Chapter 29 - Roast Chicken, King Style, Stuffed with Farofa and I am Almost Done with this Darned Book

"Woe to her! ... The blow had struck home to her heart, and, like the Copaíba, wounded in the core, she shed tears in one continuous stream"

Book:  Iracema by Jose de Alancar
Recipes:  The Brazilian Table by Roberts and Roberts

Roast Chicken, King Style, Stuffed with Farofa

For the dried fruit farofa:


1 1/2 cups dried fruit (apricots, figs, plums), roughly chopped
1 cup hot water
1/2 cup butter
2 tbsp oil
1/4 cup onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup garlic, pressed
3 cups cassava flour
1/2 cup onion confit
1/4 cup scallions (omitted accidentally)
Salt and pepper to taste


Soak the fruit in the hot water for 5 minutes or until soft, then discard the water.  Heat a skillet over medium high heat, melt the butter and oil and saute the onion for 3 minutes.  Add the garlic and saute for another 3 minutes, add 1/2 the fruit and sate rapidly mixing well.  

Pour the cassava flour through your fingers slowly, stirring constantly.  Don't just dump it in as I did, though, I'm not sure it would have made any difference.  Lower the heat and keep moving the flour from side to side for about 5-8 minutes.  Add the remaining fruit, onion confit, and scallions (unless you forgot to buy them).

For the chicken:

1 whole chicken
2 cups chicken stock
2 large onions, cut into eighths
4 tbsp melted butter
Salt and pepper to taste


Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Rub the chicken inside and out with salt and pepper.  Stuff the bird with 4 cups of dried fruit farofa.  Truss it up and bake it on the rack of a roasting pan on its back, and fill the pan itself with stock and onions.  Baste with butter every 20 minutes, and bake for 50 minutes.  Lower the heat to 375 and bake an additional 20 minutes without basting with butter.  Use a conventional thermometer to check for doneness (I used to advocate the digital thermometers, but broke up with them after my last overcooked turkey).  


This is roughly how the cookbook says to make this dish.  But since I already had some boneless, skinless thigh meat in the freezer, I defrosted that instead and made it my way.  Basically, the process was pretty much the same, except that I pounded out my chicken to a uniform thickness and wrapped it around the farofa, using some kitchen twine to keep it all in place. 

Kitchen helper Jay was in charge of chopping onions, making chicken stock, and taking pictures.  

I know I said in an earlier post that I would never make farofa again, but this recipe seemed to be moister, closer to actual stuffing as we know it.  Sadly, it still feels as though you are eating flour.  Again, the flavor was great, but Jay and I were adamant that it would have been much, much better if we'd put all that dried fruit into a cornbread stuffing mixture instead.  

About the book:


Nothing has changed since my last post (1 hour ago).  Brazil is still going to be invaded by the Portuguese for 300 years and Iracema is still going to die.  Ain't love grand.