A good rub down

On Tuesday, we ventured back to roasting chickens. M-N had made a great one a few weeks ago, using a recipe from Real Simple, which turns out to be a great resource for recipes.

This time, I used one of their ideas for a Moroccan spice rub. The recipe says: "Use your fingers to carefully loosen the skin from the breasts, thighs, and drumsticks. Spread the spice mixture evenly under the skin. Place the cilantro inside the cavity." So while we'd cooked a whole bird before, this was my first venture into "loosening the skin" and spreading something under it. That was strange.

I anticipated the most difficult part being anything involving the "cavity." But all I had to do was toss some cilantro in there.

The recipe didn't mention how I was supposed to get under the skin of the drumsticks. If you've never done this before, the "cavity" section of the bird affords easy access to the underskin of the breasts, but to get to the drumsticks (or legs, as I believe they were known in life), you have to take a left turn, go through a couple of stop signs, pass where old man Crane's barn used to be before those hooligans burned it down, make an incision below the upper metacarpal, and then you're still not there.

But once we figured it out (more or less), the results were terrific. Tonight we'll take what was left of the meat and make chicken quesadillas, and there will be much rejoicing.