To celebrate my girlfriend’s long-awaited move to New York, I found this recipe from Molly Stevens’ All About Braising: The Art of Uncomplicated Cooking. I braised sausages and plums in red wine, and like every other recipe I have tried from the cookbook, it did not let me down. It was a very simple braise that filled my apartment with aromas of sweet italian sausage, sage, and red wine. The recipe can be found here.
I’m still alive! After spending last week on vacation in Florida, I have been busy catching up on work and my workouts, and have had little time to cook or post. My cupboard and refrigerator are pretty empty, so I have been living mostly off of leftovers this week. I did, however, find some Berkshire pork cutlets in my freezer, so I prepared pork tonkatsu, a simple japanese dish of panko-breaded pork with a sweet and sour sauce.
I prepared the pork using the tonkatsu recipe from Mark Bittman’s The Best Recipes in the World. It’s very easy: season the pork, dredge in flour, dip it in beaten eggs, and coat it with panko. Shallow fry for 3 minutes per side. Serve with a sauce consisting of equal parts dijon mustard, mirin, and soy sauce, and slightly less rice vinegar. I served the pork with roasted potatoes and stir fried kale. Sorry, no picture due to poor lighting.
Now that this hectic week is almost over, I’ll I can make my return to the kitchen (and the blog).
After stuffing my face with bread and cheese samples; an excellent ham, pickle, and butter sandwich from Marlowe and Sons; and a slice of delicious caramelized leak and ricotta tart from a baker I don’t remember, I began to think about dinner. I did not have much cash on me, so I passed by two of my favorite Greenmarket meat producers, 3 Corner FIeld Farm and Flying Pigs Farm, and set my sight on the $5 chickens at Bo Bo Chicken. I was unfamiliar with Bo Bo chicken, but the friendly lady at the stall informed me that they sell super fresh (i.e. less than a day from the slaughterhouse) poultry. She told me they sell mostly to Asian markets, but also deliver fresh poultry to some of New York’s finest restaurants. I bought a medium-sized chicken for $5 dollars, and they also gave me a free tote bag with an ice pack so I could safely get the chicken home to the Upper East Side in this 90 degree weather. A great deal for a what sounded like a great chicken. Here’s what it looked like when I put it on my cutting board to prepare dinner:
This chicken was so fresh that it had seen little in the way of a butcher’s table. I had only dealt with headless and feetless chicken before, but I was able to quickly get the chicken into it’s more familiar form with a few chops of my knife. I threw the head and feet into the freezer for a stock I will be making later down the road.
To prepare the chicken, I used a recipe for roasted chicken with lemon’s from Marcella Hazan’s The Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. Roasting a chicken does not get much easier than this. Just take two lemons, roll them and squish them, poke a bunch of holes into each, and stuff them into the cavity of the chicken. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, truss it, and into the oven it goes. Here’s what it all looked like after cooking at 350 degrees for an hour, then 20 minutes at 400 degrees:
Unfortunately, I failed to dry the chicken well enough after I washed it, so the skin did not get as brown or as crispy as I would have liked. Thankfully, the meat was deliciously moist and flavorful with the lemon juice that it absorbed while in the oven. Marcella even convinced me to retract my statement that the best roast chickens are cooked with generous amounts of butter. This chicken had no butter, and was as delicious as any roast chicken I have made. It did, however, have a good amount of salt, so I stand by my belief that salt is a roast chicken’s best friend.
Last night, I made salmon “grilled” in my cast iron grill pan with “grilled” figs served over watercress with balsamic vinaigrette. The recipe was from Dave Pasternack’s Young Man & the Sea, a cookbook that I still haven’t made up my mind on yet. On one hand, the book features very simple seafood recipes and has helped me discover some excellent flavor pairing when it comes to seafood. On the other hand, the recipes I have tried have been very hit or miss, with some seemingly incorrect information when it comes to cooking times and the amount of olive oil to use in each dish. Fortunately, last night’s dish fell into the hit category.
The exact recipe is easy to find online, but it takes very little in the terms of step-by-step directions. I rubbed a salmon filet with olive oil and seasoned it with salt and pepper. I threw the salmon onto the grill pan skin-side down and grilled for five minutes over medium-high heat. I flipped it, and grilled it another minute or so, then set it aside. I threw 6 fig halves onto the grill pan and stirred them for about 2 minutes. I plated everything on top of a bed of watercress dressed with a simple balsamic vinaigrette (olive oil, balsamic, salt, pepper), and drizzled the figs with a bit more of the vinaigrette.
I ran a 5-mile race this morning, so to help me have enough energy to run in today’s stifling heat and humidity, I cooked this simple dish of pasta in a spicy tomato sauce last night. Note that this recipe makes enough sauce for about 4 servings, but it freezes well.
Penne Arrabiata
Ingredients
Directions
I tend to make some pretty jackass moves in the kitchen. My most frequent error occurs when a recipe calls for a plate to be garnished with fresh herbs before it is served. I’ll take the time to clean and chop fresh herbs, a task that I hate doing for some reason, and then I’ll set them aside as I wait for the food to cook. Then I’ll plate the food and serve it. Only after I’ve taken several bites, will I realize that I forgot to garnish the plate with all the herbs I chopped. D’oh!
Another dumb kitchen moment came this weekend when I was making my Rogan Josh. The first step in the recipe was to make a paste by blending minced ginger and garlic together. Well, stupid me, paying very little attention to detail, read “ginger” as “onions” and made a fairly watery paste with garlic and onions instead of garlic and ginger. It was only after I stared blankly at the 1 inch pieces of ginger that were laying neglected on my counter that I realized my error. I added the ginger to the onion and garlic paste and blended the paste once again. I don’t think my mistake killed the recipe, as it was still fairly tasty, but it would have been nice to have tried it exactly as Madhur Jaffrey had called for, with intact onions. Oh well, maybe next time. D’oh!
I hope I’m not the only one who can be a jackass in the kitchen, even when performing a task as simple as following the steps of a recipe. What are your D’oh! moments in the kitchen?
For tonight’s dinner, I had roast chicken with leftover curried Christmas limas and sauteed kale. I’ll ignore the boring side dishes, and just focus on the chicken.
While there are countless techniques for roasting a chicken, the one thing to remember about roast chicken is that butter and salt are your best friends. A great roast chicken shouldn’t be diet food. I’ve found that more salt = crispier skin and more butter = moist meat. The other seasonings can vary, but don’t skimp on butter or salt.
I used a tiny 2 lb. chicken from Knoll Crest Farm that I bought at the Greenmarket this past weekend. Immediately when I came home from work, I pulled the chicken out of the fridge, washed it, and dried it thoroughly with paper towels. I then set the chicken aside on a platter and preheated the oven to 375 degrees.
Next, I went through my fridge and pantry to see how I would season the chicken. I pulled up some thyme and some garlic. A lemon would have been great, but alas, I did not have any lemon, so I made due with the thyme and garlic. I chopped up about a quarter cup of thyme leaves, minced two cloves of garlic, and threw the two into a bowel. I also set aside a few sprigs of thyme and two crushed garlic cloves.
I then pulled out the butter. I sliced off a healthy 1/4 stick and threw it into the bowl with the garlic and thyme. I then added a large dashes of salt and pepper to the bowl. I mixed the garlic, butter, thyme and s&p with my hands to make a thick paste. I rubbed the paste all over the chicken, sticking a few sizable chunks under the skin of the breast. Finally, I poured a waterfall of salt (yes, more salt) over the chicken. If you think you’ve poured on a lot of salt, keep pouring another second. Here’s how it all looked before I stuck it in the oven:
I assumed my small chicken would take no more than 45 minutes to cook in the 375 degree oven. However, after 45 minutes, the temperature on my thermometer read 150 degrees and the skin was not very brown. I pumped the oven up to 450 and stuck the chicken in for another 7 minutes or so, when the thermometer read 160 and the skin had browned slightly. I set the chicken on a platter for ten minutes. Meanwhile, I added a splash of white vinegar to the pan I had roasted the chicken in and stirred up all the browned bits at the pan. This step not only cleaned my skillet nicely, but it also made a nice pan sauce for my chicken. I poured the sauce over the resting chicken. The result was a tasty, non-diet roast chicken.
