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For this preparation, the chicken must be split open and pounded flat. The butcher can easily do it, but so can you, following the directions in the recipe. Before it is grilled it must be rubbed with peppercorns, and marinated for at least 2 hours in lemon juice and olive oil. It’s an ideal dish for a cookout because you can prepare the chicken in the kitchen, put it with its marinade in one of those plastic bags with an airtight closure, and take it with you. By the time your fire is ready later in the day, the chicken will be ready too.

For 4 to 6 servings

A 3½-pound chicken

1 tablespoon black peppercorns

⅓ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

OPTIONAL: a charcoal or wood-burning grill

Salt

1. The chicken must be flattened either by you or the butcher into a shape that will look more like that of a butterfly than of a bird. If you are doing it, place the chicken on a work counter with the breast facing down. Using a cleaver or a chopping knife, split it open along the entire backbone. Crack the breastbone from behind, spreading the chicken as flat as you can with your hands. Turn it over with its breast facing you. Make cuts where the wings and legs join the body, without detaching them, but for the purpose of spreading them out flat. Turn the chicken over, the breast facing down again, and pound it as flat as you can, using a meat pounder or the flat side of a cleaver.

2. Wrap the peppercorns in a towel and crack them with a mallet, a meat pounder, or a hammer. If you have a mill that can crack peppercorns very coarse, you can use that instead. Put the chicken in a deep dish, and rub the cracked peppercorns into it, covering as much of it as you can. Pour the lemon juice and olive oil over it, and let steep for 2 to 3 hours, turning it and basting it from time to time.

3. If cooking the chicken in an indoor broiler, preheat it at least 15 minutes in advance. If using charcoal, light it in sufficient time to form a coat of white ash; if using wood, in time to produce a substantial quantity of embers.

4. Sprinkle the chicken with salt, and place it on the broiler pan, if indoors, on the grill, if outdoors, with the skin side facing the source of heat. Cook until the skin becomes colored brown, then baste it with a little of its marinade, and turn it over. Turn the bird from time to time until it is fully cooked. The thigh must feel very tender when prodded with a fork. The cooking time varies considerably, depending on the intensity of the fire, and on the chicken itself. Should you run out of liquid from the marinade before the chicken is done, baste it with fresh olive oil. When it is ready, sprinkle with fresh-cracked pepper, and serve at once.

Filleting Breasts of Chicken

BREAST OF CHICKEN has a delicate texture and fine, mild flavor comparable to that of veal scaloppine. Scaloppine are pounded thin to permit the most rapid cooking; boned chicken breast is too fragile to be pounded, but it can be converted into scaloppine-like slices by filleting. When you use the method described here, chicken breasts can become an inexpensive but no less fine alternative to veal, adaptable to the numerous ways one can prepare scaloppine.

1. A chicken breast is sold covered by two layers of skin, the fatty, yellow outer one, and a very thin, membrane-like inner layer. When you pull these away with your fingers you will find them attached at the breastbone and at the sides of the breast where the rib cage was connected. Cut them loose from both places and discard them.

2. Run a finger along the upper part of the breast where the wing used to be attached. Feel for an opening. You will find one where your fingertip can enter without any resistance: It is the space between the two muscles, a large one and a small one, that lie cupped, one over the other, and that constitute each half of the breast. You must detach them, one at a time. Detach the larger muscle first, severing it with a knife from the side of the