Maine Sunday Suppa

Roasted Butterflied Orange Chicken

with crinkle cut baked sweet potato chips & a sauteed broccoli bok choy medley

Sunday is a sacred day for me.  It is the one day of the week that I can work in my kitchen from sun up to sun down. It is the only day that I am able to find the time to make all of the creations I've been dreaming up throughout the week come to life.  Not a soul in the house bothers me for a thing because they know what the reward will be for giving me uninterrupted time in the kitchen at the end of the day. 

As for Sunday Suppa, well...that is the quintessential Maine meal. We have bean suppas, pot roast suppas, baked ham suppas, spaghetti suppas, and if your lucky, seafood suppas.  For those of you who think I might be joking about the suppa thing, you are mistaken.  Depending on what part of Maine you are from it is either suppa or supper; which of course means dinner to almost everyone outside of Maine.

  Our folks from Down East or Northern Maine call it suppa.  Where I grew up in Southern Maine, just outside of Portland, it is supper.  I can not tell you what age I was when I learned that the word dinner was the appropriate word for supper, but I can tell you that I was well into my teenage years if not toward the end of them entering adulthood.  Sunday suppa, supper, dinner; whatever you choose to call it, is my favorite meal of the week!

This is a Sunday Suppa that I prepared late last spring.  I love a nice roaster chicken but I wanted to do something a little different.  I had just attended a cooking class where I learned how to butterfly a chicken and decided to give it a try.

This is probably a 4 to 5 pound chicken that I cut the back bone out of with kitchen sheers.  You can also do this with a with a heavy chef's knife or a cleaver but it is much easier with kitchen sheers.

Once you have removed the backbone, lay the chicken out, breast side up and flatten it with your hands and a firm pressure until you hear it crack.  Season the skin with olive oil, sea salt, cracked black pepper, fresh thyme, garlic powder, the juice and the zest of an orange.

Next, slice two large oranges and place the slices into the bottom of a large baking pan.  Top the orange slices with sprigs of fresh rosemary and pour about a quarter cup of chicken broth over the orange slices to keep them moist while roasting.

Initially, you will place your chicken in the pan on top of the oranges with the breast side down to ensure that the breast meat also stays moist while roasting.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and place your pan on a wrack that is positioned in the center of the oven.  Roast the chicken for about and hour and ten to twenty minutes depending on the size of the bird.  I use my trusty thermometer to tell me when my chicken is perfectly cooked.  I highly recommend using a thermometer over cutting into the chicken to be certain that it is cooked thoroughly.

While the chicken is roasting I prepare my sweet potatoes.  

With the help of this handy dandy tool that belonged to my Grandmother, I cut the sweet potatoes into thin crinkled chips and place then into a lined baking pan.  I season them with olive oil, sea salt, cracked black pepper, fresh thyme, garlic powder and smoked paprika.  

Then I prepare my vegetable medley

I cut up a medium size head of broccoli, 2 to 3 stalks and the leaves of bok choy.  In the last 5 to 10 minutes that the chicken is cooking, I start to saute the broccoli in a medium sauce pan with olive oil, sea salt, black pepper and a clove of garlic for about two to three minutes. Then I add a quarter cup of chicken broth and cover to steam for another three to five minutes or until you can easily stick a fork into the broccoli.  Once your broccoli is steamed add the bok choy to the pan, give the vegetables a quick toss and cook until the leaves of the bok choy begin to wilt.  To finish, add a tablespoon of unsalted sweat cream butter and a couple pinches of red pepper flakes for a little spice.

In the last 30 to 40 minutes of cooking time for the chicken, remove it from the oven and flip it so that it is breast side up in the pan on top of the orange slices.  Place the chicken back in the oven on the same rack and then place the pan of sweet potato chips right beside it. If you time this right, your potatoes should be done at just about the same time as your chicken.

This is a fun and incredibly delicious way to prepare a roaster chicken. Chicken pairs nicely with almost any citrus fruit.  Cooking both sides of the chicken on top of the orange slices as I have done here, allows the chicken to absorb the flavorful essence of the orange as well as keeping the chicken moist and juicy.  

I hope that you enjoy this recipe and consider serving it for your next Sunday Suppa!