4 posts tagged “chicken”

oven fried chicken

There's nothing like some comfort food when you're feeling blue.  Which is why it was a good thing we had plenty of oven fried chicken leftover after our little Cubs playoffs party last Saturday.

I have been deluged with squash from our farm share lately, and the game seemed like a good excuse to whip up a big batch of butternut mac and cheese.  And of course we had to have coleslaw.  And what goes with coleslaw and mac and cheese better than fried chicken?  (Answer: possibly barbecued pork.  But I didn't think I could talk Jon into spending all day smoking pork so chicken would have to do.)

Since I'm still pretty "chicken" (GET IT???) to go all out and deep fat fry, and trying to at least put a cap on, if not reduce, the newlywed weight gain, I decided to go with the oven baked version.  I turned to my trusty "The New Best Recipe" cookbook from the folks at Cook's Illustrated.  Their recipe has 3 big secrets:

1. Use skinless chicken legs
2. Brine the chicken in seasoned buttermilk
3. Melba toast crumbs for the base of the coating. 

Oven Fried Chicken
adapted from The New Best Recipe
Ingredients:
1/2 cup salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons paprika
1 head garlic, cloves separated
3 bay leaves, crumbled
7 cups lowfat buttermilk
8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1/4 cup vegetable oil
5 ounces garlic flavored melba toast (about 1 box)
2 large eggs
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon dried thyme
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Instructions:
In a gallon-size zipper lock plastic bag, combine the 1/2 cup salt, sugar, paprika, garlic cloves, and bay leaves.   With a flat, heavy object, smash the garlic into the salt and spice mixture thoroughly.  Pour the mixture into a large nonreactive bowl, stockpot, or Dutch oven.  Add the buttermilk and stir until the salt is completely dissolved.  Immerse the chicken in the brine and refrigerate until fully seasoned, 2 to 3 hours.  

Remove the chicken from the brine and shake off the excess; place the chicken pieces in a single layer on a large wire rack set over a rimmed baking sheet.  Refrigerate uncovered for 2 hours.  (After 2 hours, the chicken can be covered with plastic wrap and refrigerated up to 6 hours longer.)

Adjust an oven rack to the upper-middle position and heat the oven to 400 degrees.  Line a baking sheet with foil and set a large wire rack over the pan.

In a food processor, pulse the melba toast until the mixture resembles coarse sand with some pebble sized pieces.  Move crumbs to a shallow dish or pie plate and and drizzle the vegetable oil over them; toss well to coat.

In a second shallow dish or pie plate, mix the eggs, mustard, thyme, 3/4 teaspoon salt, pepper, oregano, and cayenne pepper with a fork.

Working with one piece at a time, coat the chicken on both sides with the egg mixture.  Set the chicken in the melba crumbs, sprinkle the crumbs over the chicken and press to coat.  Turn the chicken over and repeat on the other side.  Gently shake off the excess and place the chicken on the rack in the pan.  Bake until the chicken is a deep nutty brown and the juices run clear, about 40 minutes. 

Serves 4 (or 8 with a hearty side of mac and cheese)

upscale cassoulet

You may not have been aware that you have been reading the blog of an award-winning chef, but now I must let the truth be known.  A couple weeks ago I entered Apartment Therapy/The Kitchen's braising contest, and last Friday I found out that my dish was selected as one of the winners!  I will soon be the recipient of a sunny yellow Calphalon cast-iron dutch oven, and a copy of Daniel Boulud's new book, Braise: A Journey Through International Cuisine.

The dutch oven-winning recipe was from my old standby, Cooking for Mr. Latte.  On that fateful night, we were having Heather and Johnny over for dinner and I had actually planned to make some lamb chops with asparagus and mashed potatoes, a kind of dry-run for the Passover meal I was preparing for.  (This was the same night as I tried out the honey nut cake.)  But at the last second I found out about the braising contest.  It was a perfect opportunity to try Amanda Hesser's "Component Stew," a recipe which had always intrigued me - but not enough to gather all the various and sundry ingredients it required.  But the prospect of free Calphalon was enough to motivate me to scrap my plans and run out to the store.

Amanda's Component Stew was inspired by a meal at Tom Colicchio's* restaurant, Craft, at which she was bombarded by her foodie friends with tastes of 18 different dishes.  Being a very opinionated eater (as well as cook), she didn't appreciate having her palate corrupted with so many random delicious foods that interrupted the gustatory path she had planned.   So she created this recipe as an antidote - many random delicious foods combined into one succulent and cohesive meal.

She points out that technically this is a braise, not a stew, but she didn't feel Component Braise had a good ring to it.  Personally I don't think Component Stew has a good ring either - this is food, after all, not an electronics manual.  What is the difference between a stew and a braise anyhow?  Both are methods that entail browning ingredients and then cooking them slowly with moist heat.  But for stewing you cover the ingredients completely with liquid, while braising uses a smaller amount of added liquid and allows the ingredients to cook mostly in their own juices and by steaming.  

The word braise always seems like a one of those combined words to me - like it's a combination of browning and... raising?  praising?  Really it should be a combination of browning and boiling but then the word would be broiling.  And that means something else entirely.  Plus you really don't want to boil your braise, ideally it should be kept at a bare simmer.  But brimmer just doesn't seem appetizing at all.  Turns out the word actually comes from the French word  braiser, which means to cook something over hot coals.  But... wouldn't that be grilling?  Aah, who knows.

The cooking time for this braise is not that long – about one hour total, followed by an hour rest and then a quick reheat.  The prep time adds another 30-40 minutes though – especially since I couldn't find cipollini and substituted pearl onions.  Amanda says this recipe is about simplifying your life (??) so if you can't find cipollini you can just skip them.  But this was for a contest!  I wasn't going to win any Calphalon with that kind of thinking!  I think it took me about 20 minutes just to peel all those stupid little onions.

the ingredients

She also suggests some other possible substitutions: bacon or pancetta for the sausage, which... well, where can you find pancetta but not italian sausage?? and this helpful tidbit: "If you can't get duck confit, use smoked duck breast."  Well thanks, Amanda.  I searched Whole Foods, and two other grocery stores, but there were no prepared duck products to be had.  Unless I wanted to buy a whole duck and smoke it or confit it myself, I was SOL on the duck front.  I decided to buy a pair of smoked turkey legs I found at the Cabrini Green Dominick's instead.  (This was the same shopping trip as my matzoh cake meal search - which I also ended up finding at that store.  You wouldn't think that the grocery store by one of Chicago's most notoriously crappy housing projects would have a better selection of Jewish foods than places in the Gold Coast, but there you go.)  I only used about half of one turkey leg, but the rest made a great pasta sauce the next day, slivered and sauteed with onions and some leftover mushrooms and cream. 

As soon as I got home I set about preparing my ingredients.  Normally I am not so organized with pre-slicing everything and putting each ingredient in its own little bowl before cooking, but when Calphalon is on the line I can get as Martha Stewart as the next gal.

browning my leeks and onions

Next it was time for the browning part of the braise.  I went about browning the sausage, chicken, mushrooms, leeks and onions in my trusty orange Le Creuset casserole.  Maybe I haven't totally mastered the use of enameled cast iron cookware, but I often do have trouble with things sticking or leaving browned bits behind.  Because each ingredient had to be browned separately, I was afraid all the browned bits left behind by previous ingredients would start burning and give a yucky flavor to the braise.  So I actually ended up deglazing the pan with a little bit of broth between each round of browning.  After loosening all the bits, I poured the resultant sauce back to my little container of broth, put a little bit more olive oil into the pan and continued browning.  Finally, everything was browned.  I laid all the ingredients in the pan, added the broth, covered it, and skipped off to clean the bathroom before our guests arrived.

The fanciest thing about this dish (besides the elusive duck confit that is) is the little sauce you serve it with.  After the braise has finished cooking, you add sherry and tarragon to the juices left in the pan and swirl it around for a few seconds before decanting it into a bowl to pass at the table.  The sauce was one of the best parts of this meal.  She says to serve the stew over a slice of ciabbatta or country bread, but I think we ended up devouring the whole loaf with all the extra slices that were passed around to soak up more of the scrumptious sauce after all the stew was gone.  We unanimously voted the name "Component Stew" off the island and renamed this delicious dish "Upscale Cassoulet."  I'm not sure what was so very upscale about it since I substituted turkey legs from Cabrini Green Dominick's for the fanciest element, but any dish that takes 15 ingredients and almost 3 hours to make and wins the cook a free pot and cookbook deserves a better name than "Component Stew," don't you think?

* You may also know Tom Colicchio as the bald guy from Bravo's trainwreck/cooking show, Top Chef.

Upscale Cassoulet (formerly known as "Component Stew")

a serving of cassoulet

from Cooking for Mr. Latte by Amanda Hesser
Ingredients:
2 Tablespoons olive oil
2/3 pound sweet Italian sausage, cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces
2 cups thickly sliced mushrooms (cremini, or any variety of flavorful mushroom like chanterelle, bluefoot, hen-of-the-wood)
3 thin leeks, halved, rinsed well and cut into 1-inch lengths
1 cup peeled cipollini
4 chicken thighs
Coarse sea salt or Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup chicken broth
1 fresh bay leaf (optional)
1 confited duck leg, meat cut from the bone, trimmed of fat and slivered
1 15-ounce can cannellini, great northern, or any kind of plump, creamy bean, drained and rinsed (use cranberry beans when they're in season; shell 1 1/2 cups and blanch them until tender)
2 Tablespoons Manzanilla or fino sherry
1 Tablespon chopped tarragon
4 thin slices country bread (ciabatta, if possible), lightly toasted

Instructions:
Pour 1 tablespoon olive oil into a large enameled cast-iron braiser, or similar pan (a thick sauté pan with a lid will work just fine).  Place over medium-low heat.  Drop in the sausage and let it sizzle away, rolling only when the sides turn color.  Brown all over.  If you have a splatter screen, this is the time to pull it out, as fat will be popping everywhere.  Spoon the sausage onto a plate layered with paper towels.

Add the mushrooms to the pan and brown on both sides.  Spoon into a bowl.  The pan may be dry by now.  You can drizzle in another tablespoon of oil.  Scatter the leeks and cipollini around the pan and increase the heat to medium so they color a bit; there's no need to cook them through because they cook more later.  Saute for about 5 minutes, then spoon them into another bowl.  Take the pan off the heat.

Season the chicken on both sides with salt and pepper.  Put the pan back over medium-high heat and add the chicken skin-side down.  Brown well, then turn and brown the other side, about 8 minutes total.  Put the chicken on a plate, then drain the grease from the braising pan.

Slip the chicken back into the braising pan and pour in the broth.  The liquid should just cover the base of the pan.  Add the bay leaf.  Adjust the heat to low and cover the pan.  Monitor the heat so that the surface of the liquid is wobbly with bubbles like a glass of freshly poured champagne.  You don't want it to boil.

After 20 minutes, spread the sausage, mushrooms, leeks and cipollini, slivered duck meat and beans (don't forget to rinse off those thick can juices) over the chicken.  Use a wooden spoon to gently nudge the different parts down in between the chicken.  The cooking juices should be pushing up the sides but not soaking the components.  Cover again, and continue cooking until the chicken is cooked through and the cipollini are tender, about 15 to 20 minutes.

At this point you can shut off the heat, cool it down and serve it the next day.  If you wish to serve it the same day, I'd let it cool for an hour or so.  This little rest gives the flavors a chance to blend and the meats time to reabsorb the moisture, which has cooked out.  When you're ready to sit down to dinner, heat it up over medium heat until it's bubbling, then use a slotted spoon to transfer everything to a warm serving dish.  Bring the juices to a boil.  There should be about 1 cup (don't bother measuring); if not, add a little more broth.  Taste and adjust seasoning.  Stir in the sherry and let it cook for a minute, then swirl in the tarragon.  Pour this into a pretty little bowl and pass it at the table, following the stew.

Everyone's place should be set with a shallow bowl.  As the stew and gravy are passed, have each person set a piece of toast in his bowl.  Spoon over the stew and then some of the fragrant juices.

Serves 4

jambalaya

Although I get a lot of my recipes from cookbooks and magazines, some of my favorite meals are recipes I've learned from friends and family.  And I certainly have a lot of these - not only the ones that have been passed along over the years, but a whole bunch that I gained last year when I got married.  Since I love to cook, my friend Juliet and cousin Jorie threw me a foodie-themed bridal shower, complete with Iron Chef games and a cooking lesson/demonstration.  And the best part was, all the guests brought a dish to share and a favorite recipe for me to keep!  My friend Jennifer even went beyond a single recipe, and bestowed me a whole cookbook of her family recipes, complete with photos and a cover illustrated by her adorable kids.  Who are themselves budding gourmets. 

Jennifer and I met back in my previous life when we were both secretaries in a hospital.  Though most of the meals we shared at work were of the arroz-con-pollo-from-the-cafeteria or chili-from-Clark-Dog variety, I knew Jennifer was a gourmet at home.  She had calphalon pots and the same fancy pants toaster my toast addicted Aunt Wendy has.  And it wasn't just the equipment either - the girl can cook.  She introduced me to chimichurri, the delectable Argentinian steak sauce made from parsley, garlic, and a magical combination of herbs.  And her cookies are to die for.

So I knew her cookbook would have some dogear-worthy recipes.  And I was not disappointed.  I decided to try her jambalaya recipe, one that she and her husband David have developed over the years, picking and choosing their favorite elements from the many versions of this dish in existence.  Their recipe is a Creole jambalaya, since it contains tomatoes - although if you follow David's low carb suggestion and cook the rice separately, it becomes the very rare "white jambalaya."  But I say, cook it all in one pot - that's the Creole way, and anyway it means less dishes to wash afterwards!

Creole or white, low-carb, or starchilicious, this is a recipe to make again and again.  Jon said it was one of his favorite kinds of dinner - spicy, rich, homey, and comforting.  As Jennifer says, this stew "warms the body and the spirit."  And it makes a great lunch the next day, too.

Jennifer and David's Jambalaya

• 1 pound andouille sausage (substitute chorizo or spicy italian sausage if you can't find andouille)
• 6-8 chicken thighs and/or legs
• 1 pound shrimp, deveined [I prefer to peel the shrimp before cooking, but Jennifer notes that a lot of the shrimp flavor is located in the shell.  If you want to get really anal you can set aside the shell pieces and cook them in a small pan with about 1/2 cup of water to make a little shrimp broth and then add the strained broth to the jambalaya pot with the shrimp.]
• 1 green pepper, seeded and coarsely chopped
• 2 stalks celery, trimmed and chopped
• 1 small onion, peeled and chopped
• 6-8 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
• 3 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 6 ounce can tomato paste
• 1 29 ounce can diced Roma tomatoes
• 2 cups white long grain rice
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 1/2 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
• hot sauce  [Melinda's Original Habanero Pepper XXXtra Hot Sauce is a favorite at David and Jennifer's house.  Jon and I like Cholula.]

drumsticks

I can't quite believe it yet, but despite the volumes of coleslaw we consumed last Sunday, the Bears lost the Superbowl. 

(The S-word still seems to be verboten around here, or at least no one's talking about it; it's like The-Game-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named.  Or maybe we're all just conserving our breath to use for heat in these frigid conditions.)

At any rate, the fans at our party celebrated the Bears' season in grand style.  When your husband is an artist, you become friends with the kind of people who consider everything a canvas, including a pan of brownies or a bowl of coleslaw.   (Not to mention the cunningly stencil-decorated birthday cake and the inadvertent beer can volcano-fountains provided by my own artistic friends.)  The brownies were decorated by Betsy to resemble a football field, complete with yardlines, goal posts, and two colors of plastic football players engaging in battle.  And the coleslaw Matt and Rachel brought (yes, this is Matt of giant cheeseball fame) was created with orange and blue shredded veggies and topped with a C-logo like a Chicago Bears helmet!

Matt's Bears Slaw

Such valiant efforts in the kitchen deserved a reward, and there's nothing like a hot snack at halftime to refresh your cheering reserve.  I prepared these breaded drumsticks before the game and stuck them in the oven a few minutes into the first quarter.  (Right after our one awesome moment of the game: Devin Hester's final kickoff-turned-touchdown of the season).