Yogadad World

This was the dinner I had planned for last Sunday before I got waylaid by the good looking tuna at the fish market. It was worth the wait. The chicken was moist and juicy and the sauce tangy and tasty. For a meal this good, it was ready in an astonishingly small amount of time. Tossing in time to chop the mushrooms and shallot, the whole meal came together in less than 60 minutes.

The recipe is from Jacques Pepin's Fast Food My Way, a companion book to his 2005 PBS series. It's the first one I've tried from this book and based on my experience with this one, I'm sure I'll dip into it again.

One weird thing about this recipe though. It calls for the oven to be pre-heated to 180 degrees, with the chicken in for 10 - 30 minutes to finish cooking after the initial searing. After 30 minutes, I still had pink meat. It was not nearly cooked all the way through. My oven tends to run cool. So I had set it for 200 degrees and checked the thermometer we keep inside to make sure it was hot enough. The temperature was well above 180 degrees. Taking my cue from Pepin's admonishment to not keep the meat in the oven more than 30 minutes, I put it back in the skillet, over high heat and seared the breasts for 3 minutes more on each side. That did it. Now it was warm all the way through and thoroughly cooked.

The rest of the meal went off without a hitch. I used frozen corn and frozen peas, and they came out with just the right amount of crunch. I had never sauteed this two vegetables before and now that I know how easy it is and how tasty the veggies are, it's likely to become a staple way of adding them to a meal.

Dessert tonight was special, too. Shannon baked a white cake with lemon curd and blueberry topping. It was fabulous. Normally, I'm not a big fan of anything lemony in my desserts but this was quite good. The sweetness of the blueberries and the tartness of the lemons played off each other very nicely. The cake held it all together, literally. A great finish to a very good meal.

Ingredients
2 Tbl unsalted butter
1 Tbl good olive oil
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (each about 6 oz)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/3 c chopped shallots
1 c diced (1/2-inch) white button mushrooms
1/4 c balsamic vinegar
1 Tbl ketchup
1/2 c water

Corn and peas ingredients
2 Tbl unsalted butter
1 Tbl good olive oil
2 c corn kernels (from 3-4 ears corn)
1 1/2 c fresh or frozen peas (choose baby peas if using frozen)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper
1 Tbl chopped fresh chives
 
Heat the oven to 180°F. Heat 1 tablespoon of the butter and the oil over high heat in a heavy saucepan or skillet large enough to hold the chicken breasts in one layer. When hot, add the chicken breasts, and sprinkle them with the salt and pepper. Saute, uncovered, for about 3 minutes on each side. Transfer the breasts to an ovenproof plate, reserving the drippings in the pan, and place them in the oven and continue cooking for at least 10 minutes but no more than 30 minutes.

Add the shallots and mushrooms to the drippings in the pan, and cook for about 1 minute over high heat. Add the vinegar and ketchup and continue for another minute. Add the water, and cook until the liquid is reduced by half. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon butter and stir until it is incorporated.

Meanwhile, for the corn and peas: Heat the butter and olive oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add the corn, peas, salt and pepper. Saute for 3 to 4 minutes, until the vegetables are cooked through.

To serve, arrange a ring of vegetables on each of four plates. Cut each breast in half crosswise on a slant and place the breast pieces in the center of the vegetables. Coat the chicken with the sauce, sprinkle with the chives and serve.

Garlic. Chicken. Mashed Potatoes. Broccoli. What's not to like? Throw in a homemade pound cake from Mimi's secret recipe, and it was a little bit of heaven. Amanda was coming over for dinner so I decided to do the full-spread. She's a big mashed potato gal and likes her chicken. She'll even nibble on a few pieces of broccoli to keep her dad from growling about the lack of vegetables in her diet. Shannon provided the piece de resistance with her grandmother's pound cake.

The chicken recipe is from my friend Dave. He sent it along after our January outing to Colorado. Included in the package was a PBS special from 2001 called The Natural History of the Chicken. The recipe is a keeper. The DVD is a hoot...or maybe a cluck-cluck. We enjoyed both.

I don't have a skillet that's big enough to accomdate as much chicken at this recipe specifies. So I browned the whole, cut-up chicken in two smaller pans. Afterward, I transferred the chicken to a baking dish rather than baking in the skillet. That worked just as well.

40 cloves is a lot of garlic; I used three complete heads. By baking the dish with the chicken lying on top of the garlic, yhe garlic infuses the chicken nicely, giving the meat a kind of nutty flavor. The wine and juices from the chicken cook the cloves so that they're soft and spreadable by the time it's taken from the oven. We spread it on bread, mixed it in the potatoes, and popped it into our mouths straight. It was all good.

The recipe says you can peel the garlic or not; your choice. I peeled them for this dinner. It's a bit tedious peeling that many cloves of garlic but I didn't like the thought of all that unpeeled garlic just lying in the dish. After taking it from the oven, though, I can see quite easily that it would have worked just as well unpeeled. That would have saved quite a bit of prep time, too.

I followed Mark Bittman's guidlines for mashed potatoes in his book How to Cook Everything, and I used his vegetable gratin recipe for the broccoli. You can see that I burned the bread crumbs a bit on top of the broccoli. I left them a bit too long under the broiler. Next time I do the broccoli gratin, which we all loved, I'll put it in the oven for a bit to bake, then give it a minute or two under the broiler to crisp the breadcrumbs.

The mashed potatoes were excellent. I'm learning that the big secret to exquisite mashed potatoes is to mash them as gently as possible. Otherwise, you activate all the starch and end up with gummy potatoes and just kind of stick together. So stay away from the blender, food processor, and hand mixer. Use a ricer or hand masher. I have the latter and I was careful to press down slowly, going around the bowl several times to get as many lumps out as possible. But also not getting so vigorous that I ended up with a pasty mass. The result was a very good bowl of mashed potatoes. Add a few well done cloves of garlic and it's a heavenly dish.

We ended the meal with Shannon's pound cake. It didn't need any adornments. Amanda has long been partial to desserts. She ate this one with gusto and took much of the leftover home.

I don't get to cook for Amanda often enough and this dinner turned out to be quite the success. We all pushed back satisfied.

Ingredients
Whole chicken, cut-up & skinned
2 Tb extra virgin olive oil
40 garlic cloves, peeled or not
2 cups dry white wine
4 sprigs thyme or 1/4 tsp dried
1 sprig rosemary or 1/4 tsp dried
Salt & pepper
Chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley as garnish

Heat oil in large skillet, lay chicken in pan in a single-layer and cook over medium-high heat. Sprinkle salt & pepper evenly over chicken. Cook until golden brown, about 2 mins on each side. Remove chicken from pan & set aside.

Reduce heat to medium. Add garlic & cook 1 minute or until garlic begins to brown, stirring frequently. Arrange chicken on top of garlic. Add wine & herbs. Cover & cook in oven at 350 for 45 - 60 mins.

Serve with toasted baguette slices or crostini.

Chicken, potatoes, and carrots. What else could be more quintessentially Sunday dinner? It takes me back to my childhood when Sunday afternoon dinner was the most important meal of the week. It was always right after church, around noon, and we'd all be packed off for our Sunday afternoon naps after. Heaven knows that no other activity was appropriate for Sunday. It was a day of rest after all. Inappropriate activity like playing with neighbor kids, and watching TV was banned. A few years later, room was made for Sunday afternoon football, but that was as far as the rule against activity was stretched.

I've left the Sundays of my youth far behind but sometimes I get a glimpse of those days. Today's dinner brought those memories flooding back.

For those who like as little dishwashing as possible after eating, this recipe is very nearly a one-pot meal, only the roasting pan, a cutting board and a few utinsels needing washing after the meal. The recipe comes from the Lee brothers Simple Fresh Southern. I like this cookbook a lot. The recipes are clearly laid out; they're easy to prepare, and they taste delicious.

I've long struggled with roast chicken. It's one of those meals that good cooks make with seeming ease. It's my experience that every master makes hard things look easy. My  yoga teacher Ruth does the same thing with her poses. She demonstrates and it looks effortless. Then I try it. Ooops, not so effortless. I find the same thing with roast chicken. Looks like it should be easy. Some salt, some pepper, a little olive oil. Pop it into the oven and an hour later take it out and enjoy. Except it never works out that way.

It's sort of beguiling. Last time I tried a roast chicken, I used Shirley Corriher's recipe in Cookwise. it looked easy enough and I fastidiously follwed every direction. But when I stuck in the thermometer after the allotted time, it was too cool. Extra minutes stretched into a half-hour and the accompanying veggies were done & cold by the time I fetched the bird from the oven. It still wasn't done the way I thought it should be.

The problem of course is that the white meat cooks before the dark meat. Pull it out too soon and you get cold, undercooked leg quarters. Wait too long and you get overdone, dried out breast meat. So I've been in search of the perfect roast chicken.

This recipe comes as close as I've found to an easy-to-make, perfect roast chicken. I think I didn't achieve perfection yet. The dark meat was a touch undercooked. Next time, I'll leave the bird in the oven for another 5 minutes or so. But in almost every respect, this is the best roast chicken recipe I've found yet. And an added benefit is that you have potatoes and carrots ready to eat with your chicken.

Along with our chicken and veggies, we had fresh bread that Shannon pulled from the oven about an hour before dinner, and a bottle of Acacia Pinot Noir. Before dinner, I polished off the last of a bottle of Fenn Valley Dry Riesling. The Pinot was ok but this one was too overwhelming for chicken. I'd go with the Riesling for this meal.

Ingredients
1 large or yellow onion, quartered
1 or more large carrots, peeled & cut into chunks
1 lb Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces
3 Tb olive oil
2 tsp kosher salt
3/4 tsp black pepper
3 1/2 lb whole chicken, rinsed & dried inside & out
1 large lemon, halved
1/2 c chicken broth
1/2 c dry white wine

Heat oven to 425 degrees with rack in the middle of the oven

Combine onion, carrots, and potatoes in a medium cast iron skillet or 2 quart ovenproof backing dish. Drizzle the olive oil over the veggies, sprinkle with 1/2 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp black pepper and toss until evenly coated with the oil & seasonings. Place the chicken, breast side down, on the veggies and squeeze one lemon half all over the back. Season the chicken with 1/2 tsp of the salt and 1/4 tsp black pepper. Roast for 20 mins then briefly remove from oven

Lift the chicken and pour the broth and wine over the veggies in the pan and move them around a bit with a wooden spoon. Flip the bird over so that is breast side up. Squeeze the remaining lemon half over the chicken and season it with the remaining salt and pepper. Roast until the skin is nicely browned on top, about 40 minutes.

Tranfer the chicken to a cutting board, tent it loosely with aluminum foil, and let it rest for 10 minutes. Carve the chicken and serve with the pan vegetables and spoonfuls of the lemony pan sauce.

Sometimes you cook a dish for the first time and you know that you're going to do it again because the first time is just the trial run. This was one of those times. Not that it turned out bad. We both liked it. But there were some variables that made me think that I'd want to do it again.

This recipe is from the January/February issue of Cook's Illustrated. I  enjoy reading the magazine and watching the TV show. In the article accompanying the recipe, the author talks about his time in a Bangkok cooking school and his attempt to recreate the dish when he got back to the states. It's a good story.

He says his version is relatively mild but it's hard to tell looking at a recipe whether 6 Thai chiles is going to make it unbearably hot or agreeably spicy. I didn't have 6 Thai chiles in the kitchen anyway so I opted for one medium jalapeno, one serrano, and a couple Thai chiles. I seeded the jalapeno but not the other two. Turned out to be a good decision as the dish came out hot & spicy but not enough that we didn't enjoy eating the chicken. And we weren't constantly reaching for the water glass. 

The peppers were all a bit old and most were pretty wrinkly. They didn't cut up so well in the food processor. Next time, I will use only fresh peppers.  But this does seem to be the right amount for us. You may find this way too spicy or maybe not spicy enough. See what I mean about trying it out a couple of times?

The recipe calls for medium low heat to cook the basil and shallots, but also says they should cook until the shallots begin to brown. I cooked a few minutes more than the recipe calls for but they never browned up.  think that's from the low heat. I wonder about increasing it to medium. In his text, though, he talks about the value of slow cooking the basil and infusing the chicken with flavor. I gotta admit: it works. This was a very tasty dish. But I might experiment with the cooking temperature a bit next time.

Last, we had jasmine rice as a side dish. Tonight, instead of cooking the rice with water, we used coconut milk. About halfway through cooking the rice, I noticed the liquid was gone but the rice was still crunchy. So we added a bit of water, which allowed the rice to plump up. The coconut milk added a very nice sweetness to the meal and complimented the heat in the chicken.

All in all, a successful first time for this recipe. I'm sure it won't be the last.

Ingredients
2 cups fresh basil leaves , tightly packed
3 medium garlic cloves , peeled
6 green or red Thai chiles , stemmed 
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 teaspoon white vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast , cut into 2-inch pieces
3 medium shallots , peeled and thinly sliced (about 3/4 cup)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
Red pepper flakes , for serving

Process 1 cup basil leaves, garlic, and chiles in food processor until finely chopped, 6 to 10 one-second pulses, scraping down bowl with rubber spatula once during processing. Transfer 1 tablespoon basil mixture to small bowl and stir in 1 tablespoon fish sauce, oyster sauce, vinegar, and sugar; set aside. Transfer remaining basil mixture to 12-inch heavy-bottomed nonstick skillet. Do not wash food processor bowl.

Pulse chicken and 1 tablespoon fish sauce in food processor until meat is chopped into -approximate 1/4-inch pieces, six to eight 1-second pulses. Transfer to medium bowl and refrigerate 15 minutes.

Stir shallots and oil into basil mixture in skillet. Heat over medium-low heat (mixture should start to sizzle after about 1 1/2 minutes; if it doesn’t, adjust heat accordingly), stirring constantly, until garlic and shallots are golden brown, 5 to 8 minutes.

Add chicken, increase heat to medium, and cook, stirring and breaking up chicken with potato masher or rubber spatula, until only traces of pink remain, 2 to 4 minutes. Add reserved basil-fish sauce mixture and continue to cook, stirring constantly until chicken is no longer pink, about 1 minute. Stir in remaining cup basil leaves and cook, stirring constantly, until basil is wilted, 30 to 60 seconds. Serve immediately, passing extra fish sauce, sugar, red pepper flakes, and vinegar separately.

No Super Bowl here today. Instead we made an Indian dish with skinless chicken and a yogurt-based marinade. It made for a super platter, if not a super bowl. The recipe is from 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer. We loved it. Just the right amount of heat from the chilis. I used 2 serrano and 4 Thai chilis. Any more and it would have been too hot for us. Your taste will vary. If you don't like much heat at all, cut way back on the peppers. And if you like it very hot, add a couple more. One more tip. Don't try to cut a corner and leave the skin on the chicken. You won't like it nearly as much. Removing the skin is a bit of chore but shouldn't take more than a few minutes. The wings are the hardest, legs second hardest and the rest is a piece of cake. Just grap a corner, lift, and it pretty much slides off.

The recipe calls for grinding whole spices. I used a mortar & pestle. I have a cast iron model that we picked up at a garage sale last summer. It's very heavy and did a great job grinding the corriander, cumin, and cardamom. I used ground cloves, not having whole cloves in the cupboard. The fragancy of the freshly ground cloves adds another dimension to the dish. 

A couple of notes. The bread came out of the oven this afternoon. Shannon uses the almost No-Knead bread recipe made famous by Jim Lahey and publicized in the New York Times, Cooks Illustrated and elsewhere. She added garlic, rosemary, and cheese. It was perfect with the chicken.

The yogurt was homemade, too. That came out of the yogurt maker yesterday. Very smooth and tasty.

Marinade Ingredients:
1 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup slivered blanched almonds
6 lengthwise slices fresh ginger (each 1 1/2 in. long, 1 in. wide, 1/4 in. thick
6 large cloves garlic
5 - 7 in. fresh green Thai, cayenne, or serrano chiles, stems removed
1/4 c finely chopped fresh cilantro
1 Tb coriander seeds, ground
2 tsp cumin seeds, ground
2 tsp coarse kosher or sea salt
1/2 tsp cardamon seeds, ground
1/2 tsp whole cloves, ground

Other ingredients
1 chicken (3 1/2 lbs) skin removed, cut-up
4 Tb canola oil
1 medium-sized red onion, cut in half lengthwise & thinly sliced
4 fresh or dried bay leaves
5 oz fresh baby spinach leaves

Combine yogurt, almonds, ginger, garlic & chiles in a blender & puree. Sauce should be smooth, but slightly gritty. Pour into medium bowl and fold in cilantro, coriander, cumin, salt, cardamom, and cloves.

Add the chicken pieces to the bowl & coat well with marinade. Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour or overnight.

Heat 2 Tb of the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add onion & bay leaves. Cook, stirring, until the onion slices are soft & light brown around the edges, about 3 or 4 minutes. Transfer the onion & bay leaves to a plate

Pour the remaining 2 Tb oil into the same skillet. Remove the chicken from the marinade (it's ok if some of the mariade clings to the chicken) and add it to the skillet, meat side down, in a single layer. Reserve the remaining marinade. Sear the meat until it is lightly browned, about 3 minutes. Turn the pieces ove and sear the other side unti lightly browned, about 3 mins.

Spread the reserve marinade over the chicken, add the cooked onion and 1/4 cup water. Lift the chicken pieces & allow the liquid to flow underneath them; it should deglaze the skillet, releasing any bits of browned chicken & spices. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover, and braise the chicken, basting it wi the sauce occasionally, until the meat in the thickest parts is no longer pink inside & the juices run clear, 25 - 30 mins. Transfer chicken & onions to a serving patter.

Raise the heat to medium-high & boil the sauce, uncovered, stirring occasionally until it is slightly thickened 5 - 8 mins. Then stir in the spinach, a handful at a time. Cook just until the leaves have wilted, 1 - 2 mins.

Spoon the spinach sauce over the chicken pieces & serve.