Unusually for me, this is a one pot meal, hence the very long title for an incredibly easy to assemble meal that got major thumbs up action from L., whose mouth was too full to compliment me in words. The hardest thing about this meal is finding the very best quality of bird you can. I got an organic, air chilled young chicken and it was lovely.
Broccolette is a new vegetable for me, a cross between regular broccoli and Chinese broccoli, and which essentially looks like regular broccoli with very long stalks. It apparently is also sold under the name broccolini. f you can't find it regular broccoli would taste just fine here.
This recipe will serve 2 people for dinner with a decent amount of breast meat left for sandwiches the next day and enough meat on the carcass to make a proper chicken noodle soup or 4 people if you increase the bulgur wheat to 1 cup and cook 2 bunches of broccolini. Also plan on nixing sandwiches and making chicken stock.
1 1-1.2 lb chicken
3/4 cup bulgur wheat
1 bunch broccolette, washed and stems trimmed
1/2 shallot, finely chopped
1 Tbsp grated ginger
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 tsps red miso
Salt
Boil some water. Put the bulgur wheat in a bowl and add enough boiling water to cover it. Set aside for 10-15 minutes while you prepare the rest of the dish.
Preheat oven to 350.
Grate the ginger into the olive oil. Mix to combine and pour half into the cavity of the chicken which you have placed in an oven safe dish large enough to contain it. Rotate carcass to distribute well on the inside walls; don't worry of some spills out into the pan.
Rub the remainder of the ginger oil over the chicken, onto the breast but also on the bottom. I say this because, to many people's amusement, I cook chicken and turkey upside down. You don't need to baste it during cooking because all the juices run downward and you will end up with moist, succulent breast meat.
Mix the chopped shallot and a little salt into the bulgur wheat which, by now, should have absorbed all (or at least most of) the water. Once this is combined, stuff it into the chicken cavity.
Bake for 1 hour. At this point in time, gingerly lift the chicken up on to one side and stuff all of the broccolette stems into the pan. Replace the chicken so that all of the vegetables are underneath the carcass. Add 1/3 cup water to the roasting pan and cook for an additional 30 minutes.
Remove from the oven. Mix 1/4 cup of the roasting juices with the 2 teaspoons of miso. Set aside, Split open the chicken and remove the bulgur wheat pilaf, Carve the chicken. Put everything on a serving dish and drizzle some of the pan juices over the slices of meat and the miso jus over the broccolette.