. It would be a simple one dish meal but would be lighter than the aforementioned garbage plate (which I will eat within a few days). I opted to go the chicken route and decided a cut up chicken was the way to go. I peeled several potatoes and cut them into thin rounds and placed them in layers in the bottom of a well oiled cast iron skillet. I also added a top layer of sliced onions. I added salt, pepper, thyme sprigs, and another splash of olive oil and placed the skillet into a hot oven without the chicken to allow the potatoes and onions a chance to cook a little. About ten minutes later, I pulled it out and added the chicken pieces, which I had brined for about an hour.

Food like this belongs to a category that I always think of as “French Grandmother food.” It’s a particular type of comfort food that’s based upon simple French country and bistro food. I don’t have a French Grandmother, and I’ve never been to France, but it’s a style of food that I crave. I opted to go with wine instead of beer to go with the whole French country food theme. I pulled out a bottle of 1995 Prieure de St. Jean de Bebian (which, granted, most French Grandmothers probably don’t break out with roasted chicken).

Prieure de St. Jean de Bebian is from the Coteaux de Languedoc region of France. Although it’s not in the famous Chateauneuf du Pape region, the grape varieties that are used are the traditional grapes of that region. There are three main varieties, Grenache, Syrah, and Mouvedre, which are blended in slightly different amounts depending upon the vintage. There is also a section of the vineyard which is planted to a mix of the thirteen varieties of Chateauneuf du Pape, and a small amount of this field blend is also used. It’s one of the top wines of the entire Languedoc region.

Even at 12 years old, this wine is still incredibly dark and purple. There’s no sign of browning at the edge yet as you would expect. The nose is big and rich with dark berry aromas, an earthy tarry quality, vanilla, spice and a hint of bacon. With a blend so close to a Chateauneuf du Pape, you wouldn’t expect the wine to be this big. I haven’t had this wine since its release, and was amazed at how youthful it still is. The fruit flavors are very big, and the tannins are still fairly aggressive. The wine has good acidity and seemed a little tart initially, but with time it opened up more and tartness faded. I worried that it may be a little big for chicken, but was hoping for the best. Luckily I had opened it a little early and there was a chance that it would soften as it sat.

Like most great wines and beers, this one revealed a new side with the food. The harsh side of the tannins and the tartness vanished. It wasn’t too rich or too big for the food. The potatoes and onions had melted into an almost gooey layer and had an almost gratin-like quality. The drippings from the chicken had flavored it and thickened into a rich, viscous sauce. This would be an easy dish to gussy up. A few slices of black truffle in with potatoes or an herbed butter stuffing under the chicken skin (or both) could be the basis for creating a fancy, haute cuisine dish, but this dish shined in its simplicity and once again illustrated the point that it’s hard to improve upon simple dishes, and it’s tough to beat a roasted chicken.