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temperature reaches 135°F for medium-rare, about 45 minutes. Remove the roast from the oven and transfer it to a platter or cutting board to rest for 10 minutes. While the meat is resting, place the roasting pan over medium-high heat and pour in ½ cup of dry white wine or dry vermouth, scraping the pan with a wooden spoon to deglaze. Slice the meat and arrange it on a serving platter, drizzle the pan sauce over the top, sprinkle with a little salt, and serve with more salt at the table.

CHIX & BRIX: SALT BRICK-GRILLED SPLIT CHICKEN

SERVES 4

We embrace the urge to grill as a rogue moment of atavism in modern life. Our primitive faculties at play, we become dissatisfied with our indoor culinary selves. Flattening a split chicken under a brick of 500-million-year-old salt and cooking it quickly over an open fire makes good on all that grilling has to offer: simplicity and dramatic impact. The salt block compresses the poultry, making it cook more quickly and seasoning it at the same time. The result is a novel flash-fired flavor, crackling crisp skin, and firmer textured meat that reinvigorates the experience of eating chicken as an authentic form of self-expression. See Cooking on Salt Blocks for more on using salt blocks.

2 (4 by 8 by 2-inch) bricks Himalayan pink salt

1 whole chicken (about 4 pounds)

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 cloves garlic, halved lengthwise

Preheat a covered grill to medium heat (about 375°F). When the grill is hot, brush the grill grate thoroughly with a wire brush until it is clean, and put the salt bricks on the grate. Cover the grill and heat the bricks while you split the chicken.

Remove and discard any giblets from the cavity of the chicken. Place the chicken, breast side down, on a cutting board. With a large knife, cut through the skin down the length of the spine. This may sound gruesome, but unless you have a heavy cleaver and pinpoint aim to cleave longitudinally through the spine in a single masterful stroke, use the pointy tip of a sturdy chef’s knife to pierce the spine several times down its length, sewing machine style, in order to weaken it. Now you can split the spine in two by lining up the edge of the chef’s knife blade with the perforations you just made, and pressing down until the chicken splits into two symmetrical halves.

Wash the halves in cold water and pat dry with paper towels. Coat them with the olive oil and rub them all over with the cut sides of the garlic cloves. If you want, you can tuck the pieces of garlic under the edges of the skin.

Put the chicken halves, skin side down, on the grill grate and, using grill gloves or thick oven mitts (or sturdy tongs, if you have them), put a hot salt block on top of each half. Close the grill and cook until the chicken skin is crisp and deeply grill marked, about 20 minutes. Remove the blocks using the grill gloves, flip the chicken halves with tongs, put the bricks back on top of the chicken, close the grill, and cook until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the inside of the thickest part of the thighs registers 160°F, 10 to 15 minutes.

Remove the salt bricks, transfer the chicken to a clean cutting board, and allow it to rest for 5 minutes (the internal temperature should reach 165°F) before cutting it into parts and serving.

PORTERHOUSE AU SEL ET POIVRE

SERVES 4

If the restaurants that produce them are any indication, the superlative steaks of the world cannot be reduced to a simple formula. Consider Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecôte in Paris, where the brisk waiter actually serves you half a steak, then gives the other half to another person, and then, just as you are finishing the last bite of your first half, he brings you another half-steak right off the grill—a miraculous second coming. Consider Raoul’s in New York, where the experience of eating is suffused by an equally savory experience of sitting, drinking, observing, and conversing. The only way to rival these folks is to take matters into your own hands: an excellent steak, the best pepper, the perfect salt, and thou.