Short Stories: Jacket Chicken

One day, Moe offered to cook dinner for his roommates, and he enquired about what they wanted him to make for them. They argued for ten minutes over what they wanted, each of them offering different suggestions and each of them rejecting ideas from the other people. There was a person who wanted homemade pizza, but another one that did not; then there was one who requested a casserole, but that proved to be unpopular with everyone else.

Moe turned his back to do something else when the group huddled together to talk quietly to themselves, then finally, someone called out "we would like jacket chicken for dinner". Moe had no idea what the meal they were requesting was, but Moe agreed to make it anyway.

When the others had all left for the day, Moe was still wondering what sort of meal "jacket chicken" even was, so he did some research for a recipe, yet several searches for it turned up nothing. After spending three hours on the matter and now bored, Moe decided to take a literal interpretation of the suggested meal.

"I know!" he exclaimed. "Jacket chicken is chicken cooked in a jacket! That is what I will make!"

Fortunately for Moe, there was a chicken in the fridge he could roast, and better yet, there was a jacket from one of his roommates that would be perfect for cooking the chicken: it was big enough for the chicken yet small enough to fit in the oven; most of the jacket was also made of a foil-like material, and any part of the jacket not made from that particular material Moe decided he would just cover with regular foil. He subsequently spent a half hour readying the jacket and putting herbs and spices on the chicken.

With the chicken prepared in the jacket, Moe placed the bizarre concoction in the oven and let it roast for the next couple of hours. The chicken cooked surprisingly well in the jacket, and by the time the cooking was close to completion, Moe had finished the potatoes, gravy, and broccoli to go with the chicken; and all his roommates had arrived home just in time for dinner.

"Smells good Moe!" one of them said. "Hope it tastes good too!"

"It will!" Moe called from the kitchen. "Don't get up, I'll be bringing your plates in myself! You'll be surprised with the dinner!"

They did not have long to wait for Moe to bring them their meals, for he brought them all in five minutes later. Everyone was surprised with what Moe had served them, as they were expecting something else, but no one complained and they all tucked into their food.

"So," began Moe ten minutes later. "What do you think?"

"It's great," his friend Matt replied, with murmurs of agreement from the others. "Only one thing, I thought we suggested jacket chicken, not roast chicken? Not that it matters...this is great! Although for some odd reason I think I can taste perfume in it."

"Oh, this is jacket chicken," Moe responded. "I roasted the chicken in Sally's jacket; the extra taste is probably from when she was wearing perfume and her jacket yesterday."

"WHAT?" was the collective response, combined with the dropping of forks.

"Moe, you're joking right?" asked Matt. "Jacket chicken is just boneless chicken embedded in mashed potato and then baked. You honestly didn't roast a chicken in Sally's jacket did you?"

"I did," answered Moe. "I didn't know what it was! After not being able to find out, I took you guys seriously and roasted a chicken in a jacket. Sally's was the only one that would fit in the oven and not catch fire...although juice did leak and get into the underside of her jacket."

"Gee...thanks Moe!" said Sally angrily as everyone got up. "It cost me £100, so that's a new jacket you owe me!"

"Not to mention another dinner, where you'll be supervised," said Matt. "I don't feel like chicken anymore, I'm off to the burger bar down the road; anyone else want to come?"

Everyone except Moe nodded in agreement, and they then they left, leaving their half-eaten jacket-roasted chicken dinners on their seats. Moe, meanwhile, merely finished his dinner and pondered their reaction to the reality of the meal.

"Hey," he said to himself as he began to clear everything away, putting Sally's ruined jacket in the garbage. "The important thing is that they said it was great!"

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This is the first of my "Short Stories" series; a series of random, one-post stories. Jacket Chicken was inspired by a brief line in a scene from the television show Red Dwarf (search for the term "spare jacket" on this page), hence the strange plotline. As for "jacket chicken" as a real-life meal...the description by the Matt character is something I made up on the spot. Tell me what you think!