CRISPY-SKINNED, PAPER-WRAPPED ROAST CHICKEN AND TOMATOES
Few medieval or early modern Spanish cookbooks gave recipes for roast chicken, pollos asados, a luxury seasonal poultry dish. The most widely published was that given by Francisco Martinez Montiño in 1611 for a royal May banquet: the bird’s roasting juices were fruitily acidic, made tangy by dried verjuice, and the chickens were served on a creamy rice, or arroz meloso, cooked in pine-kernel milk and broth. Perhaps this recipe inspired Altamiras to cook his chicken with tomatoes, fresh or preserved in olive oil, which he considered a good low-budget substitute for spices and verjuice.
Later versions of the book pùblished after his death kept the recipe, but with editorial changes. In the 1905 edition, for example, the chickens were quartered for fast oven-roasting with onions and tomatoes were added only right at the end of cooking time, after they were skinned.
I wanted to make the original dish, as published in the 1767 edition, to see how its flavours and textures worked: that is, a whole chicken stuffed with a handful of streaky cured ham off-cuts and another of tomatoes – misshaped or imperfect ones are ideal – wrapped in greased, seasoned and parsleyed paper, then roasted. Altamiras used no garlic, but, unusually for his cookery he used a little of his precious bowl of soft lard rendered once a year at the pig-killing. It is the surprise ingredient here, giving a super-crisp mahogany-brown skin crunchy even when cold while the fruity tomato and salty cured ham cooking inside a whole bird give blended roasting juices packed with umami, intense enough to sauce rice, mashed or roasted roots, pasta, or simply bread. The 1905 method, by dropping the slow cookery, gives neither the crisped skin nor the intense juices.
Keeping up the intensity of flavours you can follow up with a sparky dressed green salad in the 18th-century style: curly escarola, lettuce, mint, onions and celery, for example, with fruity pomegranate seeds and chopped apple dipped in lemon juice scattered on top.
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❖ Crispy-Skinned, Paper-Wrapped Roast Chicken and Tomatoes
For a whole oven-roast chicken put tomato and cured ham fat inside the cavity before wrapping the bird in herbed and larded paper so the chicken emerges with a mahogany-brown lard-crisped skin and richly flavored cooking juices.
Juan Altamiras rubbed soft lard, rendered at the pig-killing, over his roasted chicken to give a crisp, mahogany-brown skin.”