Christopher Walken Chicken

   For this week's meal I tried a youtube classic <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43VjLCRqKNk>. I know, when most people think cooking their minds don't immediately jump to "True Romance" star Christopher Walken. But, watch the video. The man makes a mean chicken.  

   I was very careful when handling my raw chicken not to get salmonella everywhere. It went directly from the bag, to the sink. Before it was washed, I took a break from sterilization to make the chicken tap dance (much to the amusement of my little brother). I used one specific washcloth to wipe my hands periodically, which has since been disposed of. The washcloth, however, was placed on various surfaces around the kitchen, causing me now to fear that salmonella lingers on my counter-tops. I do not like that we, as a civilization, must be perpetually wary of disease when handling raw poultry. I mean, cows can't eat corn, but we fixed that.

   If you've watched the video by now you've seen Mr. Walken's rather nifty, French device for keeping a chicken upright whilst cooking. I went to Bed Bath and Beyond in search of such a device, however, there were none to be found. I even ventured to the 'Way Beyond' section where Walken lurked in Adam Sandler's “Click.” But, alas, no French-chicken anal-stuffer (See picture bellow).  

Therein, I devised a master plan to act as substitute. I took a handful of wooden skewers and let them soak in boiling hot water.    

With the skewers properly heated they became malleable and I proceeded to bend them at the sharp end to create something resembling the cone-shape of Walken's device. The contraption was held together with dampened yarn, to prevent a fire from erupting inside the chicken. 

The mount successfully McGuivered, it was ready for insertion into the one place on a chicken safe enough to hide a watch in a Japanese POW camp. (Get it? "Pulp Fiction?").

You may notice the innards or "jiblets" positioned around the mount. They come in a bag stuffed inside the chicken. Oh, the world we live in.

The finished mount looked like this:

I poured a large amount of salt into the chicken's neck cavity. (Little known fact, Christopher Walken played the headless horseman in Tim Burton's rendition of "Sleepy Hollow." Ironic? Not really.) I thought Walken's chicken from the video to be rather bland, so I coated mine in Olive Oil with healthy doses if salt and pepper. 

I placed my pears on a cookie sheet beneath the chicken. They looked like this:

  Notice that I've sliced the bottom to prevent sticking, just as Walken does in the video. At this point, may I say, that the Walken cookies are delicious. Laugh if you may at the awkward trill in his voice when he announces, more to himself, "I save these". The man knows what he's talking about.

After putting chicken and pear into the oven, preheated to 400 degrees, it occurred to me that I could go for some gravy. So I opened the oven and went in with a pear of tongs to rescue the giblets. I got them all but the heart, which fell to an unreachable corner. I hadn't seen a heart lost like that since Walken lost the love of Cassandra Wong in Wayne's World II, but I digress. 

  Not being one to just whip up some giblet gravy off the top of the dome-piece, I consulted the almighty information cloud. Lo and behold, Google provided me an answer with the first of 210,000 results it returned in a concise .30 seconds! This was it: <http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/giblet_gravy/> . 

  The gravy was pretty straight forward. You'll need a bunch of carrots, onion, celery, garlic, thyme, a bay leaf and some Dijon mustard. It's a good recipe, and easier to create than a cat woman. (Whatever).

Finished, It looks like this:

Here's the final product:

And here's the man who made it all possible:

-EM