Pickled Onions with Cheese and Thomas Keller's Roast Chicken

I'm a fickle lover when it comes to roast chicken recipes. Sometimes I rely on Nigella's lemony roast, while other days Julia Child's buttery, basted bird appeals to my mouth. Once in a while, I remember to make Gourmet magazine's amazing paprika roasted chicken, which is rich in flavor, bejeweled in color, and a lot healthier than Julia's buttery cuisine. (It also makes the most fantastic base for chicken stock. I've started adding paprika every time I make stock for the golden color and resonant flavor.) My standby chicken is a Nigella-Julia hybrid that gets rubbed with a bit of butter or olive oil, sprinkled with coarse salt and pepper, and stuffed with a pierced lemon and a sprig of rosemary. I baste at the end and serve with the jus. Simple but effective, and it leaves the house smelling lemony savory.

Well, my philandering days may be over. Like a 45-year old bachelor finally realizing the simple appeals of domesticity, I have been won over by Thomas Keller's roast chicken recipe (suggested, of course, by Shauna and Dan, who I wish were my friends). It is simple as salt, and positively golden. The only changes I made were to resist "slathering" the cooked meat in butter (unnecessary) and to leave the bird untrussed. I wanted to try trussing it, but I couldn't find any twine and really, the chicken's still pretty in its free form state.

The roast came out with a crispy, salty skin just laced with thyme and pan juices. We spooned the extra jus over oven-roasted parsnips and completed the meal with a salad of butter lettuce, blue cheese and red wine vinaigrette. I do insist that you try this recipe with a free-range organic bird. Is it pricier? Yes, by a dollar or two per pound (my four-pound chicken cost $14 at Whole Foods). But I promise you, you will not get such a clean, rich flavor from one of those flaccid ghost-white hens grown in a pitch-black poultry house. The carcass will not yield a deep golden broth, and your tummy will be full of hormones and antibiotics. Also, remember that one chicken yields at least one meal of roast meat and at least two as a soup. So the monetary breakdown's not bad. I plan on using leftover chicken in tacos tomorrow, with sour cream, home-pickled onions, cilantro, and beans.

Which brings me to the pickles.

These are the pickles in an early stage of development. Now in the jar, they are fuchsia and glistening, begging to be tucked into a sandwich with sharp cheddar cheese or used to add a piquant note to tacos. They have a surprisingly mild taste, sweet with lingering notes of the cinnamon, cloves and cumin I soaked them in. I got a yen for them on Saturday night, when we had our friends over for a late supper of tomato soup and grilled cheese, hard cider, and a game of Munchkin. I remember eating cheesy, pickley cold sandwiches when I was a student in London, and the appealing contrast of rich and tangy has stayed with me. I knew I could do better than the mysteriously black London relish, however, and started trolling the net for recipes.

I found David Leibowitz's recipe (his blog is great by the way) and altered it to fit my spice selection. The onions were a big hit, even with Melissa, who hates onions. Our husbands ate them plain, like a salad. And now they sit pretty in the fridge, tempting me with all kinds of culinary possibilities.