I have jokingly come to refer to this as "firehouse", "VFW" or "benefit" chicken dinner, but joke as I might, it is one of Deb's favorite meals. We are frequent cruisers and when this meal shows up on the ship menu, she is all over it. We recently went on a cruise in the western Caribbean and this meal never showed up on the menu so I decided to replicate it last night. Roast chicken, roasted garlic mashed potatoes, glazed carrots and giblet gravy.
I like to take the big piece of chicken fat usually found just inside the body cavity, pound it out flat and make a little pocket under the breast skin and shove the flattened fat up in there to baste the breast as it roasts. You can just make it out under the breast skin on the upper left of this pic. This particular bird had a nasty rip in the breast skin which I attempted to repair with a little impromptu "field dressing".
I make a simple mixture of mayo, smoked paprika, garlic powder, assorted spices and Cholula or similar hot sauce and paint it all over the outside of the bird with a pastry brush.
HC
