Yogadad World

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.

This is the best pizza I've ever made. It's not your standard tomato sauce, cheese, and two, three, or four toppings, but boy, was it tasty. I used no sauce or cheese, just mushrooms, potatoes, onions and a few spices. Good stuff.

For years, I've fooled around with pizza dough, trying recipe after recipe. But I could never get close to the same texture as pizzeria pizza dough. I even asked my daughter's boyfriend, who makes pizzas at Pizza Hut for the secret. Turns out the dough is delivered to them frozen, and they thaw and bake. It's not mixed on site. No help there. So I looked at book after book & website after website.

Last week, I was rewarded. I got My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method by Jim Lahey from the library. His no-knead bread recipe has been copied and adapted many times, including by Mark Bittman of the New York Times and the folks at Cooks Illustrated. Turns out he also likes pizza. His recipe is simple, elegant, and delicious. It's the closest I've ever come to pizzeria style dough. Two days after checking it out of the library, Shannon ran out and bought a copy. And tonight I put it to work.

I think there are a couple of differences between his recipe and the others I've tried. First, he says to shape the dough into a rectangular pan and place that in the oven on top of a pizza stone. Previously, I've baked the pizza directly on the stone, not in a pan. Second, the pan has been liberally coated with olive oil before stretching the dough out in it. The oil makes the dough a little slippery but made a big difference in the cooking. Last, he calls for more yeast than I normally use to make my pizza dough. That made the crust very light.

This recipe makes enough for two thin crust pizzas, and the crust is very thin. If you don't want to make two pizzas at once, you can cut the recipe in half quite easily or do what I did and freeze half.

You will notice that the dough ingredients are given in weight as well as volume measurements. I recently bought a good kitchen scale and was pleased with how easy it was to put everything together using the scale, rather than the usual assortment of measuring cups and spoons. I suspect that the scale played a role in tonight's supper success.

Lastly a word about the toppings. I used mushrooms and potatoes. The recipe called for cremini mushrooms but the market was out so I used white button mushrooms. For the potatoes, it was Michigan-grown Yukon gold. The key to a well-done, tasty pizza was having the veggies sliced quite thinly. If you are very highly skilled you might be able to do that with a good chef's knife. I'm not in that league. So I used a mandoline. I'm sold on the gadget. I got uniform slices, quickly. There are many mandolines on the market, covering nearly every pricepoint so you should be able to find one that suits you and your budget.

We paired the pizza with one of our favorite Chiantis, Da Vinci Chianti. It's a pretty good, inexpensive Chianti. I often find it on sale for around $10.00 a bottle.

If you're not a fan of thin-crust pizza or think you aren't, you owe it to yourself to try this out.

Ingredients
Pizza dough
3 3/4 c (300 grams) Bread or all-purpose flour
2 1/4 tsp (10 grams) Instant or active dry yeast
3/4 tsp (5 grams) table salt
3/4 tsp plus a pinch (3 grams) sugar
1 1/2 c (300 grams) room temp water (about 72 degrees)
extra virgin olive oil for pan

Toppings
3/4 lb mushrooms
3-4 Yukon gold potatoes, peeled
2 small yellow onions, diced
1/3 c extra virgin olive oil
fresh thyme
fresh rosemary
fresh ground black pepper
oregano
Red pepper flakes

In a medium bowl, stir together flour, yeast, salt, and sugar. Add the water and use a wooden spoon (or your hands) to mix until blended, at least 30 seconds. Cover the bowl and let sit at room temperature, until the dough has doubled in size, about 2 hours.

Oil two 13-by-18 inch baking sheets. Scrape half the dough onto each sheet. Gently pull and stretch the dough across the surface of the pan and use your hands to press it evenly to the edges. Make sure the pans are adequately oiled and press gently yet firmly. Pinch any holes together. The dough on each pan will be quite thin.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees with the rack in the center.

Use a mandoline to cut the mushrooms and potatoes. The mushrooms should be about 1/8 inch thick and the potatoes 1/16 inch thick.

In a medium bowl combine a quart of water and 4 tsp of table salt. Stir to dissolve the salt. Place the potatoes in the brine for about 90 minutes, until the slices are wilted and no longer crisp.

Drain the potatoes in a colander and use your hands to press out excess water. Pat dry.

In a medium bowl, combine mushrooms, potatoes, onions, and olive oil.

Spread potato and mushroom mixture on pizza dough, with a bit more of the mixture near the edges. Sprinkle with rosemary, thyme, and oregano.

Bake 20 - 25 minutes on a pizza stone. Remove from oven when the topping starts to turn golden brown and the edges begin to pull away from the sides of the pan. Serve hot. Put jar of red pepper flakes on table for guests to add.

Not much cooking at the Dykhuis/White household this week. I'm in Indianapolis through Thursday and the only cooking device in the hotel room is a microwave oven. Since I'm likely to be doing these week-at-a-time trips for some time to come, I'm going to need better amenities.

So, nothing fun for dinner this week. But this morning, we had a delightful pan of baked oatmeal. Our friend Susan Fayad served this a couple mornings when we were on our Colorado ski trip. It's very easy to do, but does require some forethought. We mixed it all up Saturday night and put it in the refrigerator overnight. Got up Sunday, popped it in the oven and an hour later had perfectly done oatmeal.  I like to spoon a lot of plain yogurt over it but you could use milk or cream or try maple syrup or honey.

The recipe calls for apples and dried cranberries, both of which we had in the house. But you could easily subsitute pears or other fresh fruit for the apples and just about any dried fruit for the cranberries.

If you love oatmeal, as I do, this is a welcome alternative to the usual stove-top method.

I even hauled leftovers with me to Indy. With some homemade yogurt, it'll be way better than anything they hotel is likely to serve. 

Combine dry ingredients:
2 C. oatmeal
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 - 1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 C. brown sugar
1/2 - 1 C. chopped nuts
1 - 2 C. chopped apples
1 C. dried cranberries

Lightly oil a 2 qt. baking dish.

Spread dry ingredients evenly in baking dish.

Combine liquid ingredients:
2 eggs slightly beaten
1 1/2 C. milk
1/4 C. oil

Pour evenly over the dry ingredients.

Let stand about 30 minutes.  Can leave overnight in fridge.

Bake at 350 for 45 - 60 minute

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.

This was one of those nights when neither of us wanted to spend time in the kitchen. I arrived home later than usual from work, not feeling especially creative or energetic. Often, dinner on nights like these turn into "Let's send out for pizza." For us, it meant turning to the potato and leek soup that I had started on Sunday and stashed in the refrigerator, knowing that a night like this was likely sometime during the week.

The recipe is from Michael Field's Cooking School via my friend Dave Brunell. In mid-January, we spent a few days in Colorado skiing with Dave and his wife Susan Fayd. We had a lovely time. The weather was perfect, temperatures in the high teens and 20s during the day and lots of snow.

We arrived on a Friday, around noon. After Dave and Susan fetched us from the shuttle bus depot, we had lunch at Freshies, a little restaurant in Steamboat Springs. The menu that day featured a potato leek soup. Three of us ended up ordering it and it didn't disappoint. While we ate, Susan volunteered that Dave had a version of potato leek soup that was just as good as Freshies. I immediately demanded a recipe. Shortly after we got home, Dave obliged.

Dave's version is different from Freshies. At the restaurant the soup was a clear broth with herbs visible in the soup. This version is more like a cream of potato with leeks. It's a great soup. I'm still looking for something similar to what we had at Freshies.

I added a bit of cream during the reheat. And I added a pinch of red pepper flakes. Just enough to give it a bit of a bite. Be careful it you run the veggies through a food processor. If you give it more than a couple of pulses, you'll end up with a puree very quickly. I like the chunks of potatoes and leeks in the bowl.

Ingredients
4 cups of good chicken stock  
4 tablespoons of butter  
2 large leeks, cleaned & chopped (1-1 1/2 cups)  
1 medium onion (about 1/2 cup)  
1 small stalk of celery, finely chopped (about 1/4 cup)  
3 cups of potatoes diced  
Salt & pepper to taste  
1 cup cream (or half & half) optional
2 tablespoons chopped chives  

Melt the butter slowly in a large, heavy pan.  Add the chopped onion, celery & chopped leeks. Cook slowly for about 20 minutes until the veggies are soft & translucent. 

Transfer to a 3 or 4 quart saucepan, add the chicken stock & potatoes & bring to a boil.  Reduce the heat immediately, partially cover & keep the mixture at a simmer until the potatoes are soft. 

Put vegetables into food mill or pulse once or twice in a food processor. 

Cover the bowl of soup & chill over night, adding the cream & chives to the bowls just before serving. 

It's a snowy night in mid-Michigan. Not as snowy as further south & east, but enough to be troublesome. After getting home from work, the first order of business was shoveling the sidewalk and driveway. Our driveway is rather long and wide and it takes awhile to get done. Shannon helped so it wasn't too onerous. But we did have an appetite by the time we finished. Fortunately the meal we had discussed in the morning fit the bill perfectly.

This recipe is from one of my favorite food writers, Mark Bittman. He's a New York Times columnist, writing the Minimalist column and a blog, Bitten. He also has written a first rate cookbook and a non-cookbook about food, among other things.

The starchy rice, along with the egg topping, was great comfort food after coming in from the cold, covered with snow. The dish cooked up fast and was quite hearty. Dessert was a few orange slices, the sweetness nicely complimenting the saltiness of the soy sauce and sesame oil in the rice.

If you watch Bittman's video, you'll see he uses two pans - one to brown the ginger and garlic, the other to soften the leeks and heat the rice. He uses the first pan to also fry the eggs. I used one pan for the garlic and ginger, then put the leeks and rice in that pan, using the second to fry the egg. Too late I discovered that the Calphalon pan that I had assumed was non-stick had egg stuck to the bottom. After grumping around about the lack of quality in these pans, which are not inexpensive, I managed to pry the eggs, mostly intact from the pan, and get them on top of the rice. What I find a bit ironic is that the best non-stick pan I have is some no-name skillet that I think I got at Kroger for probably $10. Takes a licking and still no sticking. So next time we make this, I'll use el cheapo pan for the eggs and the other for the rice. Doesn't matter if that sticks a bit.

Ingredients
1/2 cup peanut oil
2 tablespoons minced garlic
2 tablespoons minced ginger
Salt
2 cups thinly sliced leeks, white and light green parts only, rinsed and dried
4 cups day-old cooked rice, preferably jasmine, at room temperature
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons sesame oil
4 teaspoons soy sauce.

In a large skillet, heat 1/4 cup oil over medium heat. Add garlic and ginger and cook, stirring occasionally, until crisp and brown. With a slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels and salt lightly.

Reduce heat under skillet to medium-low and add 2 tablespoons oil and leeks. Cook about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until very tender but not browned. Season lightly with salt.

Raise heat to medium and add rice. Cook, stirring well, until heated through. Season to taste with salt.

In a nonstick skillet, fry eggs in remaining oil, sunny-side-up, until edges are set but yolk is still runny.

Divide rice among four dishes. Top each with an egg and drizzle with 1/2 teaspoon sesame oil and 1 teaspoon soy sauce. Sprinkle crisped garlic and ginger over everything and serve.

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.

Tonight's supper was a soup I made Sunday afternoon and stashed in the refrigerator for later in the week. The recipe was from Sunday Soup by Betty Rosbottom. This wasn't my first soup from the book. Rosbottom's recipes for Russian Vegetable soup and Butternut Squash and Apple soup with Cider Cream were both very good. (I froze the Russian Vegetable and am just now finishing it up. It freezes very well.) I'm not sure what happened with tonight's soup, Cold Weather Potato Chowder with Caraway Cheese. I have a couple theories. But first the recipe.

Ingredients
4 slices bacon, cut in 1/2 inch pieces
1/2 cup chopped onions
1/2 cup diced celery
1 lb red-skin potatoes, unpeeled, cut into 1/2 in. dice
1 Tb minced garlic
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups whole milk
1 cup (4 oz) Harvarti cheeese with caraway seed, coarsely grated
1 Tb unsalted butter @ room temp.
1 Tb all-purpose flour
Kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper
2 Tb chopped fresh chives for garnish

Saute bacon in large heavy pot, medium heat, until browned & crisp. Transfer bacon to paper towel to drain, save 2 Tb bacon grease & discard the rest.

Add onion & celery to the bacon drippings and cook until softened, about 5 mins. Stir frequently. Add diced potatoes & saute for about 2 minutes. Add garlic and saute, stirring, for 1 minute.

Add chicken stock & milk to the pot & bring mixture to a simmer. Cook soup at a simmer until the potatoes are tender, for 10-15 mins. Do not boil soup. (Soup can be prepared to this point 1 day ahead. Cool, cover, & refrigerate. Reheat over low heat & proceed with recipe.)

When ready to serve, add the cheese, a little at a time, stirring until melted after each addition. In a small bow, mist the butter & flour with a fork to make a paste. Whisk into the soup, a little at a time, and cook until completely blended, for 1 to 2 minutes. Salt & pepper to taste.

Ladle into bowls and sprinkle each service chopped chives & bacon.

Sounds great, eh? Mine wasn't. Not even close. It had a bitter, sour taste to it. I think I went wrong when I didn't follow the recipes admonition to add the cheese and the flour paste just before serving. Instead, I shrugged, and added both on Sunday, then stuck the soup into the refrigerator. I think that somehow the cheese & potatoes weren't good together in the fridge. Alternatively, it could have been the cheese. I couldn't find Harvarti with carraway seeds at the store so I picked up some Havarti dill cheese. It's possible that dill was not the right herb to use in this soup. A third possibility is that the milk was just a little bit off. It'd been in the fridge for a while but it smelled ok. Normally, my nose doesn't go wrong. This time it might have.

I think I'll give this recipe another go sometime and correct all those things. Maybe next time, it'll be the tasty treat that it should be.

Right now, I'm heading back to the kitchen to find something a bit more satisfying than this soup.

Tonight's dinner came from The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern cookbook. This was our first recipe from their book and it was a resounding success. We paired the fish with a glass of Sutter Home Gewurtztraminer, which nicely balanced the acid from the lemon. Normally I'm not a big fan of wines made from this grape, but for our meal tonight it worked quite well. The trout were frozen and came from the Lansing City Market. Serves two. From start to finish this took about an hour. The book says 20 minutes, but that's very, very optimistic.

Ingredients:
2 Tbl all-purpose flour
1 1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
2 trout fillets (6-8 oz each)
4 Tbl unsalted butter (1/2 stick)
1 large lemon segmented
2 slices bread, toasted, crusts cut off, cut into fine dice
1/2 mixed fresh herbs such a dill, mint, & parsley
2 Tbl good tasting extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp white vinegar

In a small bow mix flour, salt & pepper. Sprinkle over both sides of the trout fillets.

Melt the butter in a medium saute pan, cast-iron preferred, over medium heat until the froth begins to subside. Place the fillets in the skillet, skin side down and cook until the skin is crispy, about 5 minutes. You'll see the sides of the fillet begin to turn brown when it's done. Turn over and cook for about 3 minutes

While the fish is cooking, toss the lemon segments, diced toast, and herbs in a bowl. Dress with the olive oil & vinegar, and set aside.

When the fillets are completely cooked, place the lemon-herb mixture on each plate, lay a fillet, skin side up, over it and serve immediately.

The fish was very tasty, and we rate this recipe a keeper. We thought we'd need a side dish so cooked up a bunch of jasmine rice, which was unneeded. The bread, lemon, and herb concoction was all we needed to accompany the fish. The rice was schlepped off to the refrigerator, to await another day. We have plans for it later this week.