“Dude, you have to try the Zuni Cafe roast chicken recipe,” Paul has told me more than a few times. “I think my version is better than what they serve at the restaurant.”

Following his lead, I looked up the recipe online and found lengthy instructions.  In an effort to help those cooking at home, the recipe goes to great lengths to not only explain the dish’s ingredients, but the process as well.  It has long explanations of what to check for as you roast the chicken, when to flip it (and flip it back), all in pursuit of a perfectly crispy skin.   The bird is salted a day ahead and stuffed with herbs.  The result of all of this work is a small chicken with deliciously crispy skin, rosemary scented flesh, and a tangy bread salad made from the drippings and champagne vinegar.

While Eli roasted the chicken and prepared the veggies, I prepped the bread salad, which is twice roasted with a olive oil champagne vinegar base, then reinforced with drippings from the chicken.  We served the chicken with the included bread salad (note for next time: use higher quality bread.  Maybe Challah? also, more arugula!) and blue lake green beans with mushrooms.  When we went to flip the bird a second time in pursuit of perfect skin, the conversation turned, of course, to what to drink.

The issue was of course, that we could serve nearly anything with roast chicken.  Chicken, with it’s delicate flavor, calls out for a lighter drink.  But the caramelized skin, toasted bread and mushrooms in the veg made me think we could go for something a bit more aggressive with some malt backbone.  After some debate, we decided to try a few smaller bottle options that were already kicking around the fridge, and experiment to see what works.

We started on the lighter side of the beer spectrum with a Troublette Belgium Wheat Ale.  It’s flavor was surprisingly mild – very low phenols, with a light malt finish.  Mildly wheaty, we immediately realized it couldn’t stand up to the strong flavors on the plate. This beer called for a park, sun, and a hot day – instead we had a cool evening and roasted october flavors.

“October flavors!” I realized and quickly stashed our bottle in the freezer to cool it down.  A few minutes later I produced a bottle of Gordon Biersch’s FestBier, their Octoberfest style seasonal lager.  It poured a crystal clear amber pint with a thin white head. On the nose, it smelled very clean, with a hint of the amber malt.  We had a winner. Eli whole heartedly agreed. The crisp lager worked wonderfully against the chicken’s herbs, and played straight man to the tangy bread salad. It even seemed like a good pairing with the woodsy mushrooms in the green beans (Eli’s mushroom sauteing technique ALWAYS delivers.)

Emboldened by our success, I decided to break out the big guns: a bottle of Jolly Pumpkin’s Oro de Calabaza, a Belgium golden ale, which is then aged in oak barrels, leading to a sometimes unpredictable sour aging process. The bottle I had was rather young, so my expectation, as with most bottles I have had from Jolly Pumpkin, was to expect the unexpected.

Of course, the bottle exploded with foam as soon as I opened it, as nearly every bottle from Jolly Pumpkin I’ve enjoyed has, and the foam ran over, quickly filling my mostly empty plate with beer. Once that settled, I carefully poured a beer and resumed  dinner.

Unfortunately, my reach exceeded my grasp.  The brett from the oak barrels had created a beer with a very minor “band-aid” flavor (the desirability of this in this style of beer is debatable.) As the beer warmed other flavors came forward, and it was OK – not the transcendent pairing I was hoping for.  The mild malt along with the tart finish and slightly medicinal sourness left the chicken’s flavors out in the cold – even the tangy bread salad didn’t sync up with it.  The rest of the bottle was reserved for dessert after dinner and clean up.

The final verdict: Zuni’s roast chicken recipe was a winner, and got the desired skin and juicy meat that roast chicken always shoots for.  The bread salad was decent, but i doubt it’ll make it’s way into another dinner anytime son – I’d rather go all in and make a classic stuffing. As for the beers, our seasonal german octoberfest struck just the right balance, beating out offerings our lighter offerings from belgium.  It’s crisp malt was just what the chicken needed, providing a great contrast to the complex herbs and carmel flavorings of the bird.

Tags: chicken, FestBier, Gordon Biersch, jolly pumpkin, Troublette, zuni

This entry was posted on Friday, October 10th, 2008 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Pairings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.