Poulet Rôti

When I was growing up, I was fascinated by everything that went on in the kitchen.

I hovered at my mother’s elbow, trying to get a better look. I asked every two seconds for a “job,” something she would gladly give–as long as it wasn’t something she wanted to do. Cooking with my mother wasn’t about learning: she called us her sous-chefs, but really, she just wanted us out of the way, mixing together ketchup and horseradish to make cocktail sauce or adding oil and eggs to ready-to-bake boxed cornbread mix.

I always assumed I would be like that: after all, I relish every step of the cooking process… why should I share? When I found out I would be cooking for the group in Paziols, I often imagined it as just that: me in my usual place in front of the stove, except stirring sauce for 17 people instead of two. How nice it is to be wrong sometimes.

I never thought I would find more happiness in the kitchen as I do when I’m cooking, but I’ve learned that it’s even better to watch someone else, someone who’s just finding their footing, start to put things together.

Some of the kids here couldn’t be less interested in cooking, and that’s fine. Sure, they’ll all have their turn rotating into the fold anyway, putting on a toque du chef and washing salad greens and chopping tomatoes. They’ll all make confiture à l’ancienne, jam made the old-fashioned way and ladled into glass jars to take home as a souvenir. They’ll all copy the recipes into their notebooks and have them years later in French, which some of them may have forgotten how to understand.

But some of the kids–one girl in particular, this year–are enchanted by cooking. The younger girls turn at my elbows the way I did with my mother, and I search for tasks to give them that aren’t too hard or too dangerous, but one of the older girls has become my sous-chef–my real sous-chef–and it was she who ended up blending together the beurre composé that made up the flavoring for the roasted chicken last night.

She has found a happy place in the kitchen, a place where she is totally at ease. I ask her to do something, in French, of course, and she completes each task–from zesting lemons and chopping potatoes to seasoning salad dressing to taste without me standing over her shoulder–with the same enthusiasm.

She’s nothing like me, moving a mile a minute, running around the kitchen to stop things from boiling over and ensuring that no one is touching my knives. She has such a complete sense of relaxation in the kitchen that I’ve found nowhere except swimming, holding my breath as long as I can and letting the world turn around me while I exist below the surface. She has found perfect zen behind the stove: I envy her it, but I don’t begrudge her one second. I love to watch as she learns, as she watches me and copies what I do, something that is essential when learning to cook in another language. I’m sure that some day she will, like me, find her place behind a stove of her own.

Poulet Rôti

4 yellow chickens
20 potatoes
2 Tbsp. butter
1 tsp. herbes de provence
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1 lemon, zested and cut in eighths
6 cloves garlic

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Wash the chickens and pat them dry. Wash the potatoes and cut into cubes with the skin on. Divide them evenly between two roasting pans. Season with salt.

In a bowl, combine the butter, herbes de provence, pepper, lemon zest and some salt. Add one of the cloves of garlic, minced. Rub the herbed butter over the chickens, including on the breast underneath the skin. Stuff the lemon eighths into the cavity of the chicken, and place them in the roasting pans on top of the potatoes. Add the other cloves of garlic, unpeeled, to the baking pans amongst the potatoes.

Season the outside of the chicken generously with salt.

Roast at 450 degrees for an hour and a half, tossing the potatoes occasionally in the fat that the chicken will render. Serve with spicy French mustard and crusty French bread, and be sure to thank your sous-chef profusely.