Chicken and Winter Vegetables

Prep: 15 Min
Cook: 1 Hr
Rready: 1 Hr 15 Min

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons margarine or butter
2 to 4 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, sliced
2 stalks celery, diced
3/4 cup sliced fresh mushrooms
4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
4 or 5 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
Green beans
2 cups chicken stock
A tiny splash of vermouth or white wine
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 bay leaf

Directions:

1. Season the chicken with additional salt, pepper, thyme, and cayenne. Set aside.

2. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Melt the margarine or butter in the skillet. Stir in the garlic for about 30 seconds. Stir in the onion, celery, and mushrooms, and cook until tender but firm.

3. Set vegetables aside, and cook the chicken breasts in the skillet 8 to 10 minutes on each side, until juices run clear. Set chicken aside.

4. Deglaze skillet with stock and vermouth, scraping up the fond. In a large sauce pot, mix in the potatoes and green beans and add the cooked vegetables and chicken. Pour in the deglazed liquid and fond from the skillet. Season with salt, thyme, cayenne pepper, and bay leaf, making sure the bay leaf is submerged in the liquid. Cover, reduce heat to low, and simmer 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until potatoes are tender and some of the liquid has been reduced. Remove the bay leaf before serving.

Personal Note: I just happened to have everything this recipe calls for in our remaining vegetable reserves for the week. It's proving an ideal supper for today--it's hearty, simple, and warms you up with heat and savory flavors. Would probably be good with crusty bread, despite having potatoes in it. No, really. I love carbs, ha.

Stir Fry: General Reference and Pointers

Vague Sense of Ingredients:
Sauce components (see directions below)

2 or 3 Tbsp oil (see directions below)

Aromatics:

2 Tbsp garlic, minced
1 Tbsp fresh ginger, peeled and grated or minced
1 cup onions, sliced

Vegetables:

Cauliflower or broccoli, cut into bite-size florets
2 or 3 scallions, sliced or minced
Bell peppers, sliced (I prefer orange, yellow, and red)
Carrots, julienned

Meat (or meatish component!):

Boneless chicken, beef, or pork, rinsed and patted dry, cut into chunks
Ddok, cut into chunks or slices

Barely cooked optional touches:

Water chestnuts, sliced
Bean sprouts
Bamboo shoots
Cashews

Directions and Loose Tips:

Whisk a mixture in a bowl to later coat the stir fry using a bit of sesame oil, soy sauce, fish sauce if you're feeling adventurous, Asian sauces at your discretion (I like fermented black bean, Szechuan, garlic, hoisin, orange, etc), and sugar. Optionally, you can add 1/4 cup stock and corn starch as a thickener as well.

Swirl 1 Tbsp oil in a wok over high heat. Add half the garlic and half the ginger, stirring, and cook about 15-30 seconds. Add the onion and cook, stirring, about 2 minutes. Add broccoli or cauliflower and scallions and cook over high heat until it browns and becomes tender but not at all mushy, about 5-7 minutes.

Remove vegetables from heat, add another 1 Tbsp oil if necessary, and cook the other vegetables similarly quickly at high heat, grouping them by toughness so everything has the right texture. Remove.

Turn heat to medium, swirl 1 Tbsp oil, and add remaining garlic and ginger. Stir, the add the meat and/or ddok. Raise heat to high, stir meat once, then let it sit for 1 minute before stirring again. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the meat has lost its pinkness, 3-6 minutes.

If you're like me and make enough that it doesn't all fit back in the wok to coat with the sauce you've made, take a huge sauce pot and stir it together under low heat that way. Toss in the cashews and other barely-cooked optional ingredients (if using) to lightly toast them, then add everything including the sauce and combine. Season with salt and pepper if necessary.

Serve over rice. I use a rice cooker for this, because stir fry is too hectic (lots of abrupt, short but crucial timing steps) to be timing white rice perfectly the normal way.

Personal Note: This is loosely based on Mark Bittman's guideline recipe, with the things my father taught me interjected. I've spent something like a decade making stir fry, both bad (I've totally flopped a bunch of times on my own) and good (Tasty! Where it makes takeout seem like paying someone to make me mac n cheese--it can be that good and easy). Now on my own I'm slowly learning how to make it open-ended but foolproof. That's why I'm finally posting some sloppy go-to reference for myself, so I don't forget what I've learned so far.

A few things:

Make sure your meat is really cut small enough and has been patted very DRY.

Keep your wok HOT and use as little oil as possible to maintain that heat.

Simplify the sauce--at first I was putting a little of every kind I had in, and the results were very underwhelming, I guess because it all cancels each other out. So now I'm not afraid to make a stir fry that is a bit more one dimensional but with big returns on actual flavor, with one sauce the major component and maybe just a dab of a couple other complementary things.

And maybe most important of all, don't be afraid to do the vegetables separately based on "toughness" class--it seems frustrating, like it defeats the purpose of stir fry (simple, quick, zap-fast cooking), but it makes a huge difference. If you're not willing to do like vegetables with like, you may well end up with soggy onions and peppers but barely cooked cauliflower and carrots.

Which reminds--the worst thing is soggy stir fried vegetables. Err on the side of "al dente"-ish, toothy crunch. Bittman talks about parboiling the cauliflower, and I just don't see it. I like it with a faint crunch though. Besides, you want things tender but firm--how else will they stand up to being microwaved as 3 a.m. leftovers? ;)

Thai-Style Chicken Soup

A fragrant blend of coconut milk, lemon grass, ginger and lime makes a delicious soup, with just a hint of chile.

Whenever you have a roast chicken it is worth using the carcass to make stock. Remove all the skin from the remains of the bird and put the carcass into a large pan. Add roughly chopped onion, carrot, and celery stick, and a bouquet garni. Cover with water and bring to the boil. Skim off the scum and then simmer the stock for 1 hour. Strain through muslin (cheesecloth). Skim of the fat when the stock is cold.

Serves 4.

Ingredients:
5 ml/1 teaspoon oil
1-2 fresh red chilies, seeded and chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 large leek, finely sliced
550 ml/18 fl oz/2.5 cups chicken stock
450 ml/0.75 pint/scant 2 cups coconut milk
450 g/1 lb skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into bitesize pieces
30 ml/2 tablespoons Thai fish sauce
1 lemon grass stalk, split
2.5 cm/1 inch piece fresh root ginger, peeled and crushed
5 ml/1 teaspoon sugar
4 kaffir lime leaves (optional)
75 g/3 oz/0.75 cup frozen peas, thawed
3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (coriander)

Method:

Heat the oil in a large pan. Add the chilies and garlic and cook for about 2 minutes. Add the leek and cook for 2 minutes longer. Stir in the stock and coconut milk and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.

Add the chicken, fish sauce, lemon grass, ginger, sugar and lime leaves, if using. Lower the heat and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes until the chicken is tender, stirring occasionally. Add the peas and cook for 3 minutes longer. Remove the lemon grass and stir in the cilantro just before serving.

Personal Note: My mom sent me this recipe. I didn't even use proper homemade chicken stock (I know--the horror! Don't tell my parents!); I settled for Le Gout-style chicken stock base. I also fiddled a bit with measurements, since I added ddok I happened to find at the Asian grocer's. The result was a thicker, less pale soup, kind of more like porridge or Asia's spunkier/more energetically flavored answer to shepherd's pie. It had a great balance of flavors--gently hot, savory, zesty/near-citrusy (thanks to the lime, lemongrass, and fresh ginger!), and sweet. Cozy-comforting like chicken soup should be, too. And sinus clearing to boot! Robert loved it.

I'm eating a bowl of it now. Good for a rainy evening.

Balsamic Roasted Chicken and Potatoes

8 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts
¼ cup olive oil
2 long springs of fresh rosemary (about 4-inches long), picked
16 small garlic cloves, whole and unpeeled
2 large red or yellow onions, peeled and cut into large chunks
16 red new potatoes, cut in half or quarters
Salt and pepper
½ cup good-quality balsamic vinegar


Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Rub some of the olive oil all over the chicken breast and then season generously on both sides with salt and pepper. Place the garlic cloves under the chicken in the roasting pan. Toss the potatoes with some of the olive oil and season with salt and pepper, placing them next to the chicken. Place the onion chunks in the baking pan, drizzle with olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. Drizzle ¼ cup of the vinegar onto everything, sprinkle with the rosemary, and bake for 45 minutes. Let the chicken rest for 10 minutes and then drizzle with the remaining vinegar before serving.
Serves: 8


How do I add a note to the bottom of this???

Chicken Tagine in Flat Bread

Chicken Tagine in Flat Bread

From The New York Times Jewish Cookbook edited by Linda Amster (2003).
From Sam Gugino.

Yield: 4 servings

3 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups boneless chicken dark meat (about 4 large boneless thighs), cut/torn into 1/2-inch cubes/pieces
1 teaspoon ground cumin
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1/8 teaspoon saffron threads crushed into 1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup small pitted green olives, halved
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1/3 cup toasted sliced almonds
4 pieces pocketless pita bread or similar flat bread, each about 5-7 inches in diameter
1/2 cilantro leaves

1. Put 2 tablespoons of the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Season the chicken with cumin and salt and pepper. Cook the chicken for 5 minutes, stirring so that it browns evenly.
2. Add the onion, garlic, and ginger and cook for 3-4 minutes, until the onion softens and turns light brown. Add the saffron stock, olives, and lemon rind and bring to a simmer. Cook for 10 minutes.
3. Preheat the broiler.
4. Adjust the salt and pepper for the tagine if needed, stir in the almonds and reduce further so only a few tablespoons of liquid remain. Remove from the heat.
5. Brush one side of the bread with the remaining olive oil. Broil for a few minutes until it is lightly browned and slightly crisp.
6. Put each pita, crisp side down, on a 12-by-12-inch sheet of foil. Divide the chicken tagine among the 4 pieces of bread and sprinkle with cilantro leaves. Roll into a cone and secure the bottom by twisting the foil. Fold the top back to expose the top of the roll.

Personal Note: This is the first dish from this cookbook we've tried and we tried it tonight for dinner. Good sign! I think with this dish alone the book paid for itself in spades. This may well be the hands down most delicious thing I've ever made. No lie. Eat this and have a gastronomic orgasm. Seriously. It's extremely layered, with lots of subtle flowering on your palate of different undertones. And when you make it be prepared to have an incredible smelling kitchen; between the cumin-seasoned browning of the meat to the minced ginger to the lemon zest to the toasting of the almonds to the typical wonderful smell of that always-foundational step of cooking onions, your kitchen will smell better than anything you've ever known.

Like usual, the best way to get the most flavor out of the meat while browning it--a step that makes or breaks the flavor of most recipes that require it--is to get the cast iron really sizzling hot and then to cook the meat briefly (but at a very high temperature!). So take the recipe's first step with a grain of salt and brown the chicken the best way possible--hot (but not charred) and fast.

We used oval/rectangular sheets of naan and instead of broiling them we brushed them with oil as it says to and then put them two at a time on a flat cast iron griddle pan over moderately high heat to toast them. Then we each scooped some of what was in the deeper cast iron pan used to do the full dish onto our separate plates of naan and ate it with our hands (kind of scooping the contents up with the bread). If I was serving company then the recipe's directions for foil wrapping the rolls would make sense and I'd follow it faithfully.

It was SO GOOD. Yeah, likely the best thing I've ever made. So good I want to share it with everyone I meet, ha.

Labor intensively, we used the really good green olives from the market--the ones with pits in them. Only because they were what we had available leftover in the fridge. Yes, it was a huge pain to halve and pit each one, but I didn't really mind 'cause this recipe is tons o' prep work anyway and I'm the kind of person who loves that part of cooking (much more than the actual cooking, i.e., splatters and heat source step). Oh, and we omitted the cilantro 'cause yeah, I am not a fan. And used homemade stock (the recipe cites the guidelines for homemade stock elsewhere in the book) because yeah, we always have it on hand and it does make a big difference.

Yes saffron is expensive, but we are lucky and a downtown Indian grocery sells little bottles of it for surprisingly cheap (of course, it's likely not very high grade, and it comes from Spain. But we don't care, 'cause that's better than not having any at all :).

Chicken Piccata

Chicken Piccata

Season:
4 chicken cutlet

Saute in:
2 T. vegetable oil

Deglaze with:
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 t. garlic minced

Add:
1/2 cup low sodium chicken broth
2 T. lemon juice
1 T. capers, the drained Sauteed cutlets

Finish with:
2 T butter and lemon slices

Garnish with:
Chopped fresh parsley

1. Season cutlets with salt and pepper then dust with flour. Spray a paute pan with nonstick spray, add vegetable oil and heat over medium-high.
2. Saute cutlets 2-3 minutes on one side and then turn and sauté for 1-2 minutes with pan covered. Transfer cutlets to a warm plate; pour off fat from the pan.
3. Deglaze pan with wine and add minced garlic. Cook until garlic is slightly brown and liquid is nearly gone--about 2 minutes.
4. Add broth, lemon juice and capers. Return cutlets to pan and cook on each side for 1 minute. Transfer cutlets to a warm plate.
5. Finish with butter and lemon slices. Once butter has melted pour sauce over cutlets.
6. Garnish with fresh parsley.

Personal Note: The same deal as the previous recipe for Pomodoro. Same easy-as-hell method and seemingly complex, impressive results. My mom sent me both. I think she said they came from a magazine; Cuisine At Home maybe.

Chicken Pomodoro

Chicken Pomodoro

Season:
4 chicken cutlets

Saute in:
2 T. vegetable oil

Deglaze with:
1/4 cup vodka

Add:
1/2 cup low sodium chicken broth
2 T. lemon juice
The sauteed cutlets

Finish with:
1/2 cup tomatoes chopped
2 T heavy cream

Garnish with:
1/3 cup scallions, minced

Directions:
1. Season cutlets with salt and pepper then dust with flour.
2. Saute cutlets in oil. Transfer to a platter; pour off fat.
3. Deglaze pan with vodka away from the flame and cook until the vodka is nearly gone.
4. Add broth and lemon juice. Return cutlets to pan and cook on each side for 1 minute. Transfer to a warm plate.
5. Finish the sauce with tomatoes and cream. Heat through, then pour over cutlets.
6. Garnish with scallions.

Personal Note: Whenever anyone on Ask Metafilter asks the standard "I'm a young hipster with my first real on-my-own-and-really-equipped kitchen and I'm ready to start really cooking so I need easy but impressive beginner recipes that'll impress my friends and hot date" etc question, people always bring up this sort of basic deglazing-to-make-sauce entry. And my mom just sent me this particular one 'cause our oven doesn't work so I'm desperately resorting to any stovetop-only recipes I can get my hands on. Actually, the challenge of this restriction has made for some rewarding and fun summer cooking. She said my dad and her love this recipe, and added that it was super easy, which is clear just from reading it. I'm a big fan of deglazing as the simple easy way to make things taste better than they should be, so I'll be trying this one tonight along with The Best Recipe for sauteed okra and tomatoes. Maybe if I'm feeling ambitious (we just got home last night at 1 a.m. from a week-long trip to Rochester and Toronto, and I always feel a bit wilted after traveling) I'll even make some Sylvia's Peach Cobbler for dessert. We'll see.

Vincent Price's Chicken Curry and Baked Saffron Rice

Chicken Curry
From A Treasury of Great Recipes by Mary and Vincent Price (Grosset and Dunlap New York 1965, page 230)

Serves 6.

These curry recipes come from Reaj Ali, the Moslem chef of the Pierre's East Indian kitchen. According to him a curry is not really a curry unless you use coconut milk in it. It does improve the flavor, and we have found that with an electric blender coconut milk is easy to come by--once you have your coconut, that is! You can make a meat curry of this recipe simply by substituting three pounds diced raw beef, lamb, or veal for the chicken.

cooking oil or butter
garlic
onions
canned tomatoes
bay leaf
cinnamon
cloves
chickens
salt, pepper
curry powder
cumin
coriander
paprika
coconut milk
(see index)

Chicken:
Remove the meat from: 2 tender frying chickens, each about 2 1/2 pounds (or use 5 pounds of chicken parts). A boning knife is a big help in cutting the raw meat from the bones, and you might ask your butcher to order the proper kind for you. Remove the chicken skin and cut meat into bite-sized pieces. The skin, bones, necks, backs, and wings may be used to make chicken stock.

Curry:
1. In a heavy saucepan heat: 1/2 cup cooking oil or butter.

2. Add: 4 cloves garlic, chopped, 4 medium onions, chopped, and saute for 5 minutes, or until vegetables are golden.

3. Add: 2 whole canned tomatoes, chopped, 1 bay leaf, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and 6 cloves. Cover and cook for 5 minutes.

4. Add the chicken meat and cook over high heat for 10 minutes, shaking pan occasionally, until most of the liquid in pan has steamed off. Reduce heat.

5. Add: 2 teaspoons salt, 2 tablespoons curry powder, 1 teaspoon pepper, 1 teaspoon cumin, 1 teaspoon coriander, and 1 tablespoon paprika. Stir to mix the spices with the chicken meat, being careful not to let the spices burn.

6. Add: 3 to 4 cups water, or enough to cover chicken meat. Bring to a boil and simmer for 35 minutes.

7. Before serving add: 1/2 cup fresh coconut milk and heat gently.

Presentation:
The best part of curry is its presentation. It is always served with a rice, and with an assortment of condiments, each in a separate bowl or dish. This curry is served with Baked Saffron Rice, the recipe for which follows, and this suggested selection of condiments.

Curry Condiments:
chopped peanuts
Bombay duck
grated coconut
grated orange rind
candied ginger
white raisins
chopped fresh parsley
nutmeg
chutney
chopped hard-cooked eggs


Baked Saffron Rice

Serves 6.

rice
saffron
butter
onion
garlic (optional)

1. Soak: 1/2 teaspoon saffron in 1 cup cold water for about 2 hours.

2. Preheat oven to hot (400 F).

3. In a heavy casserole melt: 1/2 cup butter.

4. Add: 1 onion, chopped, 1 clove garlic, chopped (optional), and cook for 3 minutes, or until onion is soft.

5. Add: 2 cups raw rice and stir until rice is well coated with butter.

6. Add the saffron and water and bring to a boil. Cover tightly and bake in hot oven for 10 minutes. Remove cover and stir to mix thoroughly.

7. Add: 2 cups boiling water, cover, and continue to bake for 15 minutes.

8. Turn off heat, fluff rice with 2 forks, and keep warm until ready to serve.

Personal Note: How cool is it that Vincent Price was actually super-cultured and into "the finer things in life"? He collected art, traveled the world, and amassed ethnic recipes way before it was fashionable to do so. The cookbook this came from is one of the gems in my parents' library--my mom did some research online trying to find another copy for me when I moved out, and discovered it's worth like 60-1o0 dollars! Anyway, this was the standard curry recipe my mom always used while my sister and I were growing up. She's branched out since then--she found an awesome one while I was in college that involves steeping spices in a tea infuser!--but I'll always have fond memories of this one. It's kind of savory and hearty in a way most modern authentic curries aren't. In a "good ol' days of 1950s-1970s suburban America" sort of way, even. Ha. And baked saffron rice?! You better believe it.