It’s quarter to six in the morning — early by some people’s standards and late by others. It’s still dark out – the crows aren’t even crowing. I just put a chicken in the oven to roast at a searing hot temperature – of about 450 degrees or so. I have to admit I’ve pushed my oven to go even hotter at times. She creaks, groans + moans but will relent – because it’s what she does. She always lets loose like a sports car on an open highway. In the end, she’s humming with heat — is happier than ever – and so am I. We both love to roast a bird. Or so I like to believe.
I note the time – 5:45am because that chicken will dry up if I leave it too long in such a hot oven. Usually a bird will start turning the color of sunflowers after about 30 minutes or so at that temperature – and that’s when I know that it’s time to turn the heat down to a civilized, more contained 350 degrees and that’s also when I stop looking at my watch. I don’t need a clock to tell me that that chicken is going to roast at its own pace because it always does.
Cookbooks and recipes will hand down the laws of roasting temperature per pound with all the seriousness of Moses on Mt. Sinai and the Ten Commandments. But honestly – every chicken is going to cook like everything else – in its own time, its own way. That means it’ll be different every day, in every kitchen with every cook. Recipes are there to guide and once you know the general rules – you’ve got to follow your own instincts, and use your senses. Trust your nose, eyes, fingers, ears, and most importantly, your tongue. They’ll tell you everything you need to know.
Let me get back to where I started from and why I’m roasting a chicken before most people have even had their morning coffee, newspaper and toast. I’m just coming back from a really long trip. It’s not important where I’ve been or how many days, weeks or months that I’ve been away – or whether it was for business or pleasure, wedding or funeral. For me, this simply means that I need to regroup, feel the ground under both my feet again – and make sure that everything alright in my world, my home and in the ordinary. If there’s one thing I know – it’s that I’m not really settled until there’s a chicken roasting in my oven. That’s just how it is for me.
I have to think that when I become old – like really old in my kids’ eyes and they have one of those spiraling moments when they look at me and all they’ll see is a stranger with white hair and a face crevassed like a topographical map of a mountain — and they’re full of doubt and confusion — of ‘how can that woman be my mother?’ It’s going to be my scent that’ll trigger their memory and connect the dots through that maze that is DNA. I imagine that that smell is going to be my own curious perfume of roast chicken, maple syrup, coffee, garlic, Nivea, plums, lime, chocolate, jasmine, dog hair, wood smoke and seawater. And when they get a whiff of that — then they’ll recognize themselves, home and me. Or so, that’s what I’d like to believe.
