Jamie Oliver’s Chicken in Milk
The British chef and cooking star Jamie Oliver once called this recipe, which is based on a classic Italian one for pork in milk, “a slightly odd but really fantastic combination that must be tried.” Years later he told me that that characterization made him laugh. “I was hardly upselling its virtues,” he said. The dish’s merits are, in fact, legion. You sear a whole chicken in butter and a little oil, then dump out most of the fat and add cinnamon and garlic to the pot, along with a ton of lemon peel, sage leaves and a few cups of milk, then slide it into a hot oven to create one of the great dinners of all time. The milk breaks apart in the acidity and heat to become a ropy and fascinating sauce, and the garlic goes soft and sweet within it, its fragrance filigreed with the cinnamon and sage. The lemon meanwhile brightens all around it, and there is even a little bit of crispness to the skin, a textural miracle. It is the sort of meal you might cook once a month for a good long while
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