Scornful Mojo Crow Chicken
L. Ann Kinyon
Served with Spite and Sarcasm
Serves one two. Hot or, best, cold and congealed.
Serve on a silver platter with casual disdain recalling all of those faults, ill wishes, inappropriate moments, days made unbearably sad, and the unreleased rage caused by the casual disregard of your guest(s) for all the thoughtful and kind things that you have done over the centuries and never, not once, asking for anything in return. Garnish inappropriately with seasoned bitter greens that you have been carefully tending all year around those roses and the thrice damned petunias and a grenache, reserving an extra bottle for yourself. (Later. In the resort you have reservations for on that unnamed tropical island.) Don’t forget that tight forced smile as you bring the silver platter to the table.
Decor suggestion: pierced poppets, torn and ragged lace, and dead roses wrapped in pages copied from Song of Ice and Fire, Storm of Swords, Ch. 51.
Ingredients
Mojo sauce, 2 batches (see recipe). One reserved for serving or drizzling over roasted potatoes.
4–6 legs and thighs of a freshly acquired chicken, chopped vigorously with a handy cleaver sharpened to a fine edge.
1 leek, rough chopped. Reserve the green parts for stock that you will never get around to making. Unless you do that all the time, in which case you already know about this, so I have no idea why I just told you to reserve the green part. Just throw them in the compost already. Who makes stock, anyway? I’m not effing Julia Child.
4–5 garlic cloves. (Because. Garlic.)
Equal parts olive oil and pumpkin seed oil for browning the chicken (pepita oil).
Roasted pumpkin (pepita) seeds scattered over the inappropriate bitter greens.
About 7 or 8 washed and halved tomatillos.
One fire-roasted pasilla pepper, chopped. Remove the seeds if you have one ounce of kindness left. If you don’t, leave in the seeds and add another pepper for good measure. And, maybe some cayenne as well.
A good-sized squirt of tomato paste from a tube.
To make the mojo sauce:
A favorite at tapas bars, mojo sauce is from Spain. In Cuba, it’s made with Seville oranges and oregano. Which is quite appropriate if you think about it for five minutes, but I’ve never made that sauce, so I’m only going to tell you that in Cuba they use Seville bitter oranges. You do whatever you want.
Make two batches and reserve the second batch for serving at the table or drizzling over roasted potatoes.
Use the smaller—7 cup—food processor and insert the metal blades. Alternating in satisfying chop and blend modes, and using the pulse button, add:
3 to 4 tablespoons smoked paprika (pimentón ahumado).
3 tablespoons ground cumin seed (or to taste)
4 cloves garlic, raw, roasted or “black garlic”
3–4 tablespoons olive oil. Use a strong flavored cold pressed extra virgin oil. (To hide the guilt.)
2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar, verdigris, or lime juice depending upon your mood.
Place all the spices plus one tablespoon olive oil in the food processor and pulse until smooth.
Add the remaining olive oil a few drops at a time, through the feeder tube (What you imagine during this process is your business.) This will take a few minutes, be patient as true scornful spite is developed slowly for ill-used immortal beings such as ourselves.
Add the vinegar and whiz for about another minute as you compose yourself for the next step.
Place one of the two batches in a container and refrigerate. Pour the rest into a mixing bowl and set aside as you prepare the chicken.
Preparing the Crow Chicken:
Foul: Two thighs or legs for each person to be served.
Leeks: trim, wash and chop the white parts vigorously into small sections. Then rough chop into ¼” chunks, delighting in how easily the sections come apart and do not make you cry as onions will. (As they did on several occasions during your enslavement.)
Smash the cloves of garlic and throw away the papery bits, considering, deeply and painfully, how your talents have also been thrown away so callously.
Use thighs and legs, cut into smallish pieces. Use your mallet and your cleaver with great enthusiasm. There is no need to remove the bones, but take care that any fragments are disposed of.
Brown the chicken in a cast iron pan, while contemplating other uses of said pan. Use a combination of olive oil and pumpkin seed oil, if you can find any of the latter. (It was probably “borrowed”. So what? You can wing this and it will taste fine without pumpkin seed oil.) Set aside. Degrease the pan. Use sherry or vinegar or whatever. Unless you like grease, then don’t.
It’s your coronary. Add some more grease if you want. Bacon, duck, goose. Whatever.
Lower heat, scrape up the bits in the bottom of the pan, and brown the chopped leeks and garlic.
Add the halved tomatillos and a squirt of tomato paste from a tube. Brown them for a few minutes until the leeks are soft. (Keep those puns to yourself.)
You are going to want to slow cook this, allowing all that ill will to develop over several hours, so use a crock pot or the oven on a low (350F) heat. (If you want centigrade, go look it up.) Put everything in the crock, cook on high for about an hour, then lower the heat to medium and let it cook all afternoon while you prepare the room for your coup de grace guests’ arrival.
Leave instructions for leftovers taped to the refrigerator: preheat the gas oven to 200F with the door open on a cold, dark day.
I’m pretty sure you know how to roast some potatoes to serve on the side, so I’m done here.
Bon Appetit!
About the author:
Lezlie Kinyon, Ph.D., is a poet, fantasy writer, artist and scholar of the humanities. She lives in Berkeley, California, where she edits Coreopsis: Journal of Myth & Theatre (www.coreopsis.org). She’s been known to write poetry as Cenizas de Rosas, and goes by @LezliethePoet on Twitter and Instagram
