The recipe came from a December, 2008 issue of Bon Appetit, in an article about the foods from the Fairmont le Chateau Frontenac in Quebec. I’m sure that’s why I stopped to read this recipe, because it came from that hotel – le Chateau Frontenac.

I remember, oh so well, the first time I saw that beautiful hotel, standing right above the river, the St. Lawrence. I was about 15 and my parents and I were on a long weekend trip from where we lived for a couple of years in Newport, Rhode Island. We didn’t stay in the hotel in Quebec– oh my goodness, no – way beyond our budget, but we were properly impressed with the place. (Back then it wasn’t owned by the Fairmont.) I never forgot seeing the hotel. I wrote a story for my English class some time after that, with a little history of Quebec and the hotel. That I remember too, plus the slight markdown I got on my report because I failed to put the le in front of the Frontenac. I remember that, and other humiliating things like losing a spelling bee in 7th grade because I didn’t know how to spell chrysanthemum. You can bet your bottom dollar I never forgot how to spell it after that! 

Sorry, I got sidetracked there. Anyway, this very French-style meat pie just sounded interesting, with an Italian twist perhaps, using Italian sausage instead of deer meat or elk or whatever would be appropriate for a wintertime meat pie. But mostly it’s chicken thigh meat, mushrooms, shallots, and garlic in a nicely thickened flavorsome brown gravy with some Madeira wine in it. I do think the Madeira makes this dish – it adds a background character to the sauce that you just can’t quite identify. Browning the mushrooms and shallots also provides a real flavor depth too. Not just cooking them, but browning them.

This made a very impressive company dinner – it’s way too much work to make for a weeknight family meal. It will serve more people than the original recipe suggested ( I think 8, rather than 6) too. It was delicious. Next time I think I’d just use puff pastry on top – a whole lot easier. I didn’t care for the pastry crust – maybe it was too thick for my taste. Am not sure, but it wasn’t as light and flaky as I would have hoped. But even with that, the entire dish was special. Deeply flavorful – kind of like a chicken & sausage stew – really that’s all it is – but with a pastry top crust. And definitely don’t eliminate the Madeira – it’s essential!

A year ago: Roasted Stone Fruit Olive Oil Madeleines
Two years ago: Marinated, Grilled Provolone

Why, oh why, don’t I go online before I try ANY recipe, to read what others have said? Well, I know why in this case . . . I’d read about piquillo peppers, a mild red pepper from Spain, and I had purchased a can of them (imported, mind you) a couple of months ago. I wanted to try them, assuming they were going to have a unique taste. Something different. Something more piquant than ordinary roasted red bell peppers. Having paid $5.00+ for the can, I truly thought they’d be extraordinary. Nope. Tasted like any old ordinary canned red bell peppers to me.

Here’s a photo collage of the peppers: clockwise from top left – in the box, the can, the whole peppers, and chopped.

The recipe came from the book Spain…A Culinary Road Trip by Mario Batali and Gweneth Paltrow. My friend Cherrie gave me the book a year or so ago for Christmas, and I had yet to try a recipe out of it. This recipe was also printed in Food & Wine awhile back, so you can read the story about it, if you so choose. Apparently the recipe is a common one in Spanish cuisine. The ingredients are simple (salt, onion, garlic, chicken, white wine and the piquillo peppers) and the preparation is also very easy. I just thought the dish would be more tasty than it was. Not that it wasn’t good – it was. It was moist, juicy. I liked the sauce. But . . . well . . . it was just chicken with red peppers.

A year ago: Slow-Cooker Tamale Pie
Two years ago: Armenian Parsley Salad

In December my former investment club members met at my home for a potluck dinner. We’ve known for years that we have some great cooks in the group, and the food is always wonderful when we have such get-togethers. The club disbanded a few months ago, but we’ll still gather now and then for conversation and most years we have a December potluck dinner.

Anyway, one of the gals, Linda C., brought this salad to the potluck. It was SO good. It’s a curry flavored rice (cold) salad, and I just needed to have some cold chicken to chop up to make this. It also has bottled artichoke hearts in it (maybe not something you’d always have in your pantry) and a box of chicken flavored rice mix. The one I used was a 6-ounce package from “Farmhouse.” But any such rice mix would likely do. The other thing you might not stock in your pantry is pimiento-stuffed olives. As it happened, I didn’t have any of those, so the salad may have lacked something. I had red bell pepper instead of green, too. And since I only had 2 green onions, I added some finely minced red onion. So, you see, this salad can be adaptable to what you have on hand. But to be true to the recipe, you need two of the small jars of marinated artichoke hearts. And just a handful of the stuffed olives. And the green pepper too. I garnished the salad with some minced Italian parsley from our garden.

Just so you know, there’s only a teaspoon of curry powder in the salad, so it’s not overwhelming in the slightest. It could be omitted if you aren’t a curry fan, but I liked the light hint. Linda said this is an old standby, one she used to fix for her family when her children were young. Thanks for the recipe, Linda!

A year ago: Butternut Squash Soup (crockpot)
Two years ago: Coconut Banana Bread (a Cooking Light recipe – very good)

Even though I’m a huge fan of Mexican food, I rarely make it at home because we have a plethora of good restaurants (from fast-food type to mid scale) to go to. But I had a bunch of leftover chicken begging to be made into something. This Sunset Magazine recipe (from May of 2008) was just the ticket. Enchiladas are usually corn tortillas rolled around a filling. Served individually. But this one is a stacked type – with each of these stacks serving 2 people. What you see in the photo above is a stack of 5 corn tortillas (supposed to be 6 but my package of tortillas only contained 11 tortillas – go figure) with the chicken filling and grated Jack cheese in between each layer. Then the top is finely sliced cabbage and cilantro in a light fresh lime juice dressing. Very tasty.

The prep for this dish took longer than I’d anticipated. The recipe said an hour, and yes, that’s true. Maybe even longer. You wouldn’t think so, but it did take awhile. The chicken chile sauce mixture took time – cooking onion, chopping up the chicken, gathering up all the other ingredients needed (raisins, pine nuts, spices, chipotle, tomato paste, brown sugar and white wine vinegar). Then grating the cheese, slicing the cabbage (I didn’t have any radishes called for in the recipe). But once you start assembling the stacked enchilada, it came together in a hurry. While the enchilada baked in the oven I made the cabbage slaw.

We liked it. I won’t say this was a stand-out recipe, but it was good. If you don’t have great Mexican restaurants in your neighborhood this might be very satisfying. The tortillas are dipped in canned Las Palmas chile sauce, and when they bake they don’t get firm or chewy – they stay soft. Actually I didn’t like the tortilla brand – you can see the tortillas were starting to fall apart in the photo. They were too flimsy, I guess. But it didn’t matter at all because the taste was fine. The Sunset recipe indicated a serving was 1/4 of the above stack. Uhm. No. We ate half (so 3 tortillas per person). Next time – I’ll add about 1 1/2 cups of frozen corn to the chicken mixture. I think it would add a nice texture change and a bit more substance.

A year ago: A list of travel websites
Two years ago: Chocolate Scones (oh yes, these are delish)

Do you ever have a magazine that gets misplaced? I certainly do. And for whatever reason I had a stack of three Cook’s Illustrated from 2007 in one of our upstairs guestrooms. They went from one place to another before I finally said to myself that I needed to get those three magazines back downstairs nearer the kitchen where they belonged. In doing so I glanced through them, leafing past numerous recipes that I had no recollection reading. And up popped this recipe for chicken and sausage done in an Italian style. With peppers and onions. Sounded perfect for dinner the other night.

First off, I DID read the article from beginning to end, to make sure I understood the instructions (of course, I’m the first one to not do this step under most circumstances). I read about how the recipe developer, Sandra Wu, worked from an old recipe for this chicken dish (in Italian it’s called scarpariello, which means “shoemaker style”). It’s not known whether the shoemaker means it’s a poor-man’s dish, or if it refers to the chicken bones sticking out of your mouth as you eat it, which reminds you of a shoemaker holding nails between his teeth. You choose! In either case, this is an American Italian invention, popularized by some of the early Italian settlers who opened Italian restaurants in New York City.

There is a bit of food prep here, but it’s not overwhelming. While you brown the sausage, you can cut up the chicken. While the chicken browns you can slice up the onion and pepper. And while the onions and pepper brown you can mince up the garlic. While that browns you can bring together the rest of it (some white wine vinegar, some chicken broth, and sugar). The recipe developer was stumped with how to get the chicken skin to stay nice and brown, so she finally resorted to browning the chicken, then once everything is assembled, the pan full of peppers, onion and sausage, with the chicken on top is baked in the oven. While THAT is baking you’ll have time to make a pan of creamy polenta, which makes a perfect bed for the onions and peppers. Once the dish is removed from the oven you do need to thicken the sauce with a bit of cornstarch, then it’s served over polenta (or you can make some orzo or mashed potatoes instead).

One thing this recipe calls for that I didn’t have (and had to buy) was (bottled) hot cherry peppers. They’re essential in this dish, although because I ended up using hot Italian sausage (instead of the sweet called for in the recipe) I used fewer of the cherry peppers. They’re hot little puppies, so be careful. I also didn’t have bone-in chicken breasts, so bought those especially to make this. The breasts were huge. I mean gi-normous, so I cut each breast into thirds (recommended in the recipe). That step also helps the chicken to cook more uniformly.

In the photo above you can see the bed of creamy polenta on the left side. And the result? Really delicious. The sauce makes it, to me. I might want to make more of it next time – there really isn’t all that much for all the quantity of chicken and peppers and onions. Just enough to drizzle over the top. The sauce has a piquant taste – meaning it’s a bit of sweet and sour (from the sugar and wine vinegar combo). And the thicker chicken pieces took a lot longer to cook through than expected. So if you have a meat thermometer, cook the thickest piece to 160 degrees F. We also liked the addition of the sausage – it gave the dish a stronger character, I think, than if it was just chicken alone. We enjoyed it with the polenta (I made creamy polenta – half water and half milk – with some butter and a bit of cream cheese and cheddar cheese added). But we liked this very much, and yes, I’ll make it again. Even for guests, although the recipe indicated it was more of a weeknight kind of dish. I didn’t think so. Quite worthy of guests, I thought.

A year ago: Crockpot Chicken Paprikash
Two years ago: Hot & Spicy Tofu Herb Dip (you’d never know it’s made with tofu)

Gee, that recipe title is a mouthful, isn’t it? If you’ve been reading my blog for long, you may recall that there’s only one person I know who gives recipes such long names. Because she’s afraid we won’t realize all the tasty goodness and goodies in any recipe. Yup. Phillis Carey. This one’s from a “light and  healthy” cooking class. And it’s delicious. And quick. EASY! It likely will require a trip to the market – specifically for the kale and zucchini – and maybe the chicken sausages – but as long as you’ve got canned cannellini beans and tomatoes on hand, then this recipe comes together in a jiffy. You add the kale – and it will seem like a LOT of kale, but once you put a lid on it, it will reduce down. Just don’t overcook everything – the kale just needs to cook until it’s tender, no further.

Pictured at right is the “soup” when I’d just added the kale – notice the mound. It cooks down, though. This dinner would likely require less than 25 minutes, maybe 20 if you didn’t serve anything else with it. And it’s a one-dish meal (it could be, anyway). Phillis suggested serving this with brown rice. If I were to serve it I think I’d serve it over a very small portion of pasta. But I liked it as-is, just served as a kind of soup with a very little bit of juice to it. Is that called a dry soup? I think so. Or sometimes the broth part is served in a separate bowl in Asian cuisines. That’s not the case here – it’s the chunky stuff that makes up the ragout/soup.

Phillis suggested that if you’d like some other textures and flavors in this, add some raisins during the last bit of heating, and then sprinkle on top some pine nuts (toasted would be best). I’ve included them in this recipe because they added a lot of texture and flavor to this dish when I made it. Delicious, that’s all I have to say. And low calorie too. This may become a real staple in my soup library.

A year ago: Beef – an informative essay
Two years ago: Brandied Apricot Bars

The other day I was looking through a cookbook that I’d not cooked from, yet. Actually I’m not sure I remember how I came by this cookbook. There’s no note inside. It’s called Parisian Home Cooking: Conversations, Recipes, And Tips From The Cooks And Food Merchants Of Paris . By Michael Roberts (he’s an American but lived in Paris for some years). Under the chapter for chicken and poultry, there are numerous recipes for simple chicken. Most, either stovetop or oven preparation, and none of them all that complicated.

Starting off, we didn’t have all the specific ingredients. The chicken was boneless – a mistake – but it’s all we had; and I didn’t have any chicken feet, a calf’s foot, or a pig’s tail – I’m not kidding you – that’s also in the recipe. I’ve learned enough over the last 20 years to know that we American’s are just so Victorian, or fastidious, I guess. We don’t like animal odd parts. We don’t like to look at fish heads. Or dead fish eyes on the fish head. And not all that many of us eat offal, the oddball organs and other things that comprise a whole steer, pig, chicken or lamb. I do like foie gras, but I don’t eat organ meat anymore in general because of the high concentration of bad fats. So we miss out, I suppose, on some awfully good flavor.

But the author cautioned in the write-up that if you don’t have good AGED red wine vinegar, don’t even bother to make this. I don’t know about your local markets, but mine don’t carry anything but the cheapest of red wine vinegars. Stuff that’s most likely mere vinegar with a dollop of red wine, perhaps food coloring to make it look like it’s red wine, it’s bottled and they call it red wine vinegar. If you ever take an honest-to-goodness taste of this stuff, you’ll probably agree with me, it’s awful. I won’t even use it for salad dressings or in cooking. Not having visited any wineries lately where I might have found some good red wine vinegar, a few months ago I resorted to buying a bottle of Cabernet Wine Vinegar at Williams-Sonoma. It’s been aged for 8 months, according to the label. And it’s expensive, I will say, but then I don’t use much of it at any one time. But Williams-Sonoma no longer carries it, I guess (I can’t find it on W-S’s website, anyway). However, several online places carry Banyuls 5-year aged. I’m going to look for that when I’m shopping at some of the high-end markets in our area. Through Amazon it’s $23.95 for a 750ml bottle.

As for chicken feet, a calf’s foot or a pig’s tail . . . uhm . . . I can’t say I’ve seen that at any of my markets, high end or not. Perhaps I could ask for it at one of the few stores I frequent where there’s an honest-to-goodness butcher visible. My guess is they likely won’t have it either. However, the Asian markets near us probably would. I don’t frequent them very often, but next time I’m there I’ll look. So this recipe I/we made didn’t contain any one of those three items. Roberts explained that adding one of those three things would add immeasurably to the flavor in the dish.

This dish was relatively easy to make. As I’ve explained recently, I’ve been under the weather. I AM getting better, but my DH offered to make dinner if I’d coach him. No problem. I sat at our kitchen island with the cookbook at  hand, a chopping board in front of me and was the laid-back director of the cooking theater. Dave said he had fun doing it! The dish was good. Next time I’d make more sauce so I’ve upped the quantity in this recipe below. I’d also add mushrooms at the end (not in the original recipe). We/he served it with French glazed carrots and a nice green salad.

My DH (dear husband, just in case you’re a new reader and don’t know my code) had a good day on Sunday. He was the speaker at a Sunday School class at our church. He gave a 20-25 minute speech about “Hope.” He talked about the fact that he’s been a Type 1 diabetic since his 8th birthday, and mostly about the fact that he’s a double amputee. At the end of his talk numerous people in the audience had questions – mostly about his artificial legs and how they work. He also mentioned that when he was diagnosed as a diabetic in 1947, the doctors told his parents that he likely wouldn’t live past the age of 28. They never told Dave that. He’s 70 now and doing well, thank you! Anyway, I was SO proud of him – Dave is a story-teller and speaks to and with people with ease. He doesn’t often speak to groups, but his speech was very interesting, well prepared and very nicely executed. So he was on a roll on Sunday, as they say, and he was ever-so proud of himself when HE put dinner on the table for us. I’m going to be back at the cooking helm now, I think, since I’m feeling better every day.  But I was grateful that he wanted to make this dish. He did it very well – VEDDY VEDDY well.

A year ago: Breakfast Egg Muffins
Two years ago: Chicken with Red Wine Vinegar Sauce (oh my goodness, I made this exact dish, different recipe, 2 years ago. Serendipity, I think)

If you read my post yesterday, about steeping chicken, then you already know I made a chicken & greens salad. I had a recipe in my repertoire that I hadn’t tried before, from Michael Chiarello (Food Network), from 2006, according to my notes. His recipe was an arugula salad, with a citrus vinaigrette, with grilled chicken and a toasted spice rub. Well, I didn’t have time to go through all of that. Didn’t feel like doing the grill thing for just two chicken breasts. So I turned to an old stand-by chicken cooking method I haven’t used in a long time – submerging boneless, skinless chicken breasts in hot, just below boiling water and letting it sit. It’s like steeping tea – where tea takes 5 minutes to come to full flavor – chicken takes about 20-30 minutes to cook all the way through.

Meanwhile, I made the vinaigrette. You can see it there at the left, still in the food processor bowl. What intrigued me about this recipe was the use of whole oranges. It also has red onion, fresh sage, salt, pepper and olive oil. And it’s all made in the food processor. I added a bit of mayo for flavor.

If you want to use the original recipe for this, by all means go for it. Some people who made Chiarello’s version didn’t care for the dressing (too bitter or they thought it was unappetizing). I didn’t even read any of this before I made the dressing. It might depend on what kind of oranges you used – I used navel oranges (sweet) and they actually had quite a bit of pith attached, so am surprised it wasn’t more bitter than it is. I like the dressing – it’s refreshing. But I added mayo to it, too (not in the original recipe). With all the fruit in it, the dressing comes through as a low-fat type.

That was my aim – something lighter in fat, not so heavy as a traditional olive oil dressing.

I defrosted the chicken, steeped it in just plain water, made a different rendition of the spice rub (without toasting)  that I sprinkled all over the cooked thicken.

Here at the right you can see the moist, tender chicken strips that I tossed with the spice rub I’d made. All I did was sprinkle, turn, sprinkle turn, sprinkle turn, etc. Not overwhelming in flavor, but you definitely got the chile flavor. Mixed with the other spices in the rub, it made for delicious morsels of chicken.

I tossed the salad portion with the dressing – tasted it and added more dressing, then poured the salads out onto plates and decorated the tops with the spice-rubbed chicken strips, sliced avocado and Parmigiano-Reggiano shards. I have a ton of dressing left over, so will have to be creative with how I use it. This salad may not appeal to everyone – if you like the sour cream blue cheese type wedge salads, this won’t fit. This is a light salad, with a refreshing hint of the orange. It’s not overwhelming. And it’s also low-fat. I’m not including the calorie count because the directions include the nearly 2 cups of dressing, and I used about 1/3 cup for two salads.

A year ago: Alabama White Sauce (for Chicken)
Two years ago: Thai Chicken Chile Soup

Maybe this is old hat for you – if so just delete and move on. But I’m going to talk about a cooking method that I use infrequently, but when I need it, I really need it. This was the case last night. We got home late from our house in the desert. I had nothing on hand to fix for dinner. We were all feeling full and like fat cats. We ate lunch out – really good Mexican food in Riverside – and wanted a light dinner. Salad was just the ticket. So, I had to defrost some chicken breasts, and wanted to cook it up quickly. I put the frozen chicken (in one of the sealed pouches) in a bowl of cold water. It defrosted in about an hour or so. Meanwhile, I thought – ah yes. I’ll steep it. Best way for making nice, moist chunks of chicken without any chance of them getting dried out.

Now, if you HAVE some leftover chicken, fine. That’s not what this is about. If you want to COOK chicken breasts for using in something – you want cold chicken strips or chunks, but you want them to be moist and succulent, this is how it’s done. I learned this method from Sunset Magazine probably 30 years ago. It’s not poaching chicken – as poaching means you continue to cook it. Steeping means allowing the meat to rest in hot-hot water until it’s cooked through. It’s an old Asian cooking technique (I think Chinese). Here’s what I do:

1. Bring a pot of water to a rousing boil. Really exciting photo here. Boiling water.

2. Slip a couple of chicken breasts down into the water. Now here’s the only tricky part. I’ve found that thicker chicken breasts need just a few minutes of very low level simmering first before you steep it. But if the chicken breasts are totally defrosted and they’re small, nothing else to do except slip them into the water. You can see they’re still raw, with their little pink ends sticking up out of the water.

3. Press the chicken down under the surface as best you can. Now if they’re thicker (these were), then leave the heat on for just a few minutes (less than 3, I’d guess). Then, turn OFF the heat, put a lid on it and let it sit. Put it on a back burner (not turned on) or on the kitchen counter. Doesn’t matter where. Just off heat and covered.

4. Let it sit. And sit. This is the STEEPING part. For about 20-30 minutes. See, how hard’s that?

5. When the 20-30 minutes are up (no more than 30), remove the chicken to a plate and let it cool for 10-15 minutes until you can handle it. Then, it’s easy enough, just slice across the grain and make strips or cubes. They’ll be as moist as can be. Not a very exciting photo below. Sorry about that, but the chicken meat is tender and juicy. If you want some variety, add some herbs to the water, a little salt, or even some lemon juice.

Tomorrow I’ll give you the recipe for the salad I made, but just to give you a teaser, here’s the photo of the salad coming up. That’s a spice rub ON the chicken, some Parmigiano shards, some avocado and a delicious citrus dressing. Stay tuned.

A year ago: Caramelized Onion Dip

With my cousin Gary visiting us for the holidays, I have to re-engineer my cooking since he can’t eat wheat. So this recipe, that I read over at Kalyn’s Kitchen blog, was just the ticket. Healthy and tasty, but using almond flour instead of wheat flour. Kalyn had a glut of sage from her home garden and tried to concoct some new uses for sage. I also had a sage bush this year (now nearly dormant), but the leaves left on the bush are way too tiny for much culinary use. So I did end up buying some fresh sage to make this.

It’s easy to make – an untypical pesto with sage and pecans (instead of basil and pine nuts). It also contained some garlic, freshly grated Parmesan, and the filling also contained some Feta cheese too. I enlisted my cousin’s help with the chicken – the pounded chicken breast halves are filled, then secured with toothpicks and lightly dipped in an egg batter, then in the almond flour (available at some specialty markets or health food stores). Don’t confuse almond meal with almond flour. The meal is more like finely ground nuts. The almond flour is milled (well, maybe not actually milled since this isn’t a grain) is a much finer mixture – it actually looks more like a flour.

The chicken was roasted in the oven just until cooked through. I should have used a meat thermometer in a thicker part of the chicken; I didn’t, so at the 35 minute mark, they were definitely already done. Kalyn’s recipe indicated 40 minutes, and maybe checking on it earlier. I should have looked at 30 minutes. Of course, it does depend on how thin you pound the chicken, too. The flavor was good. It’s very low carb, and delicious. This would make a nice company dinner, although I might serve it with a side or a drizzle of chicken gravy (if making gluten-free, just thicken with cornstarch instead of flour) – just in case it’s not juicy-tender when removed from the oven. Just do watch it carefully during baking (maybe cut one open to make sure it’s not pink) and remove from the oven immediately!

A year ago: Yams, Carrots & Ginger (veggie side dish)