A Person Could Develop a Cold

I told you so.

Specifically, I told you that the trip to Fairbanks was the straw that broke this traveler's back.  I, who am never sick, have a cold.  A sinus-dripping, reddened-nose kind of cold. 

Miserable.

The only good thing about this is that it has led to my being home more than expected this weekend, which in turn has led to cooking.  Fortunately, I am not feeding anyone other than David (who has the same cold), so the odds of contaminating anyone with my germs are minimal.

The Great Focaccia Experiment of 2012 is continuing, with yesterday's batch with olives and rosemary--for the basic recipe, go here--and while I was going through some old magazines, I found this one.  The green onion and mustard flavors are subtle and incredibly tasty, an assessment which I trust will hold when the cold clears.

The recipe was written to be cooked on a grill, but it adapts easily to an oven.

Mustard-Crusted Chicken with Green Onions

Adapted from Bon Appetit Magazine, August 2010

1 small bunch green onions, chopped

1/4 cup Dijon mustard

1 tbsp. fresh-squeezed lemon juice

2 large garlic cloves, minced

1 tbsp. olive oil

6 large chicken thighs, with skin

2 tbsp. fresh breadcrumbs, toasted

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Stir together the first five ingredients in a small bowl.  Place the chicken thighs in a baking dish skin side up.  Brush them with olive oil and then coat with the mustard sauce.

Sprinkle with the bread crumbs and cover the dish with aluminum foil.  Cook for 25 minutes and then either slice into a chicken thigh to check for doneness or use a meat thermometer--chicken is done when it registers 165 degrees on a meat thermometer.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

This weekend was chock-full of the good, the bad and the ugly.

First, the good:  Love, Loss and What I Wore opened on Friday to a full house and was a benefit for our local chapter of the YWCA.  We were sold out again on Saturday and while we had a smaller house yesterday, the audiences have just eaten up the show. 

The bad:  stage fright.  I haven't acted in so long that I've forgotten what it was all about.  It didn't show in my performance, fortunately, but I was petrified going out there on opening night.  It really helped that my fellow actors were so amazing that I warmed up before too long.

The ugly:  the tiramisu cake I made yesterday for this month's Cake Slice pick.  You'll see what I mean on Friday. 

And a second entry for "the good":  last night's dinner.  How many of you were readers of the late, lamented Gourmet Magazine?  My guess is most of you.  It kills me that when I sold my house in 2008 to move in with my now-husband, I recycled almost a hundred issues of Gourmet because I didn't want to move them.  I figured that there were plenty more issues to come, right?  A year later Gourmet stopped publication. 

I have a handful, maybe ten, of random issues that survived the Great Recycling Binge of 2008, and I treasure them.  This recipe is a reminder of what made Gourmet so great.  I'll post the polenta recipe tomorrow.

Tuscan Chicken with Olives and Pancetta

Adapted from Gourmet Magazine, January 2009

Large chicken, backbone cut out and cut into 10 pieces*

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1.5 tbsp. rosemary, chopped

1.5 tbsp. thyme, chopped

1/2 tbsp. sea salt

4 peperoncini, crushed

5 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

2 slices pancetta, diced (optional)

1 cup dry white wine (I used Vermentino;  any white will work as long as it's bone dry)

1/2 cup of good-quality pitted olives (I used a mix of black and green)

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees and position a rack in the middle.

In a large bowl, combine the chicken, olive oil, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper flakes, ensuring that the chicken is coated with the oil and spices.  Lay the chicken pieces skin-side up in a rimmed pan--we used our large paella pan and it worked perfectly.

Scatter the garlic over the chicken pieces, along with the pancetta.  Roast until the chicken skin browns, about 25 minutes.  Remove the pan from the oven and drizzle the wine over the chicken, along with scooping up pan juices and pouring them over the chicken so it remains moist.  Bake for another 8 minutes, then remove the pan from the oven again and add the olives.

Bake for another 15 to 20 minutes, until the chicken is golden and cooked through.  Remove from the oven and tent with foil.  Allow to sit for another 10 minutes or so before serving to let the flavors intensify.

If you are watching what you eat at this time of year, remove the skin from the chicken before eating.  The flavor is still fantastic, and the fat is significantly reduced.

Suggested Wine Pairing:  Italian wine, naturally.  I used a lovely crisp Vermentino to cook the chicken, and it was a great match for the final dish.  If you prefer reds, a fruit-forward red such as Negroamaro or even a good-quality Chianti would be a good match.

*The way we cut it, there are ten pieces:  two wings, two drumsticks, two thighs and each breast is cut in half.  The original recipe recommended cutting the chicken breasts into three pieces each, but I think that's overkill.

Snow City

During the night, it began to snow heavily here in Anchorage.  Snow makes me want to cook.  Of course, as my friend Paul says, so does rain.  And sun.  But never mind that.

Despite all the warnings, I managed to forget that daylight savings time started this morning.  This made my early awakening an extra-early awakening, and I found myself in my kitchen before 7 a.m. preparing to bake a cake for our new neighbors and start a pot of something warm and filling for lunch today that I can continue to eat for lunch into the week.

I have to tell you, no one is at my neighborhood grocery store at 7 a.m.  It's apparently the time to go if you want to miss everyone, particularly if you happen to still be wearing your pajama pants under a long coat and with a polka-dotted pair of Wellington boots.

The cake I'll blog about another day.  The main event was a Moroccan-influenced slow cooker chicken dish.  David hates the slow cooker with a passion (I have yet to figure out why;  maybe because he likes the idea of big casseroles simmering on the stove?), but even he had to admit this dish was a hit.

Serve this over couscous or brown rice, and add a dollop of plain yogurt to the top or--if you're feeling fancy--a mint raita.  While savory, this dish has an interesting acidic tang thanks to the stewed lemons.

Slow Cooker Moroccan Chicken

Adapted from Slow Cooker:  FoodMadeFast

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

3 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken thighs

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tsp. ground cumin

1.5 tsp. cayenne pepper

2 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1/2 cup chopped Italian parsley

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 yellow onion, sliced

1 shallot, chopped

1 can crushed tomatoes with purée

1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 lemon, quartered

Kosher salt and fresh-ground pepper

Combine the flour, one teaspoon of kosher salt and an equal amount of pepper in a wide, shallow dish.  Pat the chicken thighs dry and dredge them in the flour;  set aside--don't discard any leftover flour.




Make sure to shake off any excess flour;  otherwise, the chicken will have a gummy coating.

 Warm the olive oil in a large, shallow skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the chicken thighs in a single layer;  this may mean you make more than one batch.  Brown the chicken on one side for seven to ten minutes until it is a deep caramel color.  Turn the chicken over and cook for another two to three minutes.  Make sure the chicken is well browned.  When it is all done, add the chicken in a single layer in the pot of the slow cooker.

Add the remaining flour to the frying pan, along with the cumin and cayenne pepper.  Stir until the spices are fragrant, about one to two minutes.  Add the chicken broth all at once and deglaze the pan, loosening the browned bits.  Pour the contents of the skillet over the chicken thighs.

Top the chicken with the onion, shallot, parsley, garlic and tomatoes.  Distribute the lemons in the corners of the slow cooker pot.  Cook on the high setting for four hours;  then add the chickpeas and cook for approximately another hour.  Remove the lemon quarters when you add the chickpeas, and taste for seasoning, adding additional salt and/or pepper if needed.

Serve with brown rice or couscous.  Serves 6 as a main course.

Manic Monday

Ah, Monday.  I can always tell when it's Sunday afternoon because I feel instantly less relaxed and begin preparing for the eventuality:  Monday's coming.

I've talked about starting rehearsals for a play I'm directing called "Inspecting Carol," a mash-up of "Christmas Carol" and "Noises Off"--a small professional theatre company's trials and travails putting on an underrehearsed production of "Christmas Carol" in light of National Endowment for the Arts funding cuts, actors behaving badly and sets falling apart. 

I always feel nervous when I start directing a show.  If it doesn't come together, I'm ultimately responsible because it's my job to be the leader.  (My low point yesterday was when I whined at my husband "Why do I have to be the leader?"  The logical response would be that I have directed a dozen shows, but David knew better than to try logic).  This all gets much better, mind you, when rehearsals actually start.  Anticipation is a killer.

Yesterday afternoon, in advance of our first rehearsal, I combated my stress by cooking.  What started as a slow-cooker chicken chile verde morphed as I realized I didn't have all the ingredients I needed.  Instead, it became a smoky, flavorful and healthy soup of chicken chunks, Guajillo pepper flakes and onion, served over rice.  In other words, the perfect take-to-work lunch.

My lunch, sitting on the chaos that is my desk.

The recipe originally called for a can of minced jalapeños and their juice.  I used a whole dried Guajillo pepper, pounded in my mortar and pestle, which added the smoky flavor but not much heat.  It takes a couple of minutes longer, but I would recommend using either a good dried pepper or fresh poblanos, depending on what you have available.

Slow-Cooker Guajillo Chicken Soup
Adapted from Slow Cooker:FoodMadeFast

3 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut in 1-inch cubes
1 large dried Guajillo pepper, pounded in a mortar and pestle
2 cups chicken broth
2 tbsp. rice wine vinegar
1 large yellow onion, diced
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 tsp. dried fennel seeds


Look at the pretty new backsplash!

 1 tbsp. hot sauce, plus more to taste
Salt and fresh-ground black pepper to taste

Sour cream, chopped cilantro and white rice, for serving

In the pot of the slow cooker, add the chicken breast chunks and sprinkle the pepper over them.  Then add the broth, onion, oregano, garlic and fennel seed.


Here it is just going into the slow cooker.  Not so appealingat this point--it gets better!

Set the slow cooker to cook for four hours on high heat.  At the halfway point, add the hot sauce and vinegar and taste the broth.  Add more hot sauce or vinegar if it needs more heat or acid, plus salt and pepper to taste.


Now that's a better color.  The soup took on the color of the pepper, along with a hit of color from the hot sauce.

Serve over rice with the sour cream and cilantro.  If you have lemon or lime wedges on hand, serve on the side for squeezing over the soup.


There's no added fat in this soup;  to keep it healthy, I served it with reduced-fat sour cream.

Serves 6 as a main course.

Of Zombies, Half Marathons and Office Lunches

The words "office lunch" don't conjure up images of great food, do they?

Today we had a bosses' day lunch, which mostly meant that everyone brought bags of chips and trays of cold cuts, as well as sweets.

I like sandwiches, but I prefer something warm for lunch.  And if given the opportunity to bring food to work and cook here, sending good smells throughout the office, why wouldn't I do that?

I have a beautiful All-Clad slow cooker that I think I received as a wedding present when David and I were married two and a half years ago.  It almost never leaves its perch on the top shelf of the pantry--maybe it's been used about three times, but I can't get rid of it because it's so shiny, pretty and potentially useful.  A friend once called me a raven because I was attracted to shiny things.

I prepped everything last night, all 15 minutes of it, and started the slow cooker at 7:30 this morning.  By 10 a.m. the office was filling with the mellowing smell of onions and black pepper, and by 10:30 everyone was asking when lunch was.  It's the perfect dish for throwing together and setting aside while actual work is being done.  It's like the Filipino variant of Southern, vinegar-based barbecue:  savory, meaty and tangy.

On another note, I finished my last race of the season on Saturday, the Anchorage Running Club's Zombie Half-Marathon.  Although many people dressed up, I have wicked sensitive skin and didn't think a layer of zombie makeup would help matters any.  Here are a few friends and David just before the start of the race:



Check out my friend Arlitia and her nephew, dressed as "preppie zombies."



Although I wasn't out to set any records that day, I finished the race with a personal best time that shaved about a minute and a half off the time of my last half-marathon.  This really confirms that I'm dropping from a marathoner to a half-marathoner for future races!

Coming up soon:  The delayed reviews of three Portland restaurants--Gruner, Beast and Irving Street Kitchen--along with a recipe using this month's "mystery ingredient."

Slow-Cooker Chicken Adobo
Adapted from Williams-Sonoma FoodMadeFast:  Slow Cooker Cookbook

4 halved yellow onions, sliced
6 cloves garlic, crushed
2 bay leaves
1.5 tbsp. fresh-ground pepper, plus more to taste
3 lb. boneless, skinless chicken thighs, trimmed of residual fat
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
1/4 cup fish sauce
1 tbsp. sugar
Cooked jasmine rice

Add half of the onions to the bottom of the slow cooker in an even layer.  Add the two bay leaves.

Layer the chicken thighs on top of the onions, then cover with the remaining onions.  Sprinkle with pepper and add the vinegar, soy sauce and fish sauce.  Sprinkle with the sugar.


I mixed the wet ingredients ahead of time, but strictly speaking it's not necessary.

Cover and cook on the high heat setting for four hours, or the low heat setting for eight hours.



OK, so the presentation isn't super-pretty, but this was all that was left after my office chowed the entire contents of the slow cooker.

 This serves 6-8 as a main course, ladeled over jasmine rice.  Your hungry office (or family) will love it.

Comfort Me with Apples

My kitchen is imploding.

All right, not really, but we're starting a long-delayed minor kitchen renovation.  Although I've now grown to (mostly) love my kitchen, we almost didn't buy the house two years ago when I saw it.  First there was what I like to call the Backsplash from Hell, which started at one end of the kitchen, looped around the refrigerator and went aaalll the way around to the other side.  I like the gray-green Corian for the countertop.  For the entire decor, not so much. 

I mean, really?  It's just odd.

there were the 1980s vanilla-colored appliances, especially the less-than-standard size refrigerator (also known as the Vegetable Killer, see more on that here).

And the lack of a good vent.  I could go on.

The renovation is going to happen in pieces, as our contractor is available, but it could make cooking interesting for a while. 

Well, in all reality it's been interesting since David karate-chopped the 1980s vanilla oven closed during his birthday party, damaging one of the door hinges and resulting in the door not closing all the way.  I wish I could say that when this happened, I ran in slow motion toward the oven and flung myself on top of it screaming "NOOOO!" at the top of my lungs, but that didn't happen.  I was on the other side of the room serving up smoked gouda and caramelized onion quesadillas when I heard the squeak-thud of the unhappy oven.

I wanted to make a good dinner before the kitchen became even partially unusable.  Yesterday I started looking for recipes for Rosh Hoshanah, which is next week.  It is the start of the Jewish high holidays and has several traditional foods, including apples and honey, to signify wishes for a sweet new year. 

This recipe incorporates apples into a main course, and has several virtues:  It's healthy!  It's hearty!  It takes a total of an hour and forty minutes, of which less than twenty are active time!  Joan Nathan, you doyenne of Jewish cooking, you know how to get a frazzled cook's heart a-flutter.

If you have the advantage of more time, I would recommend salting the chicken, covering it with plastic wrap and leaving it in the refrigerator overnight.  This draws out moisture from the skin and makes for a crispier chicken.

Rosh Hoshanah Chicken with Apples and Onions

Adapted from Quiches, Kugels and Couscous by Joan Nathan

1 3.5-4 lb. chicken
1 yellow onion, peeled
3 Fuji apples, cored and cut into 6-8 pieces each
1 cup chicken stock
1 1/3 cups dry white wine
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tbsp. granulated sugar
Kosher salt
Fresh-ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Pat the chicken dry and season it lightly with kosher salt, fresh-ground pepper and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon.  Place it in a large baking pan--I put mine breast side down, so the white meat would stay in the marinade and not dry out during the long cooking process.

Cut the onion into large slivers and scatter it around the bottom of the pan.  Pour the chicken stock and wine on the onions and bake for 45 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, toss the apples (I prefer leaving the skin on, but you can peel them if you wish) with the tablespoon of sugar and remaining cinnamon.

At the 45-minute mark, remove the chicken from the oven and add the apples to the pan, spooning the broth-wine mixture over them.  If the apples still look a little dry, add another bit of broth.

Cook for another 45 minutes, or until done.  The thickest part of the breast should register 165 degrees on an oven thermometer.

Allow to sit, tented with foil, for a few minutes.  The pan juices are delicious, but you could turn them into a thicker gravy if desired.

Serves 4-6 as a main course.  Spoon the pan juices over the sliced meat and serve with a side of the apples and onions.

Food/wine pairing:  You're going to be tempted to pick a sweeter wine because of the apples.  Don't do it.  This dish hails from my mother's ancestral region of Alsace-Lorraine in France.  Either a bone-dry German riesling or a French or German Pinot Blanc would be perfect.

Mistakes Were Made

Let's face it, everyone makes a cooking mistake or three once in a while.  What is more important is whether whatever you're making actually survives those mistakes.

My parents arrived in Anchorage late Thursday night, and between wanting to cook something nice for them and continue using the CSA produce before it implodes in my refrigerator, I picked a summery, not-too-ambitious recipe from A16 to make Saturday night:  roasted young chicken with radishes and salsa verde.

Let's start with the first problem:  the book calls for young chickens of about six ounces, whereas the local grocery's "young chicken" is a behemoth five-pounder.  Um, no.  I (smartly, I think) decide to change to Cornish game hens, which the meat department tells me I might find in the frozen food section.  Oh boy.  Sure enough, I uncover four Cornish hens from behind a mountain of frozen chicken wings, take them home, and really read the recipe.  Wherein I find that the poultry should have been seasoned with salt the night before and then rubbed with an aniseseed-oregano combination first thing in the morning.  Oops.  It's 1:30 p.m. and I have frozen, unsalted, unrubbed hens.

I threw the hens in a warm water bath and realize that two of them must have been raised on steroids.  These guys must have been terrors on the farm, and I picture them as the Cornish game hen equivalent of Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver:  "You talkin' to me?  Huh?  You talkin' to me?" By 3, these babies are out of the warm water, patted down with salt--which really does have a purpose, to draw out the moisture for a crisper skin--which sits for a scant hour before they get patted off and rubbed with the spices.  After that, it's into the fridge for an uber-quick sit with the rub. 

So far, so good.  Then I realize that to make the salsa verde, I should have homemade breadcrumbs.  Oops again, but nothing I can't remedy.  After that, I throw some parsley (should have already been chopped--oh well), capers, lemon juice, garlic, tiny dried red Italian peppers and olive oil into a prep food processor along with the bread crumbs and pulverize it all.  Delicious gloppy green goodness.  A couple of tablespoons of this gets tossed with thinly sliced red radishes for the side salad.

After some fine jerry-rigging, David got the steroidal hens onto the rotisserie that attaches to our grill.  I'm not optimistic at this point that any of this is actually going to work, so I start on the side dish that I know I can make work:  the A16 braised kale with anchovy and onion soffritto.

No one is more shocked than I am when the hens came off the rotisserie and looked, well, not totally unlike the photo in the cookbook. 

 

Ignore the fact that the radish salad appears to be emerging from the hen's behind.

 By the time I put the kale in the soffritto (the key to good kale:  undercook it--it continues to cook after leaving the pot), I realize that I have made way more sauce than necessary, but at this point that sort of mistake seems like an afterthought.  I garnished the kale with a little fromage blanc and called it dinner.

We had a ton of salsa verde left, but it tastes good on grilled bread as well as the chicken and radishes.  Frankly, I totally lucked out with this dinner.  Take that, A16!  I didn't even start to think about cooking this until a mere four hours beforehand and it was fabulous if I may say so myself.

Salsa Verde
Adapted from A16 Food + Wine Cookbook

1 cup parsley (I used curly because it was what I had)
1/2 tsp. capers, rinsed
1/2 tsp. dried red chiles
1/2 cup bread crumbs, plus more if the salsa is too thin
2 small cloves garlic
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
Salt to taste

Blend the first five ingredients in a food processor until it is the consistency of a rough chop.  Drizzle in the olive oil until it reaches the desired consistency, and add more crumbs if you prefer a thicker sauce.  Give it a few more seconds in the food processor and then add the lemon juice and salt to taste.  Serve with sliced radishes, grilled bread, poultry or anything that needs a little extra pizazz.