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Description |
| A chicken has two breasts, broilers and fryers are 48-day-old birds that cook up tender, and a Rock Cornish Game Hen is simply a younger chicken. These are a few things Elaine Corn explains in Chicken, a book stuffed with useful information, "chicken nuggets" (jokes and entertaining trivia), and distinctive recipes. Delving into poultry's past, the timeline traversing the book's endpapers traces chicken from its origins in Southeast Asia more than 5,000 years ago to its arrival in Europe around A.D. 800, the New World during the 1500s, and the opening of the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in 1956. Inside, Corn points out that chicken was a luxury until the early 20th century, when agribusiness came along. Now, we all eat more of it, with Americans consuming the most--nearly 100 pounds a year per person. A writer who specializes in demystifying techniques and reassuring the hesitant, Corn explains carefully how to cut up a whole bird, using the French slice and the Chinese hack. Yet she considers the reasonable price of precut parts "the best argument I can make for never having to cut up a chicken at home." Corn wittily calls chicken "the basic black dress of cuisine." Her recipes pair it with fresh produce, chosen to provide the best flavor in each season. The "Spring" and "Summer" chapters offer lemon-brightened, sautéed Chicken Piccata and kabobs flavored with Cola-Cardamom marinade. (Corn finds the soda a good tenderizer.) "Fall" includes Chicken Pot Roast with Apple and Potatoes, a perfect example of Corn's easy-to-take creativity. In "Winter," buttery crusted Chicken Pot Pie is crammed with corn, other vegetables, and a rich, creamy sauce while Texas-style, no-beans Chicken Chili is sensibly tailored to today's health concerns. Wok-smoked chicken and other dishes reveal Corn's feel for Asian cooking, which is enhanced by techniques learned from her Chinese husband. --Dana Jacobi |
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Product Reviews |
 great ideas |
| Review Date: March 30, 2000 |
| Reviewer: , |
| I love this cookbook! Not just your ordinary chicken dishes, but not unapproachable haute cuisine either. The author puts together the most wonderful combinations using fresh seasonal ingredients. She also includes tidbits of information that make reading the book a pleasure. I have had to alter a couple of the recipes slightly, but the book is highly recommended. |
I like Chicken
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| Review Date: April 5, 2002 |
| Reviewer: heysquid, Seattle |
| The arrangement of "Chicken" into a season-oriented structure is one of the best things about this cookbook, as it provides ideas and general meal plans for year-round eating. It also provides good, solid information about buying, cooking and serving your bird. The recipes are above and beyond your average broiled chicken breasts or basic fried chicken--not that there's anything wrong with either of those dishes!--but they're not so freakishly exotic that the everyday cook is going to throw up her or his hands in frustration over confusing instructions or weird ingredients (except maybe the one with the rose petals and mint jelly which is, in fact, very worth the effort of carefully rinsing each petal by hand). I very rarely eat red meat or pork and recently developed an allergy to seafood, so chicken is pretty much my main source of protein anymore. This book has been very useful for interesting recipes that keep my diet from falling into a rut, and the little tidbits of chicken lore are entertaining. |
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Tags | chicken, great, recipes, seasons
