You will need:

1 whole chicken
650g brown mushrooms
750g egg noodles
200g butter (room temperature) plus a tablespoon
250ml of white wine
750 ml heavy cream
1 shallot
2 lemons
1 head of garlic
3 sprigs each of oregano, rosemary, thyme
1 big bunch of fresh dill
1 tbsp of dried khmeli-suneli spice blend
Coarse salt & fresh ground pepper

You will also need:

A deep roasting pan
a few medium-sized mixing bowls
a baster or a ladle
a dutch oven
tinfoil


You’ll want to serve this with:

A Georgian ‘orange’ wine such as Rkatsiteli or similar.

Recipes similar to this one seem to pop up in every bloc community cookbook; bloc communities being the historical Ukrainian immigrant settlements dotted across the Canadian prairies. I made this version at a retreat for Ukrainian diaspora friends from North America. We met in an online support group a few months after russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and a year later we gathered at my family cottage in the Canadian shield. Our friend Nikki from California brought a couple of bottles of beautiful Georgian orange wine, which paired perfectly with the herbaceousness of the dill and the richness of the chicken fat, mushrooms, and cream. ‘Orange’ wine is wine made from white grapes (not citrus oranges – ‘orange’ refers to the pretty amber colour of the finished product) that spends time fermenting on the grape skins, similar to red wine. This results in a full-bodied white wine with the structure and tannins of a red wine – perfect for rich and fatty dishes with white meat, such as this one.

Method:
Preheat your oven to 300F.

Finely mince shallot, garlic, and the fresh rosemary, oregano and thyme. Zest and juice one lemon, mixing with the alliums and herbs in a large bowl. Mix in 200g of room-temperature butter, salt & pepper, and khmeli-suneli; combine everything well to create a loose compound butter. Set aside.

Wash your hands well and with your chicken, gently move your fingers under the skin around the neck, creating space between the skin and the meat as you move from the breasts to the drums. Flip the bird over and do the same around the back. Grab your bowl of the butter mixture and scoop out the mix with your hands, filling in the space you just created under the skin, working all the way around the chicken. Use about 80% of the mixture under the skin and finish off the last bit of butter by rubbing it on the outside of the skin around the bird. You should have a nice layer of compound butter under the skin and a thin layer on the outside as well.

Wash and prick your remaining lemon a few times with a fork. Place this in the bird’s cavity. Place the chicken in a deep roasting pan and put it in the oven at 300F. Set a timer for one hour and thirty minutes (this is when you’ll check the chicken and baste it) and another for two hours (after which you’ll remove it from the oven and tent it with foil). The chicken will be in the oven for a total of two hours, and resting under foil for fifteen minutes.

In the meantime, chop your fresh dill and thinly slice your mushrooms. In your dutch oven, throw a tablespoon of butter and melt on medium heat, and place your mushrooms into the pot. Cook on medium, stirring often until they’re lightly browned and softened. Once browned, remove from heat and wait until your two hour timer goes off and you pull your chicken out of the oven.

Take your chicken out and with tongs, remove onto a serving platter and tent with foil. Your chicken should rest like this for about fifteen minutes.

Pour the chicken drippings from your pan over the mushrooms in your dutch oven, turn temperature back to medium and add a cup of water, a cup of white wine, the noodles and the heavy cream. Cover and cook for five minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. Remove the lid and throw your dill into the noodles and mushrooms. Don’t cover it. It should be bubbling persistently, so make sure to be continually stirring to avoid it sticking to the bottom. Reduce the liquid to a creamy sauce, about three more minutes. Remove from heat.

Take the foil off your chicken and carve it on the platter. Serve atop a bed of noodles and a generous glass of Georgian wine. Smachnoho.