Hash, of the Chicken Variety

By Caroline Clough in Food on Jan 22, 2007 8:19PM

Chicagoist isn't one for food shows. This is mainly because we don't have cable thus have no access to the world of the Food Network. But a few weeks back we found ourselves in a cable using household and we got sucked into an episode of The Barefoot Contessa. This episode was about the chicken hash Truman Capote made for his black and white ball. The contessa went on and on about Capote and we didn't mind, we were enthralled by the dish itself. So when we got back to our own cable-less apartment and kitchen, we thought we'd try to make our own hash from memory. As you will see our recipe isn't much different from its inspiration and we'll totally understand if you go with the shoeless cook ... it won't hurt our tender soles one little bit.

As we said, this was a dish done by memory and it, like many recipes on this site, shows our own strange culinary foibles. But our three dinner guests didn't seem to mind and that's, for us, what it's really about. There's a certain fun in cooking for friends and that fun gets raised to definite pride when the dish inspires from-the-heart compliments.

What You Need:

1 small whole chicken
4 red potatoes
1 cup fresh basil (or more)
1 lemon
4 garlic cloves
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
1 red onion
4 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper
2 teaspoons paprika
1 baking dish (for the chicken)
1 cookie/baking sheet (for the potatoes)
1 large skillet

What You Do:
1. First off, deal with the chicken. You could get a whole chicken already cut up. We didn't because we wanted to make stock from the carcass, but if you're not into mouth wateringly fresh chicken stock you may not want to deal with taking a chicken apart. Check out our much maligned Faux Coq Au Vin recipe for a fun diagram of how to cut a chicken into its parts.

2. Heat your oven up to 375 degrees. Try to keep your chicken's skin on as much as possible. Then liberally stuff the basil leaves under the skin. Add one slice of lemon as well. Coat the chicken with some olive oil and give it a few sprinkles of salt.

3. Put the chicken in the oven.

4. Now for the potatoes. Wash them good and proper and don't skin them unless you really want to. Chop them into irregular sized cubes. The size of the cubes depends on your own particular preference of potato size, we're not dictators. Now put the chopped potatoes into a bowl and add one or two tablespoons olive oil, the four garlic gloves (squished with the flat side of a knife), any left over lemon juice can be squeezed onto them as well. Salt and pepper them, to taste. Stir them so that all potatoes get a little of the olive oil and flavor. Put the potatoes on a greased baking sheet and put in the oven.

5. While the chicken and potatoes are cooking start chopping the peppers and onion. Once again you can go big and chunky or fine and dandy. We went fine and dandy.

6. When the chicken is cooked take it out. Check that your potatoes aren't sticking to the sheet and whether they are cooked all the way through. If the potatoes are cooked, take them out as well and set aside.

7. Allow the chicken to cool a bit then remove the lemon slices. Chop the chicken into liberal bites.

8. Heat up your skillet over medium to high heat (as big as you can find) and add some olive oil. Add the onions and peppers. After they've been cooked for two or three minutes, add the potatoes and chicken. Our own skillet wasn't large enough for all of this, so we had to do it in batches.

9. Add the paprika and a little extra salt. Cook until the potatoes are browned or until you can't stand the saliva you're producing due to the heavenly smell of hash.

10. Serve with any left over basil leaves.

Chicagoist thinks that this dish could be spiced up a little with a chipotle pepper or two. We also considered adding bacon because, well, when is bacon ever a bad idea? Don't answer that question. Serve as soon as possible. This dish will feed four people.