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.
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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.
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Chicken with Piquillos
Recipe By: Spain: A Culinary Road Trip by Mario Batali
Serving Size: 4
4 whole chicken thighs — bone-in
2 whole garlic cloves — sliced
Kosher salt
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 large onion — coarsely chopped
9 ounces piquillo peppers — drained, widely sliced
1 cup dry white wine
1. Rub the chicken with the garlic and 1 tablespoon of kosher salt. Cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large, deep skillet. Scrape the garlic off of the chicken pieces. Add the chicken to the skillet in a single layer and cook over moderately high heat, turning occasionally, until browned all over, about 12 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a platter.
3. Add the onion to the skillet and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until very tender, about 10 minutes. Add the piquillo peppers and white wine and bring to a simmer, scraping up any browned bits.
4. Return the chicken and any accumulated juices to the skillet. Cover partially and cook over low heat until the chicken is tender and cooked through and the sauce is thickened, about 30 minutes. If the sauce is too thin, bring to a boil and reduce it until there is about 2-3 T. of liquid. Transfer the chicken to a platter, spoon the sauce on top and serve.
Per Serving: 328 Calories; 21g Fat (66.0% calories from fat); 17g Protein; 7g Carbohydrate; 2g Dietary Fiber; 79mg Cholesterol; 77mg Sodium.
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!
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Chicken and Rice Salad
Recipe By: From my friend Linda C., 2009
Serving Size: 6
6 ounces chicken flavored rice mix
4 whole green onions — thinly sliced
1/2 large green bell pepper — chopped
12 whole green olives — stuffed with pimiento, sliced
12 ounces marinated artichoke hearts — drained (save marinade for dressing)
4 whole chicken breast, no skin, no bone, R-T-C — (2 whole breasts or 4 halves), cooked, cut into small cubes
DRESSING:
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup sour cream — (or yogurt)
1 teaspoon curry powder
marinade from the canned artichoke hearts
1. Prepare chicken flavored rice mix according to package directions, omitting butter. Slightly undercook the rice.
2. Allow rice to cool to room temperature.
3. Meanwhile, prepare the onion, green pepper and olives.
4. In a small bowl combine the dressing: mayo, sour cream, curry powder and the marinade. Stir until well combined.
5. In a large bowl combine the cooled rice mixture, the onions, green pepper and olives. Add the dressing and artichoke hearts. Mix lightly, cover and chill. (Can be done the night before to this point.)
6. Add the chicken pieces and mix until combined. Spoon onto a bed or lettuce or lettuce cups.
Per Serving: 520 Calories; 26g Fat (46.3% calories from fat); 40g Protein; 28g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 107mg Cholesterol; 764mg Sodium.
A year ago: Butternut Squash Soup (crockpot)
Two years ago: Coconut Banana Bread (a Cooking Light recipe – very good)
Posted in Chicken, on February 1st, 2010.
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.
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Stacked Chicken Enchiladas
Recipe By: Sunset Magazine, May 2008
Serving Size: 4
NOTES: Next time I make this I’m going to add about a cup of frozen corn (preferably the fire roasted from Trader Joe’s) to the chicken mixture. It would add color and texture. The recipe indicated a serving is 1/4 of one of the stacks. Not in my book – we each ate half of one, so this recipe will serve 4, no more.
1 cup onion — chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
28 ounces red chile sauce
1/2 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup golden raisins
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1 tablespoon chipotle chile canned in adobo — finely minced (plus 2 teaspoons)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
3 3/4 cups cooked chicken — cubed
12 whole corn tortilla, 6-inch
3 cups Jack cheese — shredded
2 whole radishes — thinly sliced
3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
5 cups cabbage — green, very thinly sliced (shaved)
1/4 cup cilantro — chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
1. Preheat oven to 375°. In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, cook onion with olive oil, stirring often until softened, about 5 minutes.
2. Stir in 3/4 cup red chile sauce, the pine nuts, raisins, cinnamon, allspice, chipotle chiles, adobo sauce, tomato paste, brown sugar, and vinegar. Add chicken, then bring mixture to a boil, stirring. Remove from heat. Pour remaining red chile sauce into a pie pan.
3. To make enchilada stacks, dip 1 tortilla in chile sauce in pie pan to coat. Place on an ovenproof dinner plate. Repeat with another tortilla on a second plate. Spread each tortilla evenly with a heaping 1/3 cup chicken mixture, then with 1/4 cup cheese. Repeat layering with 8 more tortillas, dipping them in sauce, then adding chicken mixture and cheese to make 2 stacks of 5 layers. (You’ll use all the chicken but not all the cheese.) Dip the last 2 tortillas in sauce, place each, curved side down, on stack, and sprinkle with remaining cheese.
4. Bake enchiladas until hot in the center and cheese bubbles on top, 10 to 15 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, pour remaining chile sauce from the pie pan into a microwave-safe pitcher and cook in a microwave oven on full power until simmering, 1 to 2 minutes. To make the salad, stir together radishes, lime juice, and extra-virgin olive oil in a large bowl. Just before serving, stir in cabbage and cilantro. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
6. Top each enchilada with a small mound of salad and cut in thirds or quarters to serve. Offer with remaining salad and chile sauce to add to taste.
Serving Ideas: This is a complete meal – with the cabbage slaw on top (and extra on the side) you have everything you need for dinner.
Per Serving: 829 Calories; 35g Fat (37.7% calories from fat); 54g Protein; 77g Carbohydrate; 11g Dietary Fiber; 112mg Cholesterol; 1200mg Sodium.
A year ago: A list of travel websites
Two years ago: Chocolate Scones (oh yes, these are delish)
Posted in Chicken, on January 28th, 2010.
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.
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Italian Style Chicken with Sausage, Peppers and Onions
Recipe By: Cook’s Illustrated, 6/07
Serving Size: 6
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
8 ounces Italian sausage — sweet, casings removed
2 pounds chicken breast halves — skin-on, bone-in, trimmed of excess fat and skin and cut crosswise into 2 or 3 pieces salt and ground black pepper
1 medium onion — halved and sliced ¼ inch thick (about 1¼ cups)
1 large red bell pepper — stemmed, seeded, and cut into ¼-inch strips (about 1½ cups)
3 whole pickled hot cherry peppers — stemmed, seeded, and cut into ¼-inch strips (about ¼ cup) (3 to 5)
3 cloves garlic — minced or pressed through a garlic press (about 1 tablespoon)
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1/3 cup white wine vinegar — plus 2 additional tablespoons
3/4 cup low sodium chicken broth — plus 1 tablespoon
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves — minced fresh
1 tablespoon fresh parsley — minced fresh
1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Heat 1 teaspoon oil in 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add sausage and cook, stirring to break sausage into ½-inch pieces, until browned, about 3 minutes. Transfer sausage to plate lined with paper towels. Remove skillet from heat; pour off fat into small bowl and reserve; wipe out skillet with paper towels.
2. Return skillet to medium-high heat and heat remaining 2 teaspoons oil until smoking. Pat chicken dry and liberally season with salt and pepper. Add chicken, skin side down, and cook without moving until well browned, 3 to 5 minutes. Using tongs, turn chicken and brown on other side, about 3 minutes. Transfer chicken to large plate. Remove skillet from heat and pour off fat into bowl with sausage fat; wipe out skillet with paper towels.
3. Return skillet to medium-high heat and heat 1 tablespoon reserved fat until shimmering. Add onion and cook until beginning to soften, about 2 minutes. Add bell pepper and cherry peppers and cook, stirring occasionally, until bell pepper begins to soften, about 4 minutes. Add garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add sugar, 1/3 cup vinegar, and ¾ cup broth; bring mixture to boil, scraping up browned bits from pan bottom.
4. Add sausage and chicken (with any accumulated juices) to skillet, arranging chicken pieces in single layer, skin side up, on top of peppers and onion. Transfer skillet to oven and cook until instant-read thermometer inserted into thickest part of chicken registers 160 degrees, 18 to 22 minutes, removing smaller pieces sooner if necessary. Meanwhile, combine cornstarch, thyme, and remaining tablespoon broth in small bowl.
5. Carefully remove skillet from oven (handle will be very hot) and transfer chicken, skin side up, to platter or individual serving plates. Place skillet over medium-high heat and stir in cornstarch mixture. Simmer sauce mixture until slightly thickened, 2 to 3 minutes. Off heat, taste sauce and add up to 2 tablespoons vinegar. Adjust seasonings with salt and pepper.
6. Spoon sauce around chicken, being careful not to pour it directly over chicken. Sprinkle with parsley and serve immediately.
Per Serving: 389 Calories; 25g Fat (59.4% calories from fat); 33g Protein; 6g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 106mg Cholesterol; 419mg Sodium.
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.
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White Bean and Chicken Sausage Ragout with Tomatoes, Kale & Zucchini
Recipe By: Phillis Carey, cookbook author and instructor
Serving Size: 5
NOTES: You can substitute any kind of sausages here – even using bulk sausage rather than links.
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup onion — chopped
8 ounces chicken sausage — links, cut in coins
2 cups zucchini — diced
3 cloves garlic
6 cups kale — chopped (about 1/2 pound), remove stems
1/2 cup water
32 ounces canned cannellini beans — rinsed and drained
14 1/2 ounces diced tomatoes — including juices
2 tablespoons basil — slivered
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup golden raisins (optional)
1/4 cup pine nuts — toasted, for garnish (optional)
1. Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add onion and sausage and cook for 4-5 minutes or until sausage is browned (be sure to BROWN the sausage, as it provides a lot more flavor that way). Add zucchini and garlic; cook for about 2 minutes.
2. Add kale, water and tomatoes and bring to a boil. Cover, lower heat and simmer for 10 minutes, or until thoroughly heated. Stir in beans, raisins and basil, season to taste with salt and pepper, heat through and serve immediately with pine nuts on top. The kale should still be a little bit chewy so do not overcook it.
Serving Ideas: Can be served with brown rice if desired. Serve in a shallow bowl.
Per Serving: 393 Calories; 11g Fat (24.9% calories from fat); 23g Protein; 54g Carbohydrate; 13g Dietary Fiber; 37mg Cholesterol; 964mg Sodium.
A year ago: Beef – an informative essay
Two years ago: Brandied Apricot Bars
Posted in Chicken, on January 13th, 2010.
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.
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Chicken in Aged Red Wine Vinegar
Recipe By: Adapted from Michael Roberts’ “Parisian Home Cooking”
Serving Size: 6
4 1/2 pounds chicken pieces — bone-in only
1 whole onion — peeled
2 whole cloves
2 whole carrots
2 stalks celery
1 bunch parsley
2 teaspoons dried thyme
2 whole bay leaves
1 teaspoon whole black peppercorns
Salt to taste
2 chicken feet, 1/2 calf’s foot or a pig’s tail (optional)
1 1/2 cups red wine — robust type like Zinfandel or Cab
3/4 cup aged red wine vinegar
3 cups chicken broth
Freshly ground black pepper
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons cold water
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
(See notes about adding mushrooms to this dish)
1. Rinse the chicken pieces and pat dry. Halve the onion and stick a clove in each half.
2. In a large deep casserole (with lid, like Le Crueset, which can be used on the stovetop) make a bed of the onion, carrots, celery, parsley, thyme, bay leaves, peppercorns, and the chicken feet (if using). Sprinkle this mixture lightly with salt.
3. Arrange the chicken pieces – except the breasts – over the vegetables, skin sides up. Pour in the wine and vinegar. Cover the pot, place over high heat, and bring to a solid simmer for about 5 minutes. Reduce heat add the chicken broth, cover and simmer without boiling, for about 20 minutes.
4. Add the chicken breasts that have been seasoned lightly with salt and pepper and continue simmering for about 20 minutes (or less), or until the chicken is tender.
5. Remove chicken pieces and place in a low oven while you prepare the sauce. Strain the liquid in the pan through a strainer and discard the solids. Pour liquid back into the pot. Dissolve the cornstarch in the water and add to the liquid. Skim the liquid of any impurities that rise to the surface. When you like the consistency of the sauce remove the pot from the heat and add the unsalted butter. Whisk it in until the sauce is smooth. Spoon the sauce over all the chicken pieces and serve any remaining sauce in a small pitcher.
Serving Ideas: Making this again, I’d gently saute about a pound of button mushrooms in a separate pan with some butter, then toss them into the sauce at the end and make that part of this dish. It isn’t in the recipe, but I think it would be a good addition.
Per Serving (assumes you eat all the skin so it’s not accurate): 642 Calories; 40g Fat (60.2% calories from fat); 47g Protein; 13g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 222mg Cholesterol; 618mg Sodium.
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)
Posted in Chicken, Salad Dressings, Salads, on January 3rd, 2010.
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.
Posted in Chicken, on January 2nd, 2010.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Chicken, on December 29th, 2009.
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!
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Baked Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Sage-Pecan Pesto and Feta
Recipe By: posted by Kalyn’s Kitchen blog
Serving Size: 4
PECAN SAGE PESTO:
1/3 cup fresh sage
1/4 cup pecans
2 whole garlic cloves
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese — grated
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese — packed
CHICKEN:
24 ounces boneless skinless chicken breast — (4 chicken breast halves)
1/4 cup almond flour — (or almond meal, or bread crumbs)
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
2 large eggs — beaten with 1 T. water
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a flat roasting pan with olive oil or nonstick spray. Or use a Silpat to line your baking sheet. Trim all visible fat and tendons from chicken breasts, then put each chicken piece inside heavy plastic bag and pound with meat mallet until the chicken is 1/4 inch thick. (Don’t worry if there are some ragged edges, you can tuck them in.) Lay chicken skin side down on cutting board.
2. PESTO: In a blender combine the sage leaves, pecans, garlic cloves, olive oil and Parmesan cheese. Blend until the mixture is smooth, about 30 seconds. Scrape down sides of blender container if necessary.
2. In a small bowl combine the pesto and crumbled Feta and mix together with a fork. Divide pesto mixture evenly among four chicken breasts, then use a spoon to spread it over the chicken, not going completely to the edge or the stuffing will leak out. Roll up each chicken breast, starting with the smallest end and tucking in any ragged edges, then secure each piece with two toothpicks.
3. Put beaten egg in one bowl and combine almond meal and parmesan in another. Dip each chicken piece first in egg, then in almond/parmesan mixture, turning over several times so chicken is well-coated.
4. Place chicken pieces in baking pan and cook until chicken feels firm but not hard to the touch (about 40 minutes, but start checking a little sooner.) If desired, put chicken under the broiler for 3-4 minutes to brown the top. (I did broil the top a bit.) Serve hot.
Per Serving: 446 Calories; 24g Fat (49.9% calories from fat); 50g Protein; 5g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 217mg Cholesterol; 346mg Sodium.
A year ago: Yams, Carrots & Ginger (veggie side dish)
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