Since I’d bought a Kosher chicken at Trader Joe’s the other day, I wanted to do something different. I mean, a roast chicken is a roast chicken, but we get tired of the same old sliced chicken. I wanted it to be succulent and juicy, not dry and stringy. What to do?

I turned to my America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook. The recipes are never overdone. They’re not fancy. But they’ve worked out these little details to make something ordinary like meatloaf – or roast chicken – better. I’ve learned to trust this cookbook when I’ve used it. This time was no exception.

Just the title, Roast Lemon Chicken, grabbed me. I’m a sucker for anything lemon, and had one Meyer left. The recipe suggests you brine the chicken. Well, if you buy a Kosher chicken, it’s already brined. Yea! I didn’t follow the recipe down to the letter. I didn’t whisk in the additional butter to the sauce which is mentioned in the recipe below. The book recommends using a V-rack. I have a V-rack, but it’s for a turkey, and I didn’t feel like retrieving the large roasting pan to put it in either, for this small little chicken. I just used a regular rack and put it on a piece of foil. And since I had just one lemon, I had to put some of it in the cavity and the rest was squeezed for the juice called for in the pan juices. I knew the juice was a necessary ingredient for the sauce. The recipe suggests baking the chicken for 40 minutes at 350. Then you turn the pan around and hike up the heat to 450. Laziness had set in and I didn’t move down the rack in my oven, so the skin got a bit charred, but the meat underneath was still succulent, likely because of all that herb butter that seeped into it.

I also used my new little heat-resistant silicone bands (looks like a rubber band on the legs above) for both the legs and the wings. They worked like a charm. And the finished dish? Delicious! I’ll make this again.
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You’re really missing out on something wonderful if you don’t make chicken and dumplings once in awhile. One day a year or so ago, in reading The Orange County Register, the Food Editor Cathy Thomas wrote up all the joys and virtues of chicken and dumplings. It set my mouth to watering, and I promptly made hers. Oh my. Was it ever GOOD. Actually, the chicken was Jamee Ruth’s version, from the book The Cookware Cookbook (had never heard of it, actually). It’s relatively simple, although it calls for ingredients I don’t often have on hand (6 leeks, for example and 6 shallots). The gravy/broth is just delicious, helped along with the addition of apple juice of all things. This is worth a trip to the grocery store. A good recipe for a chilly winter’s evening. I like to remove the chicken from the bones (and remove all the skin too so DH won’t eat it). Just reheat briefly.

Serve it in a wide soup bowl, with the light dumplings on top. And I highly recommend Marion Cunningham’s recipe for Feather Dumplings which has fresh bread crumbs and onion in them. The minced onion gives a nice little crunch in the dumpling. Something a little different, but they’re worth making. From her book Lost Recipes: Meals to Share with Family & Friends. Although surely this dish is one you ordinarily think of as homespun, it would be wonderful to share with family, and good friends. Here it is in the bowl with the dumplings.

If you have leftovers, when reheating, put the chicken mixture in a saucepan, heat just to a low simmer, then gently lower in the leftover dumplings. Top with a lid and allow to simmer very slowly for just a few minutes, then serve. I also find that the broth/gravy can have some added water. When I made the chicken and dumplings this time, after completing all the cooking (except the dumplings), I ladled out about 7/8 of the leeks with some broth and whizzed them up in the food processor. That made the gravy a bit thicker, which is a good thing.
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Our friends, Russ & Stacey, who live in the Bay Area, did two turkeys for their Thanksgiving crowd. One was smoked, the other baked. With lots of family and children around, Stacey wanted to make it easy on herself and prepared this all-purpose gravy from Cook’s Illustrated. She emailed to tell me this gravy was just wonderful, and she liked it because it could be made ahead. We all know what it’s like in the kitchen during the last hour before Thanksgiving dinner is ready to eat. Great idea, Stacey, and thanks for the suggestion. I’m going to add this to my Thanksgiving repertoire for next year.

With my posting about Kosher turkeys (and sometimes they’re too salty to use the drippings for anything) this gravy would be a great make-ahead dish. One more menu item ticked off the list early. Here’s what C.I. has to say about it:

• This gravy can be served with almost any type of meat or poultry or with mashed potatoes. If you would like to double the recipe, use a Dutch oven to give the vegetables ample space for browning and increase the cooking times by roughly 50 percent. The finished gravy can be frozen. To thaw either a single or double recipe, place the gravy and 1 tablespoon of water in a saucepan over low heat and bring slowly to a simmer. The gravy may appear broken or curdled as it thaws, but a vigorous whisking will recombine it.

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KOSHER TURKEY

Until a a couple of years ago I didn’t know much about Kosher meats. Only that if you were Jewish and you wanted to consume meat within the dietary laws of Judaism, you purchased Kosher meat. And I thought a rabbi had been involved somehow in the butchering process, maybe that he said a prayer over it? I didn’t know. We have Jewish friends who have meat shipped from somewhere in the Midwest because they believe it’s much better meat than they can buy at their local deli that offers Kosher meat and foods. They don’t keep a Kosher home – they even eat pork, but they really like the Kosher meat they buy.

Then, I went to a cooking class in which Tarla Fallgatter, the teacher, mentioned that the Kosher chicken at Trader Joe’s was just really good. Because I’m always on the lookout for better chicken, I tried a whole chicken – Kosher – from Trader Joe’s. OMGoodness. It was fantastic. It was better than any chicken I’d ever purchased before.

But still, that was the extent of what I knew about Kosher meats. Then I read an article in one of the food magazines about Kosher. About what they do to the meat. How it’s butchered, and exactly what’s involved in the process. It was a very interesting read, actually. And no, the rabbi doesn’t pray over the meat. But had I not already tried Kosher chicken I probably wouldn’t have even read the article. Since I’m not Jewish, I would have just gone right on by, not to give it another thought. What makes Kosher chicken or turkey better is that it’s already been brined or salted. The butchering process by rabinic law requires the animal to be slaughtered by a deep stroke across the neck and quickly draining the animal of its blood.

• Jews do not eat blood because the life of the animal (literally, the soul of the animal) is contained in the blood. This applies only to the blood of birds and mammals, not to fish blood. Thus, it is necessary to remove all blood from the flesh of kosher animals.

Even after slaughtering, the animal still has some blood contained within, so they must perform a second process:

• The remaining blood must be removed, either by broiling or soaking and salting. Liver may only be kashered by the broiling method, because it has so much blood in it and such complex blood vessels.

Since I’m a huge convert to the brining of lots of different meats, but particularly chicken and turkeys, I am relieved of having to DO the brining. The Kosher process does it for me. And since I’ve not perfected the ratio of water, sugar and salt so that a turkey doesn’t come out too salty, I’m happy to let the Kosher butcher do all the work for me.

I will say, buying Kosher is more expensive. This year I went to Trader Joe’s, who usually has them at Thanksgiving and Christmas, to buy my turkeys on Monday, the 19th. They were already sold out. I was absolutely devastated. I stood there in the middle of the store, with lots of people trying to get by me, and nearly cried. I talked to any clerk I could find. Nope, no Kosher turkeys. I went to the customer service desk. And very nearly cried. They shrugged. They told me all of the TJ’s stores in Orange County were sold out by 10 am that morning.The last 2 years I’ve relied on TJ’s Kosher turkeys. They’re certainly not carried at any of my local grocery stores. Thank goodness for Whole Foods. Yes, they had Kosher turkeys, but each 14 pound bird was about $75.00. A whole lot more money than TJ’s. But, these two were the most moist turkeys we’d ever eaten. And the brining was absolutely perfect – I could use the juice in the bottom of the pan – it wasn’t too salty at all. Some of our guests were blown away by how juicy the breast meat was. I may have converted several people to buying Kosher next year.

So, your challenge is to find a Kosher market (or a TJ’s) and try a Kosher chicken or turkey. You’ll be amazed, I do believe! As a little aside, I notice that all of the Kosher chickens and turkeys I’ve purchased have still had some feathers attached. And the only organ meat included is the liver – no heart of gizard. That’s part of the Kosher law. So, there’s your little lesson today in Kosher!

Note: my Kosher info and facts for this post came from Judaism 101.

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L-R: Sliced (kosher) turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans and pearl onions, one mounded plate of food.

L-R: broccoli/leek puree, Italian sausage dressing, broccoli hollandaise, grilled orange slices.

Awesome pumpkin pie and DH and me in the kitchen just before the dinner bell.
I’ll be sharing the recipes for the dressing, the mashed potatoes and the broccoli/leek puree in the next couple of days. The pumpkin pies (all 3 of them) were Libby’s recipe, still considered one of the best there is.

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Here’s another great chicken (breast) recipe. Another recipe from Phillis Carey’s cookbook, that I’ve talked about before. She’s just such a wizard with chicken. This could be a “regular” night dinner, although I think it should be elevated to “company” status. It isn’t exactly on the low cal side – it has some heavy cream in the sauce – and it isn’t exactly quick, either. Fortunately I had two helpers (Dana, my daughter, and her daughter, 10-year old Taylor). They’re all visiting us for the week (my daughter – and her two children – come to join her husband who’s been with us for a couple of months while he works on a project here, locally). So, chicken seemed like the best choice for dinner. Chicken breasts were defrosted, and I found I had everything on hand to make these. It’s nice when you do a dinner like that and you don’t have to make a trip to the grocery store.

Cajun and Creole are two different things, just in case you didn’t know. The cuisines are different, and although I’m not from the south (I’m actually a California native), we’ve visited enough times that I’ve learned not to mention to the N’awlins’ folks that they might appear similar to the unknowing. Since I couldn’t remember what the difference was, I looked it up on Wikipedia:

• According to an expression of the region, Cajuns live to eat, not eat to live. Outside Louisiana the distinctions between Cajun and Louisiana Creole cuisine have been blurred. However, Creole dishes tend to be more sophisticated continental cuisine using local produce. Cajun food is rural, more seasoned, sometimes spicy, and tends to be more hearty. Many well-known Cajun dishes were originally centered on wild game, rice and other local ingredients.

Likely the lines are a bit blurred in this recipe as well. Whatever it is, and whatever its roots, it’s just gosh-darned tasty. I’d serve this to guests anytime, although I’d make double the sauce. There just never seems to be enough sauce to go around. And I like to serve this with pasta on the side, and the sauce goes just nicely with the pasta. I happened to have served it with green beans – the Green Beans with Garlic and Olive Oil that I shared a couple of months ago on the blog. This time I had some mushrooms on hand, so I added them to the Creole sauce. They weren’t in the original recipe, so you decide whether you want to do that. The chicken breasts were pounded to an even thickness, then sort of stuffed with a cream cheese-green onion – Parmesan mixture, dipped in egg and bread crumbs (I used Panko), then baked for half an hour. Meanwhile you make the creole sauce and boil up some pasta. And whip up a bright green vegetable, perhaps a salad, and you’re done.
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When a cooking instructor says something like “this is one of my favorite recipes,” I listen up. Make notes. And prepare the dish soon for my family. That’s this recipe today. Phillis Carey, whom I’ve mentioned many times before, is a wizard with chicken (she’s even published a cookbook about chicken). I’ve made any number of the recipes in her cookbook, and this is a relatively easy one. Dinner, with a fresh vegetable and salad, took an hour. (Sorry Rachel, I can’t seem to manage 30 minute meals no matter how I try, unless I’m reheating leftovers.)

What sets this recipe apart from lots of other baked chicken breasts are the following things:

the lemon zest and lemon juice

the fresh bread crumb topping

the extremely hot oven it’s baked in

Lemons are a regular on my menus, all times of the year. We found a stray Meyer lemon on one of our dwarf trees a week or so ago, which made me very happy. I used part of it the other day and had a half leftover. Just barely enough to add juice to the sour cream mix and zest to add to the bread crumbs. I can’t say that it was very easy zesting a cut/half lemon, but I managed.

The bread crumbs must be fresh. Do not, under any circumstances, use canned bread crumbs for this. They’ll make it way too dry. You need crumbs that have some moisture. I do keep some crumbs in the freezer, but I must say they don’t keep overly well once the icy particles cling to them. I’ve even used wheat bread for this, although I do think white bread makes a prettier crust.

First you pound the chicken breasts to make them approximately uniform in thickness. Prepare the sour cream mixture and have the bread crumbs at the ready. I use a large silpat in a pan.

I remove the chicken tenders and make them separate, small servings. Try to mush them up thicker, so they don’t overbake. Then you cover the chicken with the sour cream, garlic, lemon juice and mustard mixture. That takes about 2 minutes max. Then you sprinkle the fresh bread crumbs on top and kind of pat it onto the sour cream so it sticks. Cover as much of the sour cream as you can.
Meanwhile you will have heated the oven to 475 (hot!). Pop these babies in that hot oven and watch them carefully so they don’t dry out. Mine take exactly 12 minutes. Serve immediately.

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How many possible pizza combinations are there, out there? Way too many for me to guesstimate. When California Pizza Kitchen opened up, probably 20 years ago, I was amazed at the variety. It surely swept in with the “California” style of cooking. Lightening up, fresh ingredients, etc. Lots of chicken.

So, when our daughter, Sara, was still living at home with us (probably she was in college then), she had a hankering for pizza one evening, and looked through a cookbook I had. She settled on this one, using a whole wheat dough that was easily mixed up in the bread machine. By the time DH and I got home from work, she was in the middle of this and we all just raved about how good it was. I’ve made this umpteen times since then, always to good reviews. I don’t make pizza often. In fact I don’t think we’ve even eaten pizza in over a year, but it just sounded good.

Our son-in-law, Todd, is still staying with us (he’s an electrician, and is wiring the new house for our son and his wife), and he’s a pizza fan, so I thought this would be a good choice.

First you make the whole wheat bread dough in your bread machine. You don’t have to use whole wheat dough. We just liked it that way from the get-go. It’s a mixture of 2/3 white and 1/3 wheat flours. It still has the resiliency and easy rising ability of white, though. The joy of the bread machine is that it makes pizza dough so very easy. You use the machine for mixing the dough and rising it once. Then you remove it and continue by hand. Sara used the recipe from my bread machine’s book and we’ve stuck with it ever since. I used Trader Joe’s pre-made pizza dough: I bought one white and one whole wheat and mixed them together.

Meanwhile, you marinate the chicken pieces in some lemon juice, olive oil and oregano. But, having made this plenty of times, if you forget this step, just briefly saute the chicken pieces IN the lemon juice marinade, then you’ll get at least some of the wonderful lemony flavor. Thank you, Sara, for finding this gem of a recipe.
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Thanks to my DH, he managed to make a nice chicken dinner the other night. Albeit, we only had one chicken thigh and some frozen asparagus each, but it worked. The freezer-burned asparagus was over the hill – but the chicken was scrumptious. We have leftovers, which is a good thing, and I would definitely make this again. The recipe came from Elise, over at Simply Recipes. I’ve made several of her recipes in the last 6 months, and have enjoyed them all. This one is a stand-out, for sure. The marinade and sauce (one in the same) is just delicious. You could eat it right out of the bowl it’s so tasty. Her recipe was adapted from an article in the New York Times, she said. The recipe is very simple – you make a cashew-based marinade in the food processor, with cilantro, garlic, soy sauce, brown sugar, lime juice and some fresh chiles. Some of this is reserved to scoop on top at serving time, but you marinate the chicken in this stuff for at least an hour, then grill or broil or bake and serve. Even my DH, who doesn’t cook, found this fairly easy to make. That’s saying a lot from him!

This marinade kind of resembles pesto, except rather than basil and pine nuts, this is cilantro and cashews. My recipe will include a few changes: (1) next time I’ll use boneless, skinless thighs (because I don’t like to eat the fatty chicken skin and most of the thick marinade sticks to the skin); (2) we used one small jalapeno and a part of a poblano chile, and I’d definitely do that again; and maybe if baking these (3) I’ll pat a bit of Panko crumbs on top of the chicken (I like the crunch of Panko); (4) I’ll make more of the sauce since it’s just so unbelievably yummy (I’d like to try it on other things – like a grilled pork chop – or as a spread on a sandwich, maybe even as a salad dressing – we both just l-o-v-e-d the sauce; and (5) I substituted brown sugar Splenda for the brown sugar just because we try to limit sugar in our diets. Although the recipe says to marinate just an hour or two, most likely it would be fine up to 24 hours. No more, though, or the chicken will begin to “cook” with the lime juice in it.

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This is another one of those tried and true recipes I’ve been making since about 1970. Some friends, an older couple, served it one night. Ruth Cormack (now deceased) was a very good cook, and she inspired me to try any number of different food dishes when I was still a young bride. Believe it or not, this is a recipe that she acquired from one of her weight loss diets, likely a precursor to the all-protein diet. I have no idea where, so I can’t give credit to anyone. I looked up the recipe on the internet and came up empty-handed. There is a place called Bamako in Africa (on the Niger River), but this kind of chicken combo doesn’t sound African to me. So I really don’t know its origin.

But nevertheless, it’s very easy. Incredibly easy. Even my DH who is cooking these days because of my fratured foot, could make this. I’ll have to remind him about this one, which he likes a lot. Very flavorful. You all know I like bacon already. You can vary the herbs you use – whatever suits your fancy, although the recipe calls out specific ones. If you don’t like rosemary, leave it out. Put in what you like. But use lots of herbs. Lots and lots. I never seem to make enough of the dry herb mix, no matter how much I concoct, and always have to sprinkle out some more to go around. So, in other words, be generous with the herbs.

It can be thrown together in a big hurry. If you don’t have time to marinate the chicken meat in the lemon juice, that’s okay too. Marinate it as long as you can and add the lemon juice to the pan, dribbled over the chicken instead. If you are concerned about the fat and calories in bacon, use 2 pieces instead of 4 and cut the bacon into small squares and toothpick those pieces to the top of the chicken instead of using a half slice each. Or use turkey bacon instead. Usually I serve this with rice and a veg. If you marinate overnight, don’t allow it to sit any longer than 24 hours or the chicken will start to become mushy.

Generally I use this vacuum box, pictured right, when I marinate – providing the meat is small enough to fit in the thing. It won’t do a roast or tall things or a lot of pieces of anything, but it would do 6-10 boneless chicken pieces. You put the chicken pieces inside, place the lid on top, then pop that tall handle on top and pump the handle, which sucks all the air out of the box, thereby creating a vacuum. Supposedly this forces the marinade to be absorbed into the meat faster than otherwise. It’s called a Vacu Multi Dish, made by VacuVin, and I bought it at Sur la Table some years ago when it was demonstrated in a cooking class. Allow it to sit in the refrigerator for an hour or so. If you don’t have this box, just use a ziploc plastic bag.

Then you drain the chicken, dry it off with a paper towel and slick some olive oil (using your hands) over each piece, then dip and roll in the multitude of herbs. Mound the meat up a little bit and place on a foil or Silpat lined cookie sheet or baking pan and top with bacon. That’s it. Ideally you should cook the thighs longer than the breasts, so to have them come out perfectly juicy, add the breasts later. Usually I use either breasts OR thighs, so I don’t have to make those adjustments. Obviously thighs take the longer cooking time – the 30-35 minutes noted in the recipe. Happy herbing.
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