F. Fowler - Fifty Shades of Chicken

The door of the Sub-Zero opens, revealing a kitchen filled with people nibbling on canapés and sipping wine. Ooh, a party. I’m relieved for once not to be the main course.

Blades appears distracted, chatting with his guests as he reaches for more canapés. Odd, there aren’t any canapés in here. Before I know what’s happening, he reaches discreetly inside me and pulls out my giblets. Now?

He deftly slides my liver out of its paper envelope, while appearing to focus on his conversation with a talkative fellow holding a napkin.

“Blades, what are you doing?” I whisper urgently.

He doesn’t answer, but looks around the room smiling benignly. He continues to fondle my liver with his fingertips until I can’t stand it.

He gently places my quivering offal into a skillet where some softened onions are waiting for me. Holy fucking shit… we’re cooking in the middle of a party? Everyone’s mingling and chatting, but I am not paying attention. He stirs my insides with a deft wooden spoon, around and around.…

I squirm and gasp as I feel a hardening in my heated organ.

“Always so ready, Miss Hen,” he whispers. I make a low hiss of longing. How can he do this with all these people here?

He nonchalantly carries my blushing liver to the food processor. Oh… how long will he keep escalating this? It makes me feel so—dirty.

He pulses the machine a few times, whipping me into a soft frenzy. My insides dissolve in ecstasy, my mind a spiral of pure sensation. I can’t hold it together any longer.

B’gawk , I groan as his long finger continues to hit the pulse button. I’m thankful that the room full of people seems completely oblivious.

He appears to be perfectly composed. This isn’t fair. He calmly spoons me onto toast and takes a long, slow bite, from which it takes me several minutes to recover.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” I giggle.

“You’d be surprised what I can do, Miss Hen.”

No, nothing about Shifty Blades surprises me anymore.

chicken liver crostini

SERVES 6

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 small yellow onion, peeled, halved, and thinly sliced

1 pound chicken livers, patted dry with paper towels and cut in half crosswise

½ teaspoon coarse kosher salt

¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons cream sherry or port wine

½ tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary leaves

6 slices country bread, toasted

Sea salt, for garnish

1 Heat the oil in a large skillet over high heat, then add the onions and let them get brown and oh so tender, about 12 minutes.

2 Add the chicken livers and salt and pepper and reduce the heat to medium; cook until the quivering insides of the livers have lightened from crimson to rosy, about 5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the livers to a food processor.

3 Turn the heat to high and add the sherry to the skillet with the juices. Cook, scraping up the browned bits, until the juices have thickened, 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in the rosemary.

4 Scrape the mixture into the food processor. Pulse to whip the livers until they are just broken up, but still chunky and wanting more. Spoon the liver mixture over the toast. Sprinkle with sea salt, and consume.

He gives me a conflicted look. My poor Shifty Blades—a domineering home cook who at heart is still a teenager struggling to make a decent bowl of Froot Loops, who feels unworthy of the gastronomy he sees in books and on TV… my lost foodie… it’s heartbreaking.

“Sorry about Julia,” he murmurs.

“I know you feel like you need her and all her recipes and advice. But I don’t think you do. I think you can make your own decisions without her.”

“You’re right,” he says quietly.

Whoa! Breakthrough.

“Really? No Mrs. Child?”

“No more.”

He lays me down in parts on a soft layer of berries. I try to collect myself and let this information infuse. The memory of the time he first cooked me on a bed of cherries fills my mind. That was an eternity ago.

“You are the most beautiful, toothsome, versatile, and cookable food I’ve ever had the good fortune to create with. You’ve never failed me, Chicken. I can’t imagine a meal without you.”

What? What is he saying? My skin flushes bright red.

“I want to taste you every day of every week. I want you to be more than my Ingredient. I want you to be the center of everything I do from now on. I crave you, Miss Hen.”

“Are you asking me what I think you are?”

“Chicken, will you be my Specialty?”

cranberry baked chicken with apple cider

SERVES 4

1 cup apple cider

½ cup dried cranberries

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar or white wine vinegar

1 cinnamon stick

1-inch slice peeled fresh gingerroot, smashed with the flat side of a knife

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

3 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken parts, patted dry with paper towels

1½ teaspoons coarse kosher salt

2 tablespoons cold butter, cut into pieces

Cooked wild rice, quinoa, or couscous, for serving

1 Preheat the oven to 450°F. Combine the cider, cranberries, vinegar, cinnamon stick, and ginger in a saucepan over medium-high heat, and season with the pepper. Bring the liquid to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer until the cranberries are very soft and the liquid is reduced by two-thirds and has a syrupy consistency, about 20 minutes. Discard the cinnamon stick and ginger.

2 Season the chicken with the salt. Lay the parts in a roasting pan, skin side up. Spoon the cranberry mixture over the parts, then dot with the butter. Roast until the chicken parts are browned around the edges and cooked through, about 40 minutes. Serve up with rice, quinoa, or couscous, and enjoy.

LEARNING THE ROPES

You can make this with all white meat (choose bone-in breasts) or all dark meat (choose thighs and/or drumsticks). Or use a mix of parts and satisfy chicken lovers of all inclinations.

He’s holding a long, detailed contract. Holy shit.

“The publisher sent the paperwork this morning. My recipes won them over immediately.”

I think I’m in shock. I try to imagine how readers would react to… what Blades does. To me. Surely the general public would find it too strange, too dark, too twisted.

He smiles his sly smile. “They want my cookbook badly. And they’re going to give me a lot of money for it. Especially since I turned them down the first time.”

Turned them down?

“What changed your mind?”

“You did, Chicken. They wanted me to cover all kinds of dishes and Ingredients. But it’s not about Ingredients for me anymore—it’s about my Specialty. This book isn’t just my cookbook. It’s yours, too. It’s our baby.”