🍗 Roast Chicken, Bloody Beets, and Reinventing Life

Hello, friends.

This week I made the Roast Chicken with Lemon and Butter—a Bourdain classic—and served it with Roasted Baby Beets with Red Onion and Oranges (both from Appetites). The kitchen smelled like crispy fat laced with citrus. After freeing the beets from their skins post-roast, my hands looked like I’d just come from a crime scene of my own making.

Roast chicken is one of those meals that feels like an offering. You don’t make it unless you’re trying to feed something bigger than just your body. I only make it on special occasions. Not because it’s difficult—it’s not—but because it’s a whole animal. That makes it feel ritualistic somehow.

In late summer, I pair it with a stone fruit panzanella that is one of the best things about summer. That version is a celebration: of surviving the heat, of the slow promise of fall.

But this chicken—I made it for people I love. For my husband. For a dear friend. For all of you. While I was shoving slabs of butter under its skin, I thought about A Cook’s Tour, and how Anthony made himself watch the animals he ate being slaughtered. Watching his face during those scenes is fascinating—he teeters between composure and collapse. There are moments when he looks like he might cry, or puke, or both.

Even spared the off-camera gore, I still have to face the truth: there’s an animal in my kitchen. One with the bones for standing upright. Muscles, fat, and skin designed to protect those bones. It’s a sacred trust, cooking something like that. I promised to make sure none of it went to waste—and I didn’t.

I also made it for the ghost, hovering somewhere near the oven, judging my string-less trussing technique and whispering, “Don’t fuck it up.” And I didn’t.

The chicken came out golden and crisp-skinned, the meat bathed in butter, perfumed with thyme, bay, and lemon. The beets—sweet, earthy, and unapologetically homicidal in their mess—were sharpened with slivers of red onion and the tartness of ripe orange. Everything was perfect.

We dined al fresco. This time of year, there’s no better option. Outside, it smells like warm grass, red dirt, and clean air. In two months, it’ll be hot enough to sear a steak on the patio table, but right now it’s perfect. Our guest, a beloved friend, set the table and snapped photos of the food, of me hamming it up in the kitchen. Classic rock floated from the Bluetooth speaker, palm fronds danced in the breeze, and that feeling settled in. You know the one—contentment, deep and unbothered.

I think about that quote sometimes. Especially now, as I’m reinventing my life. That kind of rootedness is beautiful, but I also know it’s time to shove out of my comfort zone. Sometimes the answer to life is just… go somewhere else and experience it. Other times, the answer is a piece of really good chocolate.

Also? Fuck that chicken for splattering fat all over my clean oven. Roasting it at 450 degrees—what the hell was Bourdain thinking? Thank the gods the beets didn’t splatter.

And for anyone who needs the reminder: something as simple as roasted chicken can carry all that weight—and still taste like grace. Even if you now have to clean your oven.

Until next time—
Bleed your beets, salt your bird, and be sure to feed your ghosts.

In reverence and rebellion,
Michelle Davis
Your kitchen medium