My Chicken Surprise.
When we first moved to Belize a week ago, I met this really nice lady named Gloria. She sets up her BBQ grill on the beach a few blocks from our house and cooks chickens every day except Sunday and Monday. She told me she rests on those two days. You can buy a chicken plate for $10.00BZE ($5.00US) and they are really good. I have purchased chicken from her several times especially when we still didn't have our oven working yet.
Everything I need to bake my chicken.
Ready to go in the oven.
Now that our oven is working, I thought I would try baking a chicken myself. I found a very simple Belize recipe for cooking a whole chicken on the Internet. I needed one chicken, garlic powder, pepper and recado rojo. I had heard of the recado rojo before but I really didn't know what it was. Recado rojo or achiote paste as it is called is a blend of spices that usually includes annatto, Mexican oregano, cumin, clove, cinnamon, black pepper, allspice, garlic and salt. The annatto seeds are what give the paste the red color. I actually thought it was some kind of dry spice. I went to several different grocery stores and could not find recado rojo in the spice secton. So I finally asked for it. I was looking for a dry spice, when instead it was a paste. The package had no name on it and they had it up next to the cash register, so I would have never found it.
Chicken Feet
My baked chicken.
The first thing the recipe said was to wash the chicken. So I am washing this chicken I bought. Now grant you I have only cooked a few chickens in my life and I know sometimes they will stuff these extra body parts inside the chicken. So I am thinking to myself, I better check to see if there is anything inside this chicken that I need to remove before cooking. The first thing I pulled out was the liver. I knew there was still something in there. Then it was my chicken surprise. I really wasn't sure what they were are first. I pulled it out and quickly dropped them on the counter. I had never pulled anything that looked like this out of my chicken. It was two chicken feet or claws I guess is what they are actually called, yuck. I mean I know chicken have them, but I just have never seen them inside a chicken before. Seriously do people really eat this part of the chicken? While the chicken turned out really good and had a great taste, I think I will be going back to get my chicken from Gloria.
