For you ding dongs, that’s mo-ho, not the Austin Powers mojo.

I do this one a lot at home, not because I like chicken all that much, but because I like the sauce. I probably should have been a saucier like the high strung guy from Apocalypse Now. The dude who goes in and makes stocks, soups, sauces, etc. That job is pretty rare these days but back in the old times it was more common. When I lived in Boston the restaurant Menton posted an ad looking for a saucier and I almost applied. I would have brought them some soup. There’s nothing I enjoy more. When I was a kid I lived off Chunky Soup and Dinty Moore. If I’m really on a roll in my small kitchen at home, I’ve got some beef or chicken stock going and then I’ll have that throughout the week for breakfast with a couple of eggs poached in it. Something from nothing, peasant food, one man’s trash is another’s treasure…So on and so forth. My favorite.

I went on a bit of an ice cream bender yesterday. Walking around the neighborhood a bit in the morning with my son, I stopped over at Milo and Olive and got him a scoop of vanilla. He didn’t want it, I didn’t want it to go to waste. That was breakfast. After dinner a skosh of some Straub’s mint chocolate chip remained. I put that down. The missus requested I go get some supplies at Ralph’s around 10 p.m. I decided to walk over because someone said walking after a big meal is good for you. On the way out the door my instructions were “Grab something cool, no nuts.” Rummaging a bit in the frozen section, I decided upon the classic Rum Raisin from Haagen Das. Back at home I was shamed for buying it. Hmm. For whatever reason it went down real easy and before I knew it, the whole pint was gonzo. Just a mere 840 calories. Not so bad. Growing up in Vermont, I naturally hammered on Ben & Jerry’s. My freezer always had several pints of the classics–Cherry Garcia, Super Fudge Chunk, Pistachio…Throwing down a pint is nothing.

So let’s move on to the chicken. Here’s what you’ll need:

2 whole chickens, preferably organic or heirloom

1 mega shallot

1 head of garlic

4 limes

2 large oranges

some fresh oregano

salt

pepper

dried ground cumin

dried ground coriander

olive oil

soy sauce

apple cider vinegar

Cut your chicken up, buttercup. You should have eight pieces from each chicken–two breasts, two thighs, two legs, and two wings. You’ll be left with the main carcass and the two wings tips if you do it right. Throw the carcasses in the oven right away at 375. You may ask why I don’t jack the heat a bit and the answer is because it turns my apartment into a goddam furnace even with central air.

I like to keep one hand for chicken, and the other chicken free when I’m doing all of this, that way I can use my clean hand to grab stuff and I don’t contaminate everything in the kitchen.

Once you have your chicken sections all ready to go, salt both sides of all the pieces and let them sit for about twenty minutes, then add the other dried spices to both sides. You know the pepper, cumin, and coriander. Transfer everything to a large bowl and add everything else. Cut the shallots and garlic as fine as you wish. I just take the stems off the oregano. I recommend a hand juicer for the citrus. You’ll need just a splash of the soy and even less of the apple cider vinegar. If I was put to gunpoint, I’d say a quarter cup of soy and a tablespoon of the apple cider vinegar. Use about a half cup of olive oil. It should look like this:

Then mix it all up with your hands. To make it look like this:

Once you’re here, cover the chicken and let it sit for a couple of hours to allow the juices to work their magic. It’s a bit like chicken ceviche.

Once we’re done, we’ll pull the carcasses out of the oven and then immediately throw them into the handy dandy pressure cooker. I like using this because it extracts the collagen from the stock just as well without my having to deal with a stock pot on the stove for hours in the summertime which only adds to the swelter. It also produces great stock quickly. Here’s a few snapshots of all of this:

Side note: I’m obsessed with not drinking tap water. We actually buy water, ten gallons at a time, at a place called The House of Living Water on the corner of Palms and Sepulveda. Tap water in L.A. has all kinds of nasty shit in it. I figure we have to bathe in it, which is bad enough, but I’m not going to cook with it or drink it. I’m proud to say my son has never drunk tap water. Anyway…

The humble Instant Pot. I use this thing more than any other piece of kitchen equipment because I’m always buying bones, or roasting bones, or making lamb shank, beef shank, etc. the cheaper cuts that necessitate long, slow roasting or braising. The Instant Pot cuts all the time down by a lot. Tough ass beef shank will braise in about an hour and fifteen minutes in this puppy as opposed to the oven which will take five hours. Yes, the oven result is better, but I don’t want to deal with it all in the heat and I have a busy life.

At any rate, after the chicken is done marinating, throw it in the oven. I separate the breasts and the boney bits into two pans because Jo likes the breasts cooked to oblivion and I don’t care for the breasts anyway. I go 375 for thirty five minutes. It’ll look like this when it’s finished:

You’ll notice the skin isn’t crispy. A typical mojo won’t have crispy skin, but that’s why Daddy’s Chicken Mojo is special. I take the boney bits and throw them into the trusty air fryer for ten minutes at 425.

While it’s crisping up I turn the oven off but leave the breasts in there and then reduce the sauce on the stove.

Don’t reduce too much. You’ll regret that later because the sauce is so good you’ll want to bathe in it.

Here’s the chicken out of the air fryer:

Better, not my best, but much better.

And here’s the table:

And my plate:

I served it with rice last night and nothing else. No vegetables. I got lazy. I’ve got to say, the sauce is drinkable. It’s so good. It’s because the chicken bones leech out all their goodness as it’s all coming together. We (me, Jo, Nana, Titi) had this with a little Bonny Doon orange wine (on sale at Whole Foods last week) and it was a perfect pairing.