Zuni-ish Roast Chicken Salad
A shortcut for making one of my favorite California dinners
Happy July! I’m out of town for most of the month (stepping back into my old Brooklyn life and catching up with colleagues, friends, and editors in NYC). But just because I’m not in CA doesn’t mean I’m cooking differently. This week, in fact, the family requested my twist on one of California’s most beloved dishes—Zuni Café’s roast chicken on a salad of bitter greens and fresh croutons with lots of garlic, scallions, currants, and pine nuts. My shortcut recipe is especially useful in summer, when you don’t want to have your oven on for over an hour, so I thought I’d share it with all of you. Happy cooking!
If you’ve ever been to San Francisco’s iconic Zuni Café, chances are you’ve ordered their roast chicken. Listed on the menu as “chicken for two roasted in the wood-fired brick oven; warm bread salad with scallions, garlic, bitter greens, dried currants, and pine nuts,” the dish is by far the restaurant’s most famous offering. It’s so important, in fact, that when the oven was down for repairs earlier this month, Zuni’s website ran a banner across the top of their home page warning potential diners that the chicken would not be available on those dates (see above). For some, it seems, there’s no point in booking a table at Zuni if you can’t get the chicken. (Personally, if I couldn’t get the chicken, I’d go with one of the restaurant’s great pastas instead.)
While I love any excuse for a dinner at Zuni, work and parenthood (and my budget) keep me from going as often as I’d like. Over the years, I’ve tried to make the chicken myself following the very helpful recipe in the Zuni Café Cookbook. The problem is that the recipe takes a very long time (you need to salt the chicken the day before and roast it for up to an hour) and even when I do all of that, it doesn’t turn out quite right—no matter how hot my oven gets, it can’t replicate the restaurant’s wood-fired brick hearth.
But the chicken itself is not the only reason I love this dish. In fact, at least half its magic comes from the salad the meat is served on, an aromatic, sweet-savory mix of greens and homemade croutons dressed in all the chicken’s juices. So eventually I developed my own twist on the dish, one that bumps up the flavors in the salad a little bit and tops it with delicious (and much easier) roast chicken thighs. The result isn’t quite the same as the original, but it’s still absolutely delicious—and easy enough that I sometimes make it on a weeknight.
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Zuni-ish Roast Chicken Salad with Toasted Bread, Bitter Greens, Scallions, Garlic, Currants, and Pine Nuts
I’ve made the chicken element of this dish many ways over the years. The version below is an all-seasons, all-markets option, but I’ve also stuffed compound butter stuffed between the chicken’s skin and flesh (green garlic and Meyer lemon zest are great additions), added fresh thyme to the garlic here (an element from the restaurant’s version) and even skipped the add-ins all together. I’ve also made it by pan-searing chicken thighs, following the fantastic method for the Canal House’s chicken thighs, and prepped the bread in a toaster oven; this way I don’t have to turn my oven on at all. But the best way to ensure that the dish has great flavor is to start with a great chicken; if you splurge on free-range birds raised on good feed, I promise that you’ll be able to taste the difference.
Serves 3–4
6 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
6–7 garlic cloves
Kosher salt
½ large loaf crusty bread, such as a whole wheat boule
Extra-virgin olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
1 handful dried currants (or chopped raisins)
Red wine vinegar
4–5 scallions
1 large handful pine nuts
2 tablespoons champagne vinegar, plus more to taste
4 cups lightly packed bitter greens, such as a mix of frisée, escarole, and radicchio
Pat the chicken thighs dry and set them on a plate lined with a paper towel. Roughly chop 3 of the garlic cloves and crush them lightly with the side of the knife. Use a finger to loosen the skin on the top of each thicken thigh, to create a little pocket between the skin and the meat, and insert ⅙ of the garlic into each thigh, pressing it out to spread it around under the skin. Generously salt the chicken and set it aside to come up in temperature a bit.
Preheat the oven 450°F. While the oven is heating, cut the crust off the bread, then cut or tear the bread into large chunks, about 2”across. Spread the pieces on a foil-lined sheet pan, drizzle them with 2 tablespoons of olive oil, season them with salt and pepper, then toss them to distribute the oil. Toast the bread in the oven, flipping the pieces once, until they are lightly brown but not burnt, about 8 minutes total (check the undersides as you go, in case the pan is very hot and the bottoms are browning faster than the tops).
While the bread is toasting, put the currants into a small bowl with enough warm water to cover and add a big splash of red wine vinegar; let them soak for 10 minutes, then drain. Thinly slice the remaining 3-4 cloves of garlic and cut the bottom 2/3 of the scallions (the white and light green parts, along with some of the darker green) crosswise, on a bias, into thin slices.
Pat the chicken thighs dry once more, transfer them to a casserole dish, and drizzle them with olive oil. Flip the pieces a couple times, so they’re well oiled on both sides.
When the bread is done, set it aside and roast the chicken thighs until they reach an internal temperature 170°F, 25-30 minutes for large thighs; this slightly higher temperature will help break down the tougher thigh tissue. (If the meat is finished before the skin is golden, pop the thighs under the broiler for a minute or two to crisp them up.)
While the chicken is cooking, prep the salad: Heat about 1 tablespoon of olive oil in medium pan, add the sliced garlic and scallion, and cook gently, on medium-low, until softened, about 2 minutes. Stir in the pine nuts and cook until they are a little toasty, about 1 minute, then turn off the heat and add the drained currants; set everything aside.
When chicken is done, let it rest and finish the salad: Tear the toasted bread into bite-sized pieces (about 1”–1½”) and put them in a casserole dish. In a small bowl, whisk together 1/4 cup of olive oil and the champagne vinegar, then drizzle about half of the dressing over the bread and toss it well. Spoon a good amount of the rendered chicken fat from your roasting pan over the bread and toss it well. If the croutons are still relatively dry and crispy, or don’t have a lot of flavor when you taste one, mix together a couple tablespoons of warm water and two big pinches of salt and drizzle that on the bread as well. Add the scallion-garlic-currant garlic mixture to the bread, mix well, then put the entire pan in the oven to warm the bread for 5 minutes.
While the bread warms, dress the greens in the remaining vinaigrette. Spoon the remaining chicken fat (and any crispy bits from the bottom of the pan) onto the greens and toss. Taste the greens and add more vinegar as needed.
When the bread is done, add it to the greens and toss everything well. Serve the chicken thighs directly on the salad, or cut the meat off the bone in large pieces and use them to top the salad.
Have a Zuni memory of your own? Thoughts about the recipe? Leave a comment:
More California Recipes to Cook This Week
Over the past few weeks I’ve become obsessed with the Marinated Feta with Spice-Roasted Tomatoes and Grapefruit from the new Kismet cookbook. It’s so good that I went out and bought all kinds of spices (to add to the friend-of-a-friend’s kitchen I’m cooking in this week) so that I could take it to a potluck dinner tomorrow. If you’re looking for something sweet to enjoy afterwards (or after your Zuni-ish chicken), look no further than the Pavlova with Apricot Curd and Blueberries from Becky Sue at Baking the Goods. (I recently had the opportunity to work with Becky on a photo shoot, and I can’t wait to dig through the rest of her blog.)
From the Archives
The bread salad for the Zuni-ish chicken got me thinking about another bread-based salad, the Crispy Peach-Tomato Panzanella I shared last summer. It’s the perfect way to celebrate the start of good tomato and peach season!
Photos: Georgia Freedman, screenshot from Zuni Café’s website, Georgia Freedman