Just try it! This is no ordinary way of cooking chicken. Rather, the bird is baked and steamed at the same time, because the crust keeps all the moisture inside.
What follows is a basic recipe, my adaptation of a wonderful dish I have eaten at Cheong Liew’s restaurant, The Grange, in Adelaide. The chicken was stuffed with a mixture of its livers and exotic mushrooms, then enveloped in a crust and cooked to perfection. The presentation was spectacular. My guess is that, towards the end of the cooking time, pieces of puff pastry were attached to the sides of the chicken crust. These were removed at the table and set aside while the crust was ceremoniously ‘broken’. The chicken was then carved and served to each diner with a piece of puff pastry, some of the stuffing and a rich poultry gravy. Many Chinese restaurants offer a dish called beggar’s chicken, which is cooked in a similar way, but in clay. You can ‘Italianise’ this dish by preparing a sauce made of porcini mushrooms and a little cream to serve with the chicken. Or you can do away with the cream altogether, replacing it with a concentrated chicken stock.