chicken a la delicious

Not sure what to call this one. It was inspired from a few different sources and came out pretty well. I think we'll work up from the bottom. First, a base of.... polenta! Nothing fancy here, just some salt, pepper, olive oil and.... polenta!! Go figure! On top of that we have a Zuni Cafe radicchio and parseley salad with bread crumbs, anchovy vinaigrette, and a grated boiled egg? yup, grated. Apparently Judy Rodgers knows what she's doing. Next up we have the hero of the night - roasted chicken with a parmesan/breadcrumb coating. "This reasonably slowly roasted chicken was butterflied and baked with tender love and care." Sorry, just practicing my marketing skills... As it turns out, despite being Italian, parmesan ain't half bad. And finally, to pull everything together, we have baked onions and bacon which provided a nice cushion for the chicken to roast on and an even better topping. I did not need inspiration for the bacon... All in all, i think this dish deserves a solid A-. Very tasty stuff.

01/09 Seasonal Chicken with Beer!

After being blamed for Heather's inability to post anything or carry the weight while I was busy with other... how should I say... endeavors, I decided I should take matters into my own hands and cook up a little somethin' somethin' for the kids. Truth be told, I don't actually have kids. But I digress. I've actually been cooking from time to time over the last couple months, but there were certainly weeks where I was living off of burritos and Indian food. I even grew to like the Anna's Veggie Burrito, which is a sure sign of needing to get back into my own kitchen.

Anywho... I was sitting on the Red Line last week, flanked by two people with very large rear ends, considering my options for dinner. I had a bunch of random things in the fridge including a whole chicken that didn't seem like they would amount to a whole heck of a lot. It being winter time, and me living in the northeast, there's not much in the way of fresh fruits and veggies this time of year. Then all of the sudden I had one of those "light bulb" moments, just like in a cartoon - in fact it was just the lights in the train that had turned back on, allowing the fat people to whip out their 'south beach diet' books. Anyway, my inspiration was a Mario Batali dish I'd made a while back, though I never referred to back to it and actually, I couldn't even really remember what it was.

Basically, what I came up with was chicken braised in Harpoon Winter Warmer beer. Yup, beer. Into the dish went two clementines, a bunch of green olives, pancetta, extra pancetta fat for good measure, some celery, one onion, maybe two - i forget, fennel/cumin/celery seeds, salt&pepper. Now I know what you're thinking - "that sounds awfully weird!" and "what Batali dish could possibly inspire that crazy concoction?". Well, I can't really speak to your first thought, other than to reassure you that it came together nicely fed me for several days. As for the Batali dish - after some searching, I realized what it was that I was thinking about on that bone-crushing train ride back from work. It's a lamb shank braised in white wine & tomato sauce with olives and oranges... not exactly the same thing, but you know what - the final product was pretty similar.

So there you have it, my first post since mid October. Now that I have my life back to some degree, I'm hoping I'll have more time to entertain you and make you hungry. So keep checking back as we bring this blog back to life!

9/17 chicken and garlic

For someone who claims to dislike chicken, i do find myself with a whole chicken in my fridge rather frequently. Really when it comes down to it, i dislike chicken that others cook. By others, i mean most commercial establishments. It's always skinless, boneless and invariably tasteless, dry as chalk breast meat (yes this is a bad thing). anyway, tonight i had a whole chicken and instead of roasting it, which always leads to happiness, i opted to braise it. Now, not too long ago, my mom made a garlic chicken dish from a classic elizabeth david book, which was quite delicious (the meal, not the book). i didn't have the recipe on hand, so i just did my best to recreate it. Basically, after browning the chicken, which i'd cut up into the standard 8 pieces (breast, thing, leg & wing), i braised it with some white wine, onions, a lot of garlic and some carrots till everything was nice and tender. (unsurprisingly, i used bacon fat as the lubricant). i also cooked up some green beans as a side. Speaking of the green beans, after steaming them, i like to pan fry them in butter till they are basically burnt. I realize this is very french of me and some might even say this is slightly weird, but it tastes sooooooooo good. they're not actually burnt, its closer to lightly caramelized. the waxiness is nearly gone and any crispiness that they've lost while cooking has been replaced by buttery crispiness. basically, they've become an unhealthy reincarnation of their previous selves. simply delicious.

8/26 poulet roti

"That's a roast chicken, numbnuts! And if you can't properly roast a damn chicken then you are one helpless, hopeless, sorry-ass bivalve in an apron. Take that apron off, wrap it around your neck and hang yourself. You do not deserve to wear the proud garment of generations of hardworking, dedicated cooks. Turn in those clogs, too."
-A. Bourdain

8/24 vietnamese

my favorite ethnic food - by far... but very much outside my cooking comfort zone. no worries though, i had a hand from Haskell who joined me for dinner as well as a very good cookbook to guide me. The main dish was Ga Kho Gung (chicken braised in ginger and caramel sauce). This involved making homemade caramel sauce and cooking chunks of chicken thighs in it along with a good amount of ginger and some fish sauce. To go along with this, we also made some shrimp summer rolls. Again, not something i make very often. in fact, i've never made em before, but they were fun to put together and quite tasty. overall a pretty successful meal.