Spicy, Lemony Chicken

As I was working on this post and the prior one–pork parmesan meatballs–news of David Bowie’s death spread across the world. I mean, the Vatican tweeted the lyrics to “Life On Mars”. Go ahead. Top that.

Like most of the rest of the planet, I did not take this news well. When one is closing in on fifty, the deaths of beloved musicians aren’t about where they were born or how their artistry rocked the planet. It’s about the songs, and the memories associated with those songs.

My David Bowie memory bank is enormous. Most of my Bowie collection is on vinyl, carbon dating me more surely than any set of tree rings. And while I’ve listened to those records enough to significantly batter them, what I really did was dance to them.

By this I mean that during my years as a serious dance student, I often reached for Bowie’s records. Specifically, Low, Heroes, and Station To Station–what I privately referred to as his “fucked up in Berlin” trilogy.

(note the wear.)

So often did I rely on Bowie’s music that when asked to choreograph a piece for a modern dance final exam, I chose “Speed Of Life.”

Performing terrified me. On the videotape of this final, I can be seen starting, then stopping in hopeless terror. Only with my teacher’s encouragement was I able to complete the sequence. I remember it vividly–the black wool A-line skirt I wore over black tights and leotard, the soft leather jazz shoes I favored, and, of course, the music, which eventually calmed me down enough to dance. When I finished, a silence fell over the class.

“I’ve never seen anyone who could isolate her ribcage like that,” my teacher finally said. This was before my diagnosis. This woman, herself recovering from a serious back injury, knew something was wrong with me. It was she who taught me proper posture, to stop bending backward at the barre until the top of my skull reached my coccyx, to stop standing on one leg while pulling the other up, tucking my kneecap into my ear, a deranged human earmuff. She warned me that if I didn’t stop contorting myself during warm-up, my back would give out by age forty.

I respected her. I listened. I believe her teaching has saved me, thus far, from needing a wheelchair.

These are the things I remember when I hear “Speed Of Life”.

There is no getting over certain losses. You abide them. David Bowie is such a loss.

—

There is no neat way to transition to today’s recipe, a spicy little number calling for enormous amounts of garlic and lemon. Then again, nor was there any way to blithely skate over such an enormous loss, either. That’s life, a crazy quilt of feelings and needs and demands, oh-hell-David-Bowie-why-is-the-stereo-buzzing?!-the-cat-has-earmites-again-we’re-out-of-candles-oh-shit-it’s-dinnertime.

Enter Spicy, Lemony Chicken, which calls for breasts, a cut I don’t often use. They’re expensive. They dry out easily. Feel free to use cheaper thighs, taking confidence in the lemony marinade eliminating any chance of dryness.

Let’s talk about the spices a moment, shall we? I like fiery food. Those of you not sharing this predilection are welcome to decrease the heat. By now my fondness for garlic isn’t news; while amounts can be lessened, know it sweetens while cooking, losing that raw bite.

The work in this dish is all up front, the actual cooking a matter of moments. I served this with home-made flatbread (recipe to come next week) and canned chickpeas, which I improved upon with a slug of Vermouth, salt, pepper, and chicken broth. A huge hit, even as we cried into our dinners.

This is another Diana Henry adaptation, found in fact whilst working on the aforementioned meatballs. Her recipe, from A Bird In The Hand, is Chicken Shish With Toum. While full credit is happily given, there is nothing new under sun. I’d long cooked poultry and pork using a combination of cumin, coriander, garlic, and lemon, though I always add fennel seed to the mix. In my towering ignorance, I didn’t realize this was one of the classic Mediterranean spice combinations used for shish-kebabs. Live and learn.

The Toum is a wonderful-sounding sauce of garlic, oil, lemon, salt, and water, rather mayonnaise-esque, but I was too lazy to figure out how to downsize Henry’s recipe, and knew we’d never finish it before the garlic grew acrid.