I often wish my cooking style was more “a little of this, a little of that.” When I try to combine fresh local produce and/or top-shelf pantry staples with joyous abandon and a little good olive oil and fleur de sel the results are generally underwhelming. How can so many good ingredients together be so dull? Sometimes the mix is wrong, sometimes the cooking method. Often things will be proceeding apace and I’ll second-guess myself and douse the dish with lemon, basil, vinegar, or cheese, knowing that if nothing else it will taste like one of those and that can’t be all that bad, except that those are accent ingredients for a reason and no one wants to eat a bowl full of balsamic vinegar (well, I don’t).

My desire to produce beautiful, delicious food and say “I just threw this together on the fly relying on quality ingredients and my rock-solid kitchen skills!” is partly due to Pinterest envy, and partly due to a belief that this (minus the boasting) is the essence of good cooking.  I’ve been reading Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal, which is a wonderful book that you should buy, and it is inspiring and instructive if you want to get better at making the food you have good.

Anyway, I am still shaky without training wheels (=recipes), which is why dinner tonight was such a triumph. I had on hand cooked quinoa, rapidly rotting grape tomatoes, a drawer full of corn, and the usual other suspects: onions, dessicated herbs, butter.

I sliced and separated half an onion into strips. I cut the kernels off one ear of corn and quartered about 10 grape tomatoes. I melted about a tablespoon of butter in a skillet, added the onions and cooked them gently over low heat til they caramelized, about 20ish minutes. Then I added the corn and some salt and pepper, decided it needed some liquid to cook in, and had a stroke of genius. Sweet corn should cook in sweet wine. I poured in a shot glass of Riesling, a shot glass of water, and then only narrowly avoided the steam burn my home ec (“Teen Living,” actually) teacher used to warn us about. “Waft, waft,” I heard her shout as I lowered my face into the deliciously boozy mist.

Covered the pan and let the corn cook on low heat for somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes. In between stirring and sniffing I chiffonaded about 15 leaves of basil and finely chopped 2 green onions. Once the corn seemed just cooked enough I tossed in the green onions and tomatoes, stirred gently, and let them cook for a few minutes, still on low heat. Then in with the quinoa til it just warms up and the tomatoes have begun to break down a little (I might skin them next time, since I hate errant tomato skins).

I took a trial bite and between the butter, sweet corn, sweet wine, and caramelized onions, this dish needed a dash of something sharp. I grated about a ¼ of a lemon’s zest into the pan, then squeezed about a half-tablespoon of lemon juice in and scraped all along the bottom of the pan. Into a serving bowl, top and toss with basil (you want a lot of basil). Perfect, perfect, perfect.

Melissa Clark has a new video up on the Times‘ dining section showing how to spatchcock a chicken. To spatchcock is to cut out the back and breast bones, which makes it possible to open the chicken and cook it flat. Chicken cooks faster and more evenly when spatchcocked (or butterflied, a more elegant name for the same technique). The Italians and French have been doing this for years and calling it “chicken under a brick,” because classic recipes weigh the flat chicken down with a brick.

Melissa roasts her chicken in the oven but notes that it can also be grilled. Grilling is the first way I encountered spatchcocked chicken, and it was so indecently delicious that I’ve never bothered to cook it any other way and felt compelled to share.

To me this is what grilled chicken is always supposed to be but never is. The meat is tender and holds the flavor of whatever you rub under the skin plus the subtle smoky flavor of the grill (it truly tastes smoky, something I’ve otherwise found hard to achieve without resorting to crutches like Liquid Smoke). The skin is crisped but not charred. It’s quick and easy to prepare and doesn’t require constant sweaty hovering over the grill. It won’t be ruined if you don’t manage to flatten it out completely, or can’t get the compound butter to distribute evenly, or leave it a couple minutes too long on the grill.

Grilled Spatchcocked Chicken, as adapted by my mother from here and here, and by me with help from Melissa Clark

1. Spatchcock: Watch the video above for courage and inspiration. Or dive right in: set a whole chicken on a cutting board, back side up, legs down. Using poultry shears, kitchen shears, sharp regular scissors, or a sharp knife, cut along both sides of the backbone and pull it out. Open the bird like you’re flinging open a set of French doors: pull each side out and open. Press down with your hands all along the insides to flatten the bird out. Flip over.

2. Schmear: Soften 2 tablespoons of butter to smearing consistency (think cream cheese) and with a fork mix in several teaspoons/a generous palm-full of chopped fresh thyme and rosemary. There are endless delicious variations: sage is good; so are lemon zest, a splash of lemon juice, and chopped parsley; a little Dijon mustard and a clove of minced garlic is kicky and also very good. Stuff, spread, and smear the butter under the skin.

3. Grill: Lay the chicken skin side up on a grill over a medium-hot charcoal fire. Cover and cook about 10 minutes, then flip. When whole bird is crispy and dark brown and clear juices run out when the thigh is pierced, the chicken is done, usually in 20-25 minutes.

P.S. Where does the word “spatchcock” come from? According to the Oxford Companion to Food, it’s a shortened form of “dispatch the cock,” indicating a summary order to kill and cook a chicken, or “dispatch cock,” indicating a chicken cooked with dispatch, or great speed.

Every family has their secret, and this is ours.

Fudge-bottom pie is my family’s signature dessert. The recipe is not casually shared. Within the family, that is. It is not shared at all with others. You learn it through an in-person, hands-on tutorial first; only then can you have your own hard copy of the recipe. I recall being told at one point that my grandmother had coaxed the recipe out of a diner owner in Madison, Wisconsin. So even if my ancestors didn’t create the recipe from scratch, at least we were part of a very small, very exclusive group of people who had access to it (nothing a child who moves a lot likes more than being in with the cool crowd).

Fudge-bottom pie makes its annual appearances at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and you better savor it then because the next time you’ll see it is the following November. Heresy of heresies, I think it would make an excellent summer dessert, since it’s served chilled. My dad once made my mom a miniature one for her birthday, which I believe was allowed to pass because my mom’s birthday falls between Thanksgiving and Christmas.There are Rules in our family, supported by Strong Opinions about how Things Should Be. This is one of many things I love about my family (nothing a child who moves a lot likes more than certainty). Breaking the pie rule to give my mom a dessert she adores but wouldn’t usually make for herself – time-consuming, also see above re: Rules – strikes me as a delicious example of true love.

To my great disappointment I discovered recently that the recipe, or a version of it, is available to any casual Googler. Generations of University of Wisconsin students have evidently enjoyed fudge-bottom pie, which originated in either the UW student union or the dining hall.

Since the secret is already out I figured there was no betrayal in sharing it further. But alas, as with many treasured family recipes, it’s a bit vague. The original copy is on an index card in my grandmother’s elegant spider-crawl handwriting, with no quantities given for the ingredients and only the gentlest suggestions as to how they might be combined. In the 90s a more precise version was typed up for those pie-makers requiring more instruction, with an addendum in my uncle’s neat block capitals: “Consume one or three Manhattans before beginning.”

That solid advice in hand, I asked my mom to send me the recipe, with plans to tweak and test the crust, fudge, and custard layers to make it easier to turn out the best version every time, since one of the pie’s charms is that it is never the same. Even two baked on the same day by the same person will differ.

The potential pitfalls are many: the fudge layer, poured hot onto a chilled graham cracker crust, can seep into the crust and work its way into the nooks and crannies between the cracker crumbs and undermine the pie’s structural integrity. Alternatively, the fudge can set up like concrete and become impervious to your attempts to serve and eat it, unless you are willing to use a hacksaw at the table, which I believe is also against the Rules. Custard is notoriously fickle, demanding a sure hand and a watchful eye. Get lazy with the whisking and it will break or curdle. Pour it on too soon and it will melt the fudge layer, creating an unappetizing oozing mess. Pour it on too late and it won’t spread properly. I presume the preparatory Manhattans are for girding yourself to do battle with custard. Whipping cream, fortunately, is easy. Just don’t overdo it and make butter.

A fudge-bottom pie that retains its shape when sliced, with the requisite layers, none of them curdled or concrete-like, is thus an achievement.

“Sure, play around with the recipe,” my mom said, “just don’t put it online.” “But it’s already out there!” “If it’s online it’s online, but you can’t put it online,” Mom clarified. “It would upset your grandmother,” she added, and that settled it.

And so I will say only that a graham cracker crust, chocolate fudge, and vanilla custard are a very good combination. The secret lives on. Unless, of course, you care to Google.