Location: My tiny kitchen

I don’t know when I stopped watching the food network channel but it certainly has been awhile since I tuned into that channel. Considering it was the the only channel I watched through university, this change surprised even myself. Have you ever loved someone or something a lot, and overtime you gradually lost your interest in them without realizing it until one day? When you finally realize it, you always have a strange feeling. That’s how I feel about the food channel. Js at the Eating Club Vancouver is right: nowadays every show on the food channel is either a food challenge, a reality show on how fast a team can cook the most impossible meal or a special “unwrapping” of how some ordinary food like candy cane is made. Who cares about how candy cane is made, how many people are going to make a dozen of that at home? How many cook-offs do people want to see before they get tired of them? Do people like watching Bobby Flay in food challenges so much that he needs two shows to do the same thing? After I watched him in a hotdog throw down, do I want to watch him again in the kitchen stadium? Is the secret ingredient going to be hotdogs? What’s with that Gordon Ramsey who just simply cannot finish a sentence without using the F word or threatening to kick someone’s behind? Does he believe that all it takes to turn someone into a great chef is by continuously swearing at and talking down to them?

Oh, I really miss the good old days when the food channel, like Js puts it, have more substantial shows on food. Emeril Lagasse might be a guy who tried too hard to be funny with his recurring Bam’s, but his cooking shows really spoke to me. After all, I learned cooking by watching all these great chefs such as Lagasse, Batali or Feenie seared a steak to perfection or used butter to make a good bearnaise sauce from scratch. I got interested in baking when I saw Anna Olson made a successful souffle by beating egg whites to stiff peaks. The bottom line is, these shows convinced people like me, who didn’t go through any formal chef training, can cook something delicious. I also believe that celebrity chefs are better created when they showed people how to cook instead of how to curse. Many chefs have earned my respect over the years: all of the those mentioned above plus those on screen in the earlier days, such as Julia Child and Jacques Pepin. These chefs taught me the techniques and tricks on how to cook good basic dishes. One of the dishes I learned really well from their shows is roast chicken. It’s not difficult to make a perfect roast chicken and when it’s perfect, it really is the only thing you need to make a great dinner.

I created this roast chicken recipe by taking a bit from different chefs’ recipes. The green onion sauce comes from Jacques Pepin’s recipe. He is my favourite chef on French cooking.

You need the following:
- 1 chicken
- 3 tbsp of coarse or Kocher salt
- 1 tbsp of thyme
- 1 tbsp of rosemary
- 1 tbsp of paprika
- lots of freshly ground black pepper
- 1 Boston lettuce
- 4 green onion
- 1 shallot

1. Rinse the chicken and pat dry.

2. Rub 1 tbsp of salt and a good amount of black pepper inside the chicken. Rub the remaining salt and pepper on the outside. Make sure you take the time to rub the salt and pepper into the chicken because the rubbing gives the chicken a good taste.
3. In sequence rub the paprika, thyme and rosemary on the outside of the chicken. Again, take your time to get the spice into the meat.
4. Let the chicken marinate for 24 hours.
5. Every chef ties the chicken before roasting. I never learn how to tie a chicken properly so I always skip this step. Turn on the oven to 400F.
6. Put a wire rack in the baking pan. Place the bird breast side up on the rack. Roast the chicken for one hour.
7. Turn the oven down to 350F and roast for another 30 minutes. The chicken should be perfectly cooked by now. To be sure, check with a thermometer.
8. Let the chicken rest for 1/2 hour before carving.
9. While waiting for the chicken to cool, rinse the lettuce leaves and let them dry.
10. Minced the shallot and green onion.
11. There will be a lot of fat dripping in the baking pan. Take 2 or 3 tbsp of the fat to saute the shallot and green onion until they are soft.
12. To serve, place a few lettuce leaves on a plate. Placed a few pieces of chicken on the leaves and spoon some green onion and shallot all over the chicken and lettuce.

My friend R told me once that life is always a matter of comparison. I guess he is right after all: when you’ve heard enough of Ramsay’s cursing, all of the sudden Emeril’s bam’s start to sound sweet. You can call me old school but before the food channel starts showing something sensible, I’m going to spend my TV watching quota on Lost.