I love it when people recommend recipes to me that they’ve previously cooked and loved. Which is probably why I started reading food blogs and eventually writing my own. This recommendation is from one of my readers spacegirl, who wholeheartedly recommended Zuni Cafe’s method of dry brining chicken and the accompanying bread salad. If you have the forethought, it’s easy to make the dry brining making the chicken moist without the addition of oil or fat and the salt rub making it easier than wet brining a chicken.

The bread salad, whilst not that complicated, has a few steps to it and some fiddly bits but is well worth it. It’s like upping the crouton factor on your salad times ten which is how some people happen to like their salads. One thing that I always do is save the oil that sun dried tomatoes are marinated in for salad dressings. The added herbs always give it an extra boost of flavour and aroma and I always have people asking for the dressing recipes when I serve it.

The recipe is broken down into 5 steps, so that you can organise your time and do as much ahead of time as possible, bringing the final steps together just before serving. The resulting chicken is tender as tender can be, whilst still retaining the crispiest of skins. And serving it like this, heaving bounty style with the bread salad will only bring your applause when you bring it to the table, making the humble roast chicken most certainly posh dinner party food.

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