Butterflied Chicken With Cracked Spices
Somewhere in “The Zuni Cafe Cookbook” is a recipe for a standing rib roast of pork with variations. I’m sure of that. I’m less sure, because I can’t find it online, that the book gives a variation that calls for rubbing the meat with fennel and coriander seeds, among other spices. I wanted to try some version of that on a chicken and came up with the idea of grafting those seasonings, as I remembered them, onto a classic Marcella Hazan recipe for chicken alla diavola. Hazan has you butterfly the chicken and rub it with cracked black pepper before grilling or broiling it. Just by faking and misremembering, I stumbled on a weeknight dinner that’s faster than roast chicken and fragrant with mysteriously harmonious spices. It may not be the devil’s chicken, but it could be the work of one of his minor demons.
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