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Versatile chicken
DINING & ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE - JANUARY 2008
Versatile chicken
Global favourite in The Bahamas
From deep fried to cordon bleu, there's surely no food more versatile than chicken. Nutritionists laud it as a good source of protein, niacin and vitamin B6 as well as the cancer-fighting trace element, slenium. The rest of us love it just because it tastes so good.
One Internet site lists 3,390 recipes for the tasty bird and the mighty Larousse Gastronomique, which maps out the far reaches of French haute cuisine, lists about 80. They range, from chicke ambassadrice, breasts stuffed with lamb, truffles and mushrooms, to chicken yassa, "a Senegalese dish consisting of pieces of broiled mutton, chicken or fish marinated in lime juice."
The Gallic flair can be savoured at Chez Willie on West Bay Street, were the menu includes poached stuffed chicken breast with truffles, served with leeks in a white wine sauce.
Other French gourmet dishes include roasted organic chicken with parsnips, Meyer lemon and hazelnuts at elegant Café Martinique on Paradise Islan; and breast of free-range chicken stuffed with prosciutto, spinach and Parmesan with Marsala flavoured gravy at Graycliff, overlooking downtown Nassau.
Bahamians love chicken
According to zoologists, today's domesticated chicken (Gallus domesticus) is escended from the wild red jungle fowl. People have been enjoying it for at least 4,000 years; first in Asia, then in Africa and Europe. Chicken bones have been discovered in the pyramids. Today, the bird is found in kitchens throughout the world.
It's sid that Bahamians eat more chicken per capita than any other nationality. That's hard to prove but they do eat a lot. According to the poultry research unit at The College of The Bahamas, islanders consume at least 100 pounds, or 25 chickens per person pe year, and that doesn't include fast food.
At home, Bahamians prepare chicken as families do everywhere: roasted, baked, broiled, barbecued, stewed, poached and fried. But they also prepare it in ways with which other North Americans may not be familiar.
Bahamians dote, for example, on souse: pieces of chicken boiled with potatoes, celery, sweet pepper, onions, lots of allspice, bird peppers and lime. Souse has been described as either a chunky soup or a thin stew, but either way it's delicious, especialy served with lime-pepper sauce. Visitors can try chicken souse at virtually every Bahamian restaurant in town, including those cheek by jowl on Arawak Cay on West Bay Street, known locally as the Fish Fry.
You can also find Bahamian-inspired food at may restaurants that cater to North American tastes. For example, Bimini Road on Paradise Island features a Junkanoo chicken salad that includes grilled pineapple, roasted corn and Caribbean garlic dressing.
Poultry culture
"Chicken is a large part of culiary culture in The Bahamas and is often part of a typical Sunday dinner," agrees Jennifer Carey, co-owner of Jumbey Cafe on East Bay Street.
"You can add almost any flavour to it," adds Carey, including jerk spices, curry and allspice. One of her restaurnt's best-selling dishes is grilled chicken breast stuffed with crab meat and served with a cream sauce-a poultry-based version of surf and turf.
Virginia Nairn, chef at popular Montagu Gardens on East Bay Street, says chicken of one kind or another is amng her restaurant's most often ordered meals."You can always make a dish with chicken," she says.
Most popular of all is perhaps Nairn's calypso chicken. It's grilled, boneless breasts cooked with red peppers, tomatoes and onions that have been sauteed i lemon and butter and seasoned with herbs and spices. "It's colourful and very tasty," she says.
Chicken has wide appeal all over the world, says Philip Curtis, chef at The Indigo Cafe in the Cable Beach area. He should know because Indigo features interntional cuisine as well as sushi specialities.
"Every nationality seems to have their own recipes," says Curtis, who offers a Mediterranean-style herbed chicken variation, which is among the favourites at this chic restaurant. It's a tasty combination of hicken breasts marinated in spices and olive oil, lightly grilled, basted with pesto sauce and then quickly baked.
Asian influence
Asian fusion cuisine has been around for quite a while but it is still growing in popularity. Restaurants in the Cable Beac area, Nassau and Paradise Island have several top-notch restaurants specializing in this type of food, in which chicken is an indispensable ingredient.
On West Bay Street, Ichiban-Japanese for number one-has rapidly gained an appreciative clientele wit meals ranging from Chinese dishes and sushi and sashimi presentations to great steaks. Naturally there are plenty of poultry dishes too, including teriyaki and the popular kung pao and General Tso chicken. This dish is said to have been the favourite of Chinese warlord but most historians believe that story is a lot of hooey.
The legend is that Tso's wife cooked it up for her husband and his officers, after a military victory. It's doubtful there ever was a General Tso from Hunan Province in China or hat he gave his name to this delicious dish of lightly breaded chicken strips cooked in a spicy sauce.
More likely, it was invented by chef Peng Chang-kuei, who fled China after the communist takeover and opened a restaurant in New York, where he inventd several dishes based on Hunan's internationally recognized cuisine.
There's a fascinating story behind many chicken dishes, including a recipe created by William King, a beloved cook at the old Bellevue Hotel in Philadelphia, who died in 1915.
So the egend goes, a bored patron at the Bellevue once demanded "something new." Challenged, King combined bits of chicken, mushrooms, truffles and red and green peppers in a cream sauce. The delighted patron dubbed it "chicken-a-la-King" on the spot and so it hs remained.
Another chicken dish got its name because Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was superstitious. After winning a major battle in the year 1800 near the village of Marengo in Italy, Napoleon was famished and ordered a meal.
His chef, very low on supples, could only find a chicken, a few eggs tomatoes and crawfish. With these, the desperate chef whipped up a dish that has been called chicken Marengo ever since. Napoleon wanted it prepared for him after every victory thereafter. Today's recipe calls forchicken pieces fried in oil and garlic and sauteed with tomatoes and brandy, with a side order of crawfish.
Mediterranean flair
Back in The Bahamas, you'll find many poultry dishes on the menu at Capriccio Ristorante, the oldest Italian restaurant in Nasau.
Chef Anthony Johnson says chicken and pasta are favourites at Capriccio, mostly for great flavour but also because health-conscious diners like the idea of chicken prepared in low-fat olive oil.
Among dishes offered off-and-on as a special at Capricio's is an authentic chicken cacciatore as it's prepared in the Ancona region of central Italy.
Bell peppers, onions, mushrooms and black olives are sauteed in premium olive oil. Lightly grilled chicken pieces, a dash of tomato sauce and white wine are hen added and simmered. This "hunter style" of chicken goes together best with red wine and any pasta, says Johnson."On a busy night, we sell more chicken than any other dish," he adds.
Mediterranean-style chicken dishes are found on the menus of many retaurants around Nassau. Carmine's at Marina Village on Paradise Island offers no fewer than seven chicken dishes, including their typically gigantic presentations of chicken Marsala and chicken Parmigiana.
The pasta menu at Villaggio Ristorante at CavesPoint on West Bay Street, features a delicious penne with organic sauteed chicken and delicate, ear-shaped orechiette pasta served with chicken and Italian sausage in
a spicy chicken broth.
Roasted temptations
If roast chicken is more to your taste, Seaire Steakhouse on Paradise Island offers a celebrated marinated and char-roasted organic chicken breast.
Across the harbour on East Bay Street, Luciano's of Chicago serves delicious pot-roasted chicken, marinated and roasted in a clay pot, as well as gimbotta, a speciality dish of chicken and sausage, sauteed in olive oil with garlic, herbs, onions, sweet roasted peppers and roasted potatoes.
Anthony's Grill at the Paradise Village Shopping Center also serves oven-roasted and grilled chicken which is sasoned and glazed with a tangy in-house barbecue sauce, while Columbus Tavern, next to Ocean Club Estates on Paradise Island, offers herb-roasted Cornish hen and grilled tamarind chicken.
Or try roasted organic chicken breast with yellow rice and mild muhroom sauce at Cafe Matisse in downtown Nassau, a hugely popular restaurant with Bahamians on Bank Lane.
Further west on West Bay Street, the Travellers' Rest serves authentic Bahamian curried and fried chicken; while even further west, colourful CompassPoint Beach Resort's seaside restaurant will tempt you with a citrus-basted chicken breast served with peas 'n rice.
Local favourite
At The Poop Deck on East Bay Street, chef Rosemary (Rosie) Curtis has created a dish that she created from a recipe she ues at home. "Rosie's Steamed Chicken," in the Bahamian Specialities section of the menu, is a colourful concoction of sauteed vegetables-onion, celery and bell peppers-added to seasoned chicken stock and chicken pieces, simmered and reduced. It's served wth a side order of peas 'n rice or potatoes.
The Poop Deck, with two restaurants-one on East Bay Street and the other west, near Sandyport-specializes in fresh fish meals but also serves a full menu of meats and poultry.
Chicken is an especially popularalternative, says co-owner Eloy Roldan."At The Poop Deck we try to maintain a lot of local dishes and our spicy fried chicken and Rosie's chicken are very popular."
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