Having an old friend for dinner...

Joslyn's college ski team friend Darcy visited this weekend. Since reunions with old friends call for a feast, we asked our guest what main dish she desired. When she requested chicken, I realized that I'd be having another old friend for dinner.

Chicken and I have a complicated relationship.

Tangletown Farm in nearby Middlesex, VT provided the first chicken I've cooked in more than a decade, a 4.5 pound organic, "ethically raised" beauty.

When I was a kid, my mom made the most delicious chicken drumsticks: oven-roasted, skin on, salt, pepper, olive oil, simple, perfect. Chicken legs were my lunch staple. I ate three per day, including the cartilage (especially the cartilage). She'd offer to pack me other things, but I always picked the poultry. I also greedily devoured her creamy chicken a la king and hardy chicken pot pies, sometimes so quickly she'd have to say "slow down, no one is going to take it away from you." (How could she be sure?)

Chicken and I were still tight all through college. My mom briefed me on the basics of roasting the drumsticks' dark meat to perfection so I could make them for my own lunches, as I often did. When I didn't have time to make food, I'd also hit up some "Chester Fried" from under the heat lamps at Chansky's market in Brighton. I had always been a drumstick guy, but eventually I branched out to breasts. They were the tailgate grillable of choice for me and my buddy Moje in concert parking lots or up on the roof at 1653 Comm. Ave. We cooked them on a cheap portable weber gas grill lathering them with barbecue sauce or italian salad dressing before and after grilling. Finally, I'd never have survived a semester abroad living with the Mughini family in Florence, Italy without consuming many a crostini covered in "fegato," chicken-liver pate typical as Tuscan antipasto.

Right before law school, I started learning more about the meat I was eating: where it came from, how it lived, how it died, what it ate, what happened to its poop, and the working conditions for the people who raised and slaughtered it. I won't go into details here. Movies like "Fast Food Nation" and "Food, Inc." explain it best and much of the horror of corporatized, industrialized meat production must be seen to be believed. Needless to say, what I learned disturbed me enough to go vegetarian.

My return to cooking chicken went from zero to sixty when I bought this bird whole. Most of the small, local producers only sell their chickens whole.

I hung on as a vegetarian for three years before succumbing to my meat cravings. I reintroduced it to my diet one animal at a time. Part of what allowed my conscience to rest somewhat more easily with the switch was the growing abundance of locally-raised, grass-fed, organic beef. It packed the same, if not stronger, meaty punch as the corn-fed factory-raised schlock served at McDonalds or in the butcher's case at big supermarkets without as much environmental and ethical baggage. Once my antennae were up, it didn't take long to find local pork producers who picked the pasture over the feeding pen, growing organic hogs that lived happy lives and made excellent chops and sausage.

For some reason, however, I was slow to seek out folks who could help me bring America's favorite fowl back into my life. On occasion, my buddy Rory would whip up some wings with Vermont's Misty Knoll chicken that were too hard to resist as were grill-smoked free-rangers from his CSA with a small organic chicken farmer who also comes to our farmer's market. But by and large, I still wouldn't eat chicken. Perhaps it had something to do with bird flu. It's totally illogical given my youthful devotion to chicken and the utter lack of scientific support for the bird-flu connection, but it helped keep chicken out of my kitchen for more than a decade.

My dietary drought ended in a big way Saturday as I began a butterfly cut, pressing a freshly-sharpened chef's knife into the back of my market-fresh 4.5 pound bird from Tangletown Farm in Middlesex. I'm not sure what a good price on a whole chicken is. I paid $24 and considered it money well spent (especially b/c I know the farm has a good reputation for raising healthy and happy birds and I often see the farmers out and about in my community).

Being that I'd never cooked, much less cut, a whole chicken, I sought lots of advice on how to prepare it. The friendly farmers who sold me the chicken took me through it step by step. Then I called grillmaster Rory for a refresher course--he advised me to grill it under a brick wrapped in foil (fortunately there are several loose bricks in my yard). I also consulted America's Test Kitchen's New Best Recipe--an encyclopedic, well-worn cookbook in my kitchen that is full of how-to diagrams perfect for a novice like me.

Prepping a raw bird is not for the faint of heart. There is blood. There are bones and sinews that challenge even the sharpest knives. You also get to remove the neck and giblets. Joslyn the vegetarian was thoroughly grossed out, but she couldn't complain because I was cooking for her friend.

New Best Recipe also had a great diagram explaining how to get under the skin with seasonings and fat (butter or oil) to prevent the chicken from coming out flavorless and dry. I slathered on a simple paste of of five minced garlic cloves mashed into 3 tablespoons of butter, and a tablespoon of salt. This was enough to cover the bird under and over the skin.

I held off on adding herbs to my paste because I knew I was going to serve this very strong pesto made with our own basil as one of the dipping sauces with "Andy's Barbecue Sauce" made right up the street in Waterbury,VT (it uses "Pure VT Maple Syrup" instead of sugar) as the other sauce.

After roughly 35 minutes on my Weber "Baby Q" gas grill (starting with 15 minutes skin side down), the digital thermometer told me that the breast had reached 160 degrees--the high side of the temp range that my Williams and Sonoma grilling cookbook advised. After a few minutes rest (for me and the bird), I carved it up with my cleaver and put it out on plates.

The grill-marked skin tasted as good as it looked, its rich fattiness fomenting a flood of lunchbox memories of innocent days around the elementary-school cafeteria table. The pesto and barbecue sauce were both great, but I couldn't help ignoring them both in favor of eating the chicken just as it was off the grill.

Leftovers are the best part about cooking a whole chicken. Since Saturday, I've eaten chicken w five times. I am keeping the bones for stock, and every time I open the container I can find another bit of meat or cartilage that I missed on my last sumptuous sortie into the fridge.

I also made a simple, quick, and delicious meal of the liver and heart cooked with onions (put a pat of butter in a pan over medium heat, cook the onions until they are golden, add the chopped liver and heart and cook tossing often until the liver turns dark brown and is just starting to firm up and serve it with fava beans and a fine Chianti).