The "L" Word: Curried Coconut Chicken Soup

It may still be sunny, but there's a chill in the air. I hear leaves crunching underfoot as children walk by the house on their way to school. Agriculturist and author J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur first coined the term "Indian Summer" in 1778 in his Letters from an American Farmer, describing it as a season when "the rain is followed by an interval of calm and warmth…its characteristics are a tranquil atmosphere and general smokiness."

Tatsoi, an Asian brassica.

It's the season to turn on the stove again after a long, dry summer and think about soups and braises, stews and one-pot suppers. I'm back to my weekly habit of roasting a chicken, making sure to buy the largest available so there are leftovers for salads, tacos and soups, not to mention slowly simmering the picked-over carcass in water to make stock—yes, that's what "bone broth" is—that'll go into risottos, soups and myriad other dishes.

As I was casting about for something to make for dinner the other night (a situation that occurs all too often around here) I came across some of that leftover chicken in the fridge then found a couple of cans of coconut milk in the pantry. A glance in the vegetable bin revealed a bunch of spinach-like tatsoi (photo, above left) and a finger of ginger, and I was off to the races.

Thai-Style Curried Coconut Chicken Soup

2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 onion, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1-2 Tbsp. curry powder, to taste
2 c. chicken stock (or corn stock or water)
2 13.5-oz. cans coconut milk
2 c. cooked chicken
2 kaffir lime leaves
2” finger of ginger, peeled and halved
4 c. tatsoi, chopped (or bok choi, spinach or other greens)
1 Tbsp. harissa (or 1/4 tsp. cayenne or to taste)
Juice of 1 lime
Salt, to taste
Cilantro leaves, chopped roughly (optional)

Heat oil in a large soup pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add onion and sauté until tender and translucent. Add garlic and curry powder and stir to combine. Add remaining ingredients except for lime juice. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer and cook 30 minutes to an hour*, stirring occasionally. Just before serving stir in lime juice and adjust salt to taste. Garnish with cilantro leaves.

* If you like, while the soup simmers, put on a pot of rice and serve a scoop of it in your soup.

Read more The "L" Word posts about creative (and delicious) uses of leftovers.

Chicken Tikka Masala Fills Your Senses

If I knew a good love song about dairy products, I'd be putting a link to it here. If you read my last post about our discovery of a line of organic, lactose-free dairy products, you'll know what I'm talking about.

It's been years since I've been able to contemplate making recipes that contain any fresh dairy products like butter, yogurt, sour cream, cream or any cheese younger than about six months. Looking through cookbooks or recipe sites, I automatically screened out anything that had any significant amount of those ingredients. Sure, I'd been able to substitute margarine for butter in a few, and tried tofu sour cream and cream cheese on occasion, but…sorry to say this…they were pale imitations when the real deal was called for.

Roasting spices for garam masala.

The cuisine of India is generally fine for the lactose intolerant, since vegetable oil is often called for (or can be substituted for ghee) in many instances. But the creamy, lovely curried yogurt sauces have been off limits. Until now.

As mentioned previously, Green Valley Organics makes lactose-free sour cream, yogurt, cream cheese and butter, and they're widely available here in Portland. So to celebrate this life-changing—or at least dinner-changing—occurrence, I decided to do a trial run of a tikka masala, which uses copious amounts of ghee and yogurt as the body of a curry sauce that blankets the chicken, lamb or whatever meat you choose in a lusciously rich coating.

Lovely aroma, fabulous flavor.

I was intrigued by the description I ran across in a recipe for a Punjabi-style tikka masala by Samin Nosrat on the New York Times cooking site, but decided to substitute fresh chicken thighs for the cooked turkey called for. (I also made homemade garam masala—easy and so much more flavorful than store-bought—using a recipe by Craig Claiborne.)

Long story short, with a few tweaks and adjustments to the recipe, sighs and moans were heard emanating from the diners gathered around the table, for the return of these much-missed gifts from our bovine friends as much as the incredible aroma and flavor of the dish itself.

Chicken Tikka Masala

For the garam masala:
9 green cardamom pods

1" length of stick cinnamon
1⁄2 tsp. whole cloves

1⁄2 tsp. black peppercorns

1 Tbsp. cumin seeds

1 Tbsp. coriander seeds

For the marinade:
2 tsp. garam masala
2 tsp. ground coriander
2 tsp. ground cumin
1 Tbsp. paprika
4 tsp. ground turmeric
1 tsp. kosher salt
6 cloves garlic, crushed in a garlic press or pounded in a mortar and pestle
1 c. whole-milk yogurt
3 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken thighs (bone-in, skin-on is fine, too)

For the masala:
4 Tbsp. ghee, butter or neutral- tasting oil
1 onion, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
6 cardamom pods, crushed, with seeds reserved and husks disposed of
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. paprika
1⁄2-1 tsp. red pepper flakes
1 tsp. garam masala
1 1⁄2 tsp. kosher salt, plus more to taste
2 Tbsp. finely grated fresh ginger
4 cloves garlic, crushed in a garlic press or pounded in a mortar and pestle
2 serrano peppers, finely minced
1 qt. roasted tomatoes or a 28-oz. can crushed tomatoes
12 oz. sour cream
1/2 c. whole-milk yogurt
3⁄4 c. coarsely chopped fresh cilantro, plus sprigs for garnish
Steamed basmati or jasmine rice, for serving

Break open cardamom pods and reserve the small seeds, discarding the outer shells. Roughly crush the cinnamon stick into small pieces in a mortar and pestle. Combine all the spices in a small skillet over medium heat. Cook spices briefly until they emit a roasty aroma, but be careful and don't allow them to smoke. Empty into small spice mill or small coffee grinder and grind as finely as possible. Store in airtight container.

Make the marinade: In a medium bowl, stir together garam masala, coriander, cumin, paprika, turmeric, kosher salt, garlic, ginger and yogurt. Fold in the chicken thighs. Cover and chill for 4 hours or overnight.

Make the masala: On the stove top, heat a Dutch oven or similar pot over medium-high heat. Add 3 tablespoons ghee, butter or neutral oil, then add onion, cardamom, bay leaf, paprika, pepper flakes, garam masala and a pinch of salt. Reduce heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, until onions are brown and tender, 10 to 15 minutes, adjusting temperature as needed so the onions don’t burn.

Make space among onions in center of pot, and add 1 tablespoon ghee, butter or neutral oil. When it sizzles, add ginger, garlic and serrano peppers, and sizzle for about 10 seconds. Stir into the spiced onions, then add tomatoes and their juices. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, stirring often, until the liquid is almost gone, 8 to 10 minutes.

Stir sour cream, yogurt and chopped cilantro into the mixture in the pot. Season with 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt. Simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, until sauce thickens, about 40 minutes. Discard bay leaf.

In the meantime, line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil, turn on oven broiler, and arrange an oven rack about 6 inches from broiling unit. Lay the marinated chicken thighs on the parchment in a single layer. (Stir any remaining marinade into the sauce.) Broil thighs until they begin to blacken in spots, 6 to 8 minutes. Add the browned thighs to the masala sauce, bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer and cook for 30 minutes.

Just before serving, taste and adjust salt as needed. To serve, garnish with cilantro sprigs. Serve hot, with steamed basmati rice.

Wild Chanterelles Mean Great Meals This Winter

I'm sure it comes as no surprise that I follow a few foragers on social media, people like Hank Shaw, Langdon Cook and Monica Wilde. I also have friends who forage professionally, like Jack Czarnecki and his sons Chris and Stefan, of the mushroom-centric Joel Palmer House in Dayton, Oregon. Then there are the myriad chefs, cooks and other folks I know who pull on their wellies and get out in inclement weather to hunt—not pick—our wild edibles.

So when I start seeing photos of wild-foraged chanterelles circulating around the ether, it gets my heart pining to head out into the woods myself with a basket and high hopes. I actually did get to do some foraging this last weekend at Fort Stevens State Park near Astoria on the Oregon coast, but it's more well known for its porcini mushrooms, or boletus edulis, than chanterelles, due to the mix of trees planted on its former sand dunes.

Not that I was complaining about the three pounds of boletes we found there, not at all. (I wouldn't want to tick off the mushroom gods, after all.)

Luckily for Portland folk there are plenty of wild chanterelles available at local farmers' markets and stores—some even have special sale prices—so I've been able to stock up on those chanterelles in case I don't get out in the forest soon enough to catch them at their peak. An hour of roasting in the oven at 400°, draining off the juices a couple of times for the deliriously delicious mushroom stock that'll get used in risottos and chowders, and then popping the roasted mushrooms into zip-lock freezer bags. Then I'll have plenty of braises, soups and other delights to look forward to this winter.

So far we've had chanterelle quesadillas (thanks Kim Severson), a stunning mushroom chowder and last night a coq au vin with roasted yams that blew away any other chicken dish we've had lately. Fast, dead simple and so delicious, it was lucky that there were any leftovers for Dave to take to work for lunch today. Seriously, this is a company-worthy dinner, and would be more than adequate using regular mushrooms. But to send your guests into the stratosphere, invest in a pound of the wild things. You won't regret it.

Coq au Vin with Chanterelles and Roasted Garnet Yams

For the chicken:
3 Tbsp. olive oil
3 lbs. bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (approx. 10)
1 onion, roughly chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb. chanterelles or other mushrooms, roughly chopped or 1 cup pre-roasted mushrooms
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
2 tsp. dried basil
1 c. dry white wine
Salt to taste

For the yams:
4 medium-sized garnet yams

Preheat oven to 375°. Bring a medium pot of water to boil. Cut yams in quarters. When water boils put yams in boiling water, let it return to a boil and cook for 3 minutes. Remove and transfer to baking sheet, skin side down. Place in oven and roast for approx. 45 min. or until tender. Turn off oven until chicken is done and serve alongside.

While yams are baking, place a large skillet over medium-high heat and add oil. Heat until oil shimmers, then brown the thighs on both sides in batches, removing to a plate as they're browned. When thighs are browned, add onions to the fat in the pan and sauté until translucent. Add garlic and chanterelles and sauté until tender. Add herbs and stir in, then pour in wine. Put chicken thighs into the pan with the vegetables and wine. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and simmer 45 minutes. Add salt to taste. Serve.

One Simple Roast Chicken = At Least Three Dinners

It's the dinner that keeps on giving. Not just a single feast-like meal, roast chicken fits in the category of those magical dinners that, if you can whisk away the platter before there are just scraps left, you've got the makings for at least two more meals, not to mention a decent lunch. And even with just a few scraps left over you can have a big pot of soup and enough stock for risotto.

You can see where I'm going here.

Say you make a roast chicken for your Sunday dinner (left). (Shopping hint: I always buy the biggest one in the case because there's a better chance for leftovers, and it only takes a few minutes longer to cook.) After it's been ripped apart by your ravenous family/fellow diners and they've gone off to their postprandial pursuits, take the plates into the kitchen. Scrape the bones into a pot along with any innards that came with the chicken. Then pull off the meat from any pieces left on the platter, scraping the bones into the aforementioned pot.

Now it's time to attack the carcass with your hands, pulling off even smaller shreds and adding it to your growing pile of meaty bits. Break the carcass in half—this is super easy once all the meat is gone—and put it in the pot. Add water to cover the carcass and put it on the stove to simmer for about an hour (this can be done anytime, really—just put the pot in the fridge until you've got an hour to make the stock). Notice I don't add any other vegetables to make the stock…I like to add those when I'm making whatever the final dish calls for. Put the leftover meat in the fridge.

So what do you have? Well, you'll probably come away with two to three quarts of stock once the bones have been strained off, which you can freeze for soups, risottos or whatever other quickie dinner you choose to make later in the week. Depending on how much meat I've yanked from the mouths of my family and scavenged from the carcass, I usually get upwards of a couple of cups of meat or maybe more. It's enough to throw in a pot of chicken soup, a chicken pot pie or a risotto, with perhaps enough left for a chicken curry sandwich for lunch.

As for that first, lovely roast chicken dinner, if you make the recipe below, in 90 minutes you'll have a one-pot meal, if you count the carrots as your vegetable. Which, of course, I do.

Roasted Chicken with Root Vegetables

3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, roughly chopped
2 carrots, halved and cut in 1/4" slices
3 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1 tsp. dried thyme
3-4 c. root vegetables like sweet potatoes, yams, squash, parsnips, potatoes, turnips, etc.
1 roasting chicken or large fryer
1/2 c. white wine or dry vermouth
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 375°. Pull the chicken out the fridge, removing any wrapping, and let it sit on the counter on a couple of paper towels to come to room temperature.

Pour 2 Tbsp. oil into a large frying pan over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add onions and sauté until translucent. Add carrots and sauté till tender, then add garlic and sauté briefly. Turn off heat and stir in the thyme and root vegetables. Put mixture in 9" by 12" Pyrex casserole dish. Pour wine over vegetables.

Rub chicken with remaining 1 Tbsp. oil and throw 1 tsp. or so salt into the cavity and place the chicken on its side on top of the vegetables. Place in oven and roast for 25 minutes. Remove from oven, turn chicken on its other side and roast for another 25 minutes. Remove from oven, turn chicken so it is breast-side up, baste with pan juices and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast another 15 minutes, remove and baste, then roast a final 20 minutes or, for our tastes, until an instant-read thermometer reads 150° on the inside of the lower thigh and the inner side of the breast next to the rib cage. Remove from oven, allow to rest for 10 minutes. Cut it into pieces, removing the breasts whole and slicing them crosswise.

Fabulous Roast Chicken with Apologies to Sam Sifton

I don't know if this is true of other cooks, but I can't seem to follow a recipe to save my life. Even though I consider myself a recipe-dependent cook rather than one of those people who, like my friend Denise, freestyles her way through ingredients, following her intuition to come up with creative, fabulous meals.

This entire blog is a testament to my need for guidance, chock-full as it is of favorite recipes gleaned from family dinners and camping trips, or—ssssshhhh…don't tell!—stolen from friends. So the other day when I was browsing through the New York Times magazine and saw a gorgeous photo of a dish of roasted chicken legs, I had to stop and check out the recipe.

The article, by the Times' food editor, Sam Sifton, whose writing I find pretty irresistible, clever without being one of those "Look at me! Look at me! I can do a double flip!" food writers, was an interview with the designer Steven Stolman. He'd first had the dish, called Roasted Chicken Provençal, as a college student in New York.

Sifton wrote, "the chicken was seasoned with spices meant to evoke the flavors of southern France: rosemary, thyme, bay leaf, lavender, marjoram, chervil, sage. It all seemed exotic and wonderful to Stolman, a child of the Hartford suburbs and new to Manhattan. 'I thought it was the coolest thing,' [Stolman] said. The dish and the evening left an impression on him that has lasted for almost 40 years."

A couple of paragraphs later Sifton wrote, "it is still the coolest thing: chicken dusted in flour and roasted with shallots and lemons and vermouth under a shower of herbes de Provence until it has gone crisp above the fat and wine and lemon juice, and the shallots are melted and sweet."

It's a dead simple recipe, and with my crazy love of roasted chicken it seemed like a natural for a test run. And that's where I went ever-so-slightly off the rails. You see, I had almost everything the recipe called for…except shallots. Hm. While it sounds like they're pretty crucial to getting the dish just right, I've also cooked enough chicken to know that shallots aren't a make-or-break ingredient.

So I decided to throw in a few extra garlic cloves and call it good. Then I saw a half-full basket of cherry tomatoes left over from a vinaigrette I'd made a couple of days before sitting on the counter. Those'd be good, too, and still keep it in the Provençal theme. Pulling the chicken out of the fridge my eyes fell on a dozen or so leftover oil-cured olives. They're Mediterranean, too, right?

Except for those "tweaks," if you can call it that, I pretty much made the chicken as originally intended and it was indeed as wonderful as advertised. Like Stolman, I'll definitely make it again and probably serve it to company. Maybe I'll even follow the recipe.

Roasted Chicken Provençal (Kind Of)

4 chicken legs or 8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs

2 tsp. kosher salt

1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

1/2-3/4 c. all-purpose flour

3 Tbsp. olive oil

2 Tbsp. herbes de Provence

1 lemon, quartered

8-10 cloves garlic, peeled

1 1/2 c. cherry tomatoes, halved

1 dozen or so oil-cured olives, pitted and halved

1/3 c. dry vermouth

Preheat oven to 400. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Put the flour in a shallow pan, and lightly dredge the chicken in it, shaking the pieces to remove excess flour.

Swirl the oil in a 9” by 12” pyrex roasting dish, and place the floured chicken in it skin-side up. Season the chicken with the herbes de Provence. Arrange the lemons, garlic cloves, cherry tomatoes and olives around the chicken, and then add the vermouth to the pan.

Put the pan in the oven, and roast for 25 to 30 minutes, then baste it with the pan juices. Continue roasting for an additional 25 to 30 minutes, or until the chicken is very crisp and the meat cooked through.

Serve in the pan or on a warmed platter.

Guest Essay: In Defense of the Chicken

My friend Hank Shaw is a journalist, hunter, forager and author. Recently he published an essay on what we think of as the most boring meat imaginable, the chicken. He excoriates those who brought this once noble bird to its current lowly state, and makes the case for why we should gladly pay $5 a pound for it. He gave me permission to post an excerpt, and I encourage you to click through to read the entire essay.

I bought a chicken the other day. To virtually every other American, this is an event akin to taking out the trash, or driving to work — a commonplace barely worth noting. But there’s something you should know: I have not bought meat for the home more than a handful of times over the past decade. So buying any meat is very much an event for me. You might ask why on earth, of all the things that I could have chosen to break my self-imposed fast on domesticated meats, would I buy a chicken?

Because of all the flavors I miss from the store-bought world — ribeyes, skirt steak, a huge pork chop, shrimp — chicken is the one I long for most often. Chicken. You read that right. Chicken deserves respect. It deserves to be reclaimed by the culinary world for what it has been for most of human history: A bird worthy of a king’s table, a gift for cooks to work magic on. A platter of home.

How Americans came to believe that $1 a pound chicken is as inalienable a right as free speech or the right to bear arms is a depressing story of industrial might over right. Suffice to say that when Frank Perdue said it took a tough man to make a tender chicken, he was right. He and his colleague John Tyson needed to be OK with debasing a once prized bird, to polluting environments and destroying whole communities. The industrial chicken is a wretched shadow of its former self. To paraphrase J.R.R. Tolkien: “they were chickens once… tortured, and mutilated… a ruined and terrible form of life…now perfected.”

The modern chicken has a breast so big it can barely walk or fly. It’s lethargic, to the point where even if a farmer gives it pasture to roam it won’t. It grows with frightening speed: In 1960 it took about 5 months to raise a meat chicken for market. Now it can be done in 6 weeks. In 1925, a chicken needed to eat 4.7 pounds of feed to gain 1 pound. Now it only needs to eat 1.9 pounds of feed to gain the same pound. Only tilapia, the Soylent Green of fish, has a better feed ratio.

This is the chicken you eat. And we Americans eat a lot of it. Chicken topped beef as America’s favorite meat in 1992. In 2006 we ate an average of 87.7 pounds of these birds, the highest poundage on record. And as you well know, we are not eating all this chicken as a whole bird.

Various shreds of it are glued together to make your McNugget. It’s injected with a saline solution to “plump” it and make the watery, flabby, tasteless meat even more tender; apparently teeth are no longer needed to enjoy your skinless, boneless chicken lump. it’s sliced and diced in so many ways that the concept of roasting a whole chicken — once a bedrock skill every cook possessed — is now so daunting it’s a challenge on Top Chef. (Incidentally, chicken used to be almost always sold whole, with the head and feet on, right up into the 1950s. Why? Consumers judged chickens like fish: Are the eyes clear? Feet fresh looking? People knew what a good chicken looked like. Now if you did that you’d create an incident, unless you are at an Asian market. )

No wonder the average consumer recoils in horror at the notion of $5 a pound chicken. Chicken has become our baseline, our lowest common denominator of meat. It’s our daily bread, a right like free bread in ancient Rome or free gas in modern Saudi Arabia.

Read the rest of this essay.

Top photo by Holly A. Heyser.

Quick One-Dish Dining with Cauliflower and Chicken

I don't mean to break out the violins or start wailing "Woe is me!" here, because, when you get right down to it, we're pretty darn lucky to have the bounty of seasonal produce that is coming into the farmers' markets and to have terrific local supermarkets that fill in the gaps. But sometimes I envy those who can reach into their cupboards and break out a box of macaroni and cheese or Hamburger Helper for those nights when you need to get dinner on the table pronto.

But really, even those "instant" dinners require at least a half hour of prep and cooking, especially if you're adding a salad or vegetables to the mix. Fortunately—or unfortunately, if you think about it—I don't actually like the bland, dusty, overly salty taste of most of these convenience foods, so my solution has been to come up with quick, one-dish dinners that I can throw on the table in short order, not to mention actually feeling good about feeding them to my family.

This one was a what-do-I-have-on-hand solution when I'd just hit "send" on my story about Ben Meyer and looked up to see Dave walking in the door after a hard day at work. Oops. So I rummaged through the freezer, found some chicken thighs I'd stashed in there, opened the veg bin to find a head of cauliflower and pulled a can of tomatoes out of the pantry.

Just about 45 minutes later we were sitting down to what turned out to be a dish we'll be having again* even when I'm not in a rush!

Spanish-style Cauliflower, Chicken and Tomatoes

1/4 tsp. saffron threads
1 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 lbs. chicken thighs, cut in 1” pieces
1 yellow onion, chopped fine
3 cloves garlic, chopped fine
1/2 tsp. Spanish smoked paprika (pimenton)
2 bay leaves
1 28-oz. can tomatoes
1 head cauliflower, separated into small florets
10-12 green olives, sliced crosswise into 1/8” slices  (I used Spanish anchovy-stuffed olives)

Place saffron threads and salt in the bowl of a mortar and pestle and grind the saffron threads into the salt with the pestle. There’s no need to pound it…the sharp edges of the salt crystals will do most of the work for you.

Pour oil into a deep skillet over medium heat. When the oil shimmers, add the chicken and brown, turning pieces occasionally. Add onion and garlic and sauté till tender. Add remaining ingredients, bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to keep it at a steady simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Serve over rice.

* Next time, assuming I'm not pulling this together at the last minute, I'm going to add chopped Spanish-style chorizo to the sauté. Even more delicious and totally company-worthy.

Dinner Reboot: Chicken Visits a Moroccan Souk

When the sun has comes out,  the last thing I want to do is be sitting at the computer checking Twitter or Facebook for the umpteenth time. So I head out with the dogs for a walk on a new route, or chuck them in the car and drive to a dog-friendly park or trail I've heard about. It's all about letting a little air into the routine, like taking a quick vacation, if only in my head.

Basking in Moroccan spices.

The same thing can be done with dinner. Tired of that same old meatloaf? Take it to Mexico with some cumin, chiles and lime, or to Greece with fresh oregano and oil-cured olives. I did it the other night with that ultimate boring protein, chicken. But did you ever consider that the bird gets that reputation because it keeps getting cooked the same old way over and over? I say take that chicken on a vacation!

Because I'd been craving some exotic spices lately, the spice market, or souk, in Morocco seemed like the perfect destination for my poultry. With a palette of colors and flavors to choose from—brilliantly yellow turmeric, smoky red paprika, the intoxicating perfume of cumin—and the zing of lemon, this chicken wasn't ever going to be called bland again.

Moroccan-style Chicken with Lemons, Olives and Carrots

2 tsp. paprika
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground ginger
1 tsp. ground turmeric
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. freshly ground pepper
2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. olive oil
4 lbs. chicken thighs and legs
Salt
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 onion, chopped
4 carrots, sliced in 1/2” coins
1 lemon, sliced in half lengthwise, then in 1/4" slices crosswise or 1 roasted lemon sliced as directed
1 c. green olives, pitted
1/2 c. water
1/4 cup currants or golden raisins

Combine all the spices, including salt and pepper, in a 1-gallon zip-lock plastic bag. Place the chicken pieces in the bag with the spices and seal it. Then using your hands, squish the pieces around with the spice mixture until they're thoroughly coated. Let the chicken stand for one hour in the spices.

Heat the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed skillet on medium high heat. Remove chicken pieces from the bag and place skin side down in the skillet, browning well on both sides. Remove the chicken pieces to a platter, then add the garlic and onions to the skillet and sauté. When the onion begins to turn translucent, add carrot coins and sauté for another 3 minutes.

Remove the onion and carrot mixture to a bowl and add the chicken back to the skillet. Cover the chicken with the onion and carrot mixture. Add the lemon slices, olives, raisins and 1/2 cup water. Bring to a simmer on medium heat, then lower the heat to a low simmer, cover the skillet and cook for an additional 45 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and quite tender.

Serve with rice, couscous or quinoa.

Stewing Hen Comes Home to Roost

It was a few months ago that I picked up the beef I'd ordered from Clare at Big Table Farm. She was reorganizing the white-wrapped chunks of meat in her freezer and said, "Here, take this, too." It was a vacuum-packed stewing hen, one of the laying hens that had been culled from the farm's free-ranging flock.

I brought it home with the beef and put it all away in the freezer. It would be there whenever I opened the door, and I'd think, "I should really do something with that." Then I'd grab the loaf of bread or jar of freezer jam or piece of lamb or pork or beef I'd come for and shut the door on that poor hen, forgetting about her until the next time the freezer door would open.

Last week I retrieved a roast from the icy depths and grabbed the hen, too, knowing that thawing the bird would force me to deal with it. I'd read that stewing hens were literally tough old birds and were best when braised over low, slow heat. Plus they were rumored to produce a flavorful broth, which we go through like water around here, especially in the winter months.

My plan became to make a stock from the whole chicken, then tear the meat off the bones when it was done and make one of my very favorite comfort foods, a golden-crusted chicken pot pie. A couple of hours later the house was filled with the aroma of chicken stock and baking pastry, and I knew my first experience with an old hen wouldn't be my last.

Chicken Pot Pie

For the stock:
1 stewing hen
Water

For the filling:
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, chopped into 1/4" dice
3 cloves garlic, minced fine
3 carrots, quartered and cut into 1/4" slices
3 stalks celery, cut into 1/4" slices
1 c. peas (optional)
2 Tbsp. butter or margarine
2 Tbsp. flour
2 1/2 c. chicken stock
Meat from stewing hen (above) or 3 c. cooked chicken
Salt to taste

For the crust:
1 1/2 c. flour, plus more for rolling out dough

1 c. cornmeal

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
4 Tbsp. (1/2 stick) butter or margarine, frozen, cut into large pieces
1 egg, beaten

3/4 c. buttermilk or milk

Preheat oven to 450°.

Place whole chicken in large pot and cover with water. Bring to just boiling over high heat, then reduce to low simmer until chicken is cooked through, about 1 hr. Remove chicken from broth and cool until you can comfortably remove the meat from the bones. Bones and skin can be returned to the broth and simmered for another hour.

Heat oil in a large skillet, add onions and sauté till tender. Add garlic and sauté briefly to warm, then add rest of vegetables. Sauté till tender and set aside.

Melt butter in medium saucepan over medium heat. Remove from heat and stir in flour until there are no lumps visible. Return to heat and cook the roux until it loses the raw flour flavor. Pour in stock, stirring constantly until it thickens.

Put the cooked vegetables in a 9" by 12" baking dish, then scatter the chicken meat over the top of the vegetables. Pour in the thickened stock.

Put flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda and salt in food processor and pulse to combine. Add butter or margarine and pulse until the flour mixture resembles cornmeal. Add egg and milk and process until thoroughly combined. Generously flour the area where you'll roll out the dough, then remove the sticky dough from the processor with a spatula onto the floured area. With floured hands, press out the dough into a roughly rectangular shape, then using a floured rolling pin, gently roll out the dough until it's the size of your baking dish. Gently pick up the dough and place it on top of the chicken and vegetables. (Don't worry if it doesn't fit perfectly.)

Place the dish on the middle rack of the oven and bake at 450° for ten minutes, then reduce heat to 350° and continue baking for 25 min. until crust is browned and filling is bubbly.

Here Chick Chick Chick!

This is an amazing picture of a chick just as it's hatching from its egg. Hatched in an incubator at my friend Kim's house, it had begun to crack the shell a couple of hours earlier. Its siblings were starting to hatch as well, with cracks appearing and little bits of shell popping off.

Kim told me to pick up one of the cracked-but-unhatched eggs and hold it up to my ear. From inside came a strident "Cheep!" By the end of the day all of the chicks had hatched and were on their way to a warming box to start their journey to chickenhood. Cool!

Roasted Chicken: Variations on a Theme

Roasted chicken is, without question, one of the top two favorites for dinner around our house. Simple, delicious, satisfying and relatively quick to put on the table, it's both a company-worthy entree and a warming mid-week meal. If you buy a big enough bird, you might have enough left over to make a pot pie, soup or hearty chicken salad. Plus the carcass is terrific for stock.

James Beard is my go-to guy in terms of method, the chicken roasting on a bed of sautéed vegetables. Which means that they gradually roast in the fat and juices from the bird, a brilliant idea that provides a ready-made side dish from the vegetables and a killer base for gravy from the juices.

The other night I was getting ready to roast a chicken and, instead of mashing potatoes, I was going to roast some delicata squash that had been sitting around waiting to be of service. That's when the lightbulb went off—you've no doubt already guessed this, but I can be a little slow sometimes—and I chopped up onion and garlic, gave it a quick sauté, then combined it with the squash.

The rest, as they say, is history…and something I'm going to keep playing with using other vegetables. Stay tuned!

Roasted Chicken with Squash

3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, roughly chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped fine
3 small delicata squash, seeded and cut in 1/2" cubes, about 3 cups or so*
1/2 c. white wine or dry vermouth
1 roasting chicken
1/2 lemon
Handful of fresh herbs (sage, rosemary, thyme or tarragon)
Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Pour 2 Tbsp. oil into a frying pan and saute onions, carrots and celery (or whatever vegetables you might have) till slightly tender but not fully cooked. Place in mixing bowl with cubed squash and combine. Put squash mixture in 9" by 12" Pyrex casserole dish. Pour wine over vegetables.

Rub chicken with remaining 1 Tbsp. oil, throw 1 tsp. or so salt and the lemon and herbs into the cavity and place the chicken on its side on top of the vegetables. Place in oven and roast for 25 minutes. Remove from oven, turn chicken on its other side and roast for another 25 minutes. Remove from oven, turn chicken so it is breast-side up, baste with pan juices and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast another 15 minutes, remove and baste, then roast a final 20 minutes or, for our tastes, until an instant-read thermometer reads 160 degrees on the inside of the lower thigh. Remove from oven, allow to rest for 10 minutes. We cut it into pieces, but the breasts we remove whole and slice crosswise.

* The skin of delicatas is thin, so don't bother peeling it…just eat as is. Other winter squash would work just as well, but peel them before cubing.

New Treat: Crispy Chicken Skin

I love chicken skin. As a matter of fact, after I carve a roasted chicken, I go so far as to tear off the skin left on the carcass and make a little pile of it on the platter along with the meaty pieces. So you can only imagine how delighted I was on receiving this post from contributor Jim Dixon of Real Good Food.

One indication of the confusion over what constitutes food that’s good for us is the reluctance to eat chicken skin (I won’t get on the soapbox, but if you think it’s bad for you, read Why We Get Fat: And What to Do about It by Gary Taubes). If we’ve got guests for dinner, and I cooked a chicken, I ask them to save any skin they’re not eating so I can make crispy chicken skin (see How to Eat a Chicken for details).

But there’s only so much skin on one chicken, like the sublime example at left. Sometimes you want more. Fortunately, it’s not too hard to get—just ask your butcher. Any meat counter that does more than open boxes of already processed chicken parts can usually get you some skin if you’re willing to wait a few days. I get mine from New Seasons. Just ask.

Once you’ve got some skin (a pound is a nice place to start), spread the pieces out in a heavy skillet or other suitable baking dish (be sure use one with a bit of depth to hold the fat that cooks out). Salt well and roast at 350° for about 45 minutes or until the skin gets, well, crispy. Let cool and store in the refrigerator so you’ve got a ready supply for things like grilled cheese with crispy chicken skin or anything else where you want a crisp, savory note.

Be sure to pour off and save all that good chicken fat, too. You can use it to make this:

Mushrooms with Crispy Chicken Skin

Wash and thickly slice a pound or so of button mushrooms. Start cooking them without any fat in a heavy skillet over medium heat. The liquid in the mushrooms will soon cook out, and when it’s about to disappear altogether, add a couple of tablespoons or so of the chicken fat (if you’re using crispy skin from a leftover roast chicken, use extra virgin olive oil). Cook the mushrooms in the fat for at least another 20 minutes.

Coarsely chop some crispy skin, enough to give you about a half cup or so after chopping. Add it to the mushrooms and cook a bit longer. Add a little fresh rosemary if you feel so inclined. Or sprinkle liberally with pimenton (smoked Spanish paprika) and, if you like heat, a little cayenne or piment d’Espelette.

A Company Dinner That's No Lemon

We had friends over for dinner the other night, one of those evenings where the main dish sang, the sides were in perfect harmony and the wine was perfection. That's when I suddenly realized everyone was talking about food…a memorable restaurant meal, a dish their mom made for special occasions, a favorite recipe. Not that it's an unusual occurrence, at least around here, where a wonderful meal seems to conjure memories of other flavorful experiences.

So when Jeff and Kathryn mentioned a chicken dish his mom liked to make for company, my ears pricked up, especially since his mom and step-dad are both fantastic cooks. And when he mentioned that the dish called for roasted lemons, a personal weakness of mine, I was on board big time.

A few nights later I pulled out the Meyer lemons I'd had stashed in the fridge and whipped it up. While it takes a little prep, it's basically a one-dish dinner for four, or you could add a couple more breasts and a few more potatoes and it'd easily serve six to eight. Toss some broccoli rabe in olive oil, salt and pepper and roast it in the oven while the chicken cooks, or just tear up some butter lettuce and sprinkle with olive oil and lemon and you've got all your bases covered.

Chicken with Roasted Lemons and Rosemary
Adapted from Michael Chiarello, Tra Vigne

1 1/2 lbs. small new potatoes
2 large lemons
Extra-virgin olive oil for brushing on lemons, plus 1 Tbsp. salt and freshly ground pepper
4 boneless chicken breast halves, skin on
1 Tbsp. minced garlic
1 c. chicken stock
1 tsp. finely chopped fresh rosemary
1 Tbsp. finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 Tbsp. unsalted butter or margarine (optional)

Put the potatoes in a pot of salted cold water and bring to a boil. Cook until just tender, about 20 minutes. Drain and let cool, but do not peel. Cut in half and set aside.

Preheat the broiler. Cut a small slice off both ends of each lemon, then cut in half crosswise. Arrange the lemons, flesh side up, in a flameproof non-reactive baking dish, brush with olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. Broil 6 inches or more from the heat until browned and soft, about 10 minutes. Let cool. Squeeze the lemon halves over a sieve suspended over a bowl. Push and stir the pulp through the sieve with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon. Discard the lemon shells.

Preheat the oven to 450°. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Heat the remaining 1/4 cup olive oil in a large ovenproof sauté pan over medium-high heat until hot. Add the chicken, lower the heat to medium, and cook, turning once, until brown on both sides, about 5 minutes. Remove to a platter.

Return the pan to medium-high heat, add the potatoes, season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring and tossing, until brown all over, about 5 minutes. Drain off the excess oil. Arrange the chicken breasts on top of the potatoes and place in the oven to reheat and cook through, about 10-20 minutes. When done, remove the chicken to a platter and put the pan with the potatoes over medium-high heat. Toss well so the pan juices are absorbed into the potatoes. Scrape the potatoes out of the pan onto the platter around the chicken.

Return the pan to medium-high heat and add the garlic. Sauté briefly until light brown. Immediately add the reserved roasted lemon juice (this final flash of heat will cook off any residual acid flavor), stock, rosemary, and parsley. Stir and scrape up all the browned bits that cling to the bottom and sides of the pan. Season to taste with salt and pepper. If the sauce tastes too lemony, stir in the optional butter. Pour the sauce over the chicken and potatoes and serve immediately.

Sounds Naughty…Tastes Nice

While it sounds like something Anthony Weiner might have photographed and sent to some unsuspecting object of his (misplaced) affection, spatchcocking has a long and storied history in Britain. Contributor Jim Dixon of RealGoodFood explains.

Ass-backward Spatchcocking

After cooking dozens of whole chickens, I’ve changed my approach. There wasn’t anything wrong with how I’d been cooking them. I rubbed the skin with plenty of salt, and if I had time I’d let them sit overnight, uncovered in the refrigerator, to let the salt do its work and dry out the skin at the same time. Roasted in the oven or on the Weber, the chickens were always good, with crackling skin and moist, tender flesh.

But I’ve switched to spatchcocking. I have mixed feeling about the term “spatchcock.” Admittedly a great word, its origins ambiguous but decidedly British, quirky consonants sounded at beginning, middle and end. But it’s right on the edge of being too precious. That said, once you know what it means, it does its job perfectly. Why say you’re splitting a whole chicken down the middle for spread-eagled cooking? All you need is “spatchcock.”

I’m less ambiguous about the actual deed. Spatchcocking, by definition, is splitting a chicken or similar fowl down the back. Once split, the bird is spread open and cooked, either roasted, grilled or on the stovetop, sometimes under a brick. However it’s cooked, heat penetrates faster, and a whole chicken can be done more quickly.

The back itself is usually discarded (or saved for stock, if you’re conscientious). But if you’re married to an Italian American, especially one whose Sicilian nonna showed her how to wring every morsel of edible goodness from a chicken, you want to cook that back.

So, when I decided to deviate from my usual approach to roasting chicken, I opted to split the birds down the front. It’s actually easier than cutting out the back, requiring a single knife stroke through the keel bone. Once the bird’s been cut, I presalt as usual.

I‘ve cooked ass-backward spatchcocked chicken in the oven, simply splayed out in a big cast iron skillet. But the Weber does a much better job. Build your fire at one end (preferably with real wood charcoal, aka lump briquet), add a few sticks of hardwood if you like a smoky note (I save the trimmings from my fruit trees, but you can buy hardwood chunks for grilling), and put the chicken, skin side up, breasts toward the heat, as far away from the fire as you can.

Once the chicken is on the grill, cover it and follow this advice from Francis Mallmann: Don’t touch it. (From his great book, "Seven Fires,"about Argentinean fire cookery) After an hour or so, lift the lid and check the bird. At this point you can turn it over to crisp the skin a little more, but it might not need it. When it’s done to your liking, take the chicken off the grill and let it sit for at least 20 minutes before you cut it apart.

Simple Soup

Contributor Jim Dixon's last post of the year comes with a twist on a classic soup. Appropriate to kick off a brand new decade, no?

We’ll all be eating too much over the next week or so, and holiday food tends toward rich and extravagant. When you need a break, make this simple and relatively quick chicken soup.

Simple Chicken Soup

Put 3-4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (cheaper and better flavor than breast meat) in a couple of quarts of water, add sea salt and start cooking. While the chicken’s cooking, chop an onion, carrot, and some celery. (I never buy a whole bunch, but instead cherry-pick the inner stalks from the loose celery in the New Seasons produce section so I get the tasty leaves, too.) Toss it in, then chop a half head of green cabbage. A small can of tomatoes is an option, but not necessary. Cover, reduce heat and simmer for about 20 minutes.

Use tongs to fish out the chicken thighs and set them aside to cool a bit. Taste the broth, adding more salt if necessary. I also add a splash of fish sauce (or even a few diced anchovies), a little soy and a healthy dose of Crystal hot sauce. If you want a more substantial soup, add a half cup or so of Koda farms brown rice. Tear or chop the chicken into bite-sized pieces and return to the broth. Simmer until the rice is done, about a half hour. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil at the table.

You can find Jim at his Real Good Food "warehouse" most, but not all, Mondays, where he has a stunning array of artisan salts, vinegars, olive oils, grains and beans available for purchase. You can e-mail Jim to get on his list to be notified when he's open!

Thrill from Brazil

I am deeply indebted to the early hominids. Why, you might ask? Well, aside from their discovery of tools, writing and the internet (yes, Al Gore is human, despite any indications to the contrary), they came up with the brilliant idea of the pot luck, gatherings where each family group brings a food item to share.

At a recent gathering of hominids in our back yard, my friend Judy, who lived in Brazil while her husband taught at a university there, brought a Brazilian dish from Sao Paulo called, naturally, Cuscuz Paulista. A savory dish made with cornmeal and mixed with meat and vegetables, it is steamed in a colander and unmolded onto a platter before serving.

Like the Italian timbale or, for that matter, my mother's molded jello salad, the outside is often elaborately decorated with sliced hearts of palm, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes or roasted peppers. And, as was intended, it elicited admiring "oohs" and "aahs" from the other members of our little taxonomic gathering.

Chicken Cuscuz or Cuscuz de Galinha
Adapted from Brazilian Cookery by Margarette de Andrade

Judy reminded me that cuscuz, like potato salad, differs from household to household, and ingredients can be adjusted to whatever you have on hand. It can also be made with chicken, animal meat, fish or shrimp, so have fun and create your own unique version.

For the cornmeal:
4 c. white cornmeal
1 c. boiling salted water
1/4 lb. (1 stick) butter or 1/2 c. olive oil (?)

For the cuscuz:
1 stewed chicken (or store-bought rotisserie chicken)
1 1/2 c. gravy or stock
2 or 3 malagueta peppers, pounded (optional)
1/2 c. melted butter or olive oil
1/4 c. parsley, chopped
Cornmeal mixture
1/2 lb. smoked pork sausages, fried, or leftover meat
1 lb. peas, cooked
1 10-oz. can hearts of palm, sliced
3 hard-boiled eggs, sliced
3 tomatoes, sliced
Olives, sliced
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350°. Put cornmeal in shallow baking dish and place in oven for 5 minutes, stirring 3 or 4 times with a long-handled spoon so that the meal bakes evenly. As soon as the meal begins to turn a light beige, remove from the oven, sprinkle 1 c. of the boiling salted water over it, stir well with a fork and return to the oven for 2 minutes. The meal should then have irregular flakes. Add 1/4 lb. butter (or olive oil) and mix well.

Heat boned chicken with gravy or stock, add peppers, butter (or olive oil), parsley and correct the seasoning. Remove from heat, add cornmeal mixture, knead, then add sausages or leftover meat. If you can form a small ball with the mixture that will retain its shape, it is of the proper consistency. If it is too dry, moisten with more stock or water.

Traditionally made in a cuscuzeiro, a sort of large double boiler with perforations in the upper section, you can assemble your cuscuz in a medium-sized colander.

First layer: Oil the bottom and sides of the cuscuzeiro or colander and arrange sliced tomatoes, eggs and olives in a symmetrical design, along with a little of the meal mixture. [Judy included 1 tin of anchovies, which added its umami to the finished dish - KAB]

Second layer: Add more meal mixture, press against the sides and bottom, then cover with the peas, palm hearts tomatoes, eggs and olives and alternate with the meal mixture until all ingredients are used. Cover with a cloth napkin or top with a layer of fresh kale or collards.

Place an inverted cake pan in the bottom of a large saucepan or Dutch oven, then pour in boiling water so that it covers the bottom of the saucepan or oven and comes halfway up the side of the cake pan. Place colander on top of the cake pan, making sure the water does not touch the colander. Tightly cover the pot and steam on top of the stove until the napkin is very wet or the kale and collards are cooked, about 20 minutes. Remove the napkin (or greens) and let the cuscuz stand for approximately 10 minutes. Unmold by placing a serving platter upside down on top of the colander and carefully flip them over. Lightly tap the colander to release the cuscuz. Remove the colander and garnish with slices of orange or more slices of hearts of palm. Serve with a bottle of Brazilian hot sauce, Tabasco or other pepper sauce on the side.

Greek Profile

It's been a little crazy around here lately. First it was the birth of my new nephew, known fondly as the C-man and, I say apologetically to all the other aunties out there, the cutest baby ever born. Then we launched into a long-awaited (15 years, give or take) remodel of our main floor bathroom, requiring a major purging of years of what can only be described as assorted crap. Then this last week my neighbor's beloved father, Floyd, passed away, a kind and gentle Texan who had graced our table too few evenings in his short time in Oregon.

So why is GoodStuffNW suddenly turning into one of those soap opera-inspired, my-life-splashed-before-the-world blogs? Because, as everyone knows, the birth of a baby and a death in a family requires that food be taken to the beleaguered, sleep-deprived parents and grieving friends, of course.

Perfect for this task are various casseroles, lasagnes and platters of enchiladas that can be kept for a week or so, or frozen till needed. Comforting, yes, but a tad on the heavy side. Which is why I like a certain chicken dish that can be thrown together in virtually no time and is even good enough for company dinner when you're pressed for time or inspiration.

Layered with artichokes, olives and feta, it has a Greek profile that only needs the addition of some plain white rice and an easy salad to make a fetching dinner. Perfect for those times when your life turns into something of a soap opera.

Artichoke Chicken

2 Tbsp. olive oil
2-3 lbs. chicken thighs or 1 whole chicken, cut up
6 cloves garlic, slivered
1 15-oz. can artichoke hearts, drained and halved
1 c. pitted kalamata olives
4 oz. feta cheese, broken into chunks
1 Tbsp. oregano
Salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 350°. Heat oil in skillet and brown chicken parts in batches, transferring them to a 9" by 12" baking dish as they brown. After chicken has been browned, using the same skillet, lightly sauté the garlic slivers and scatter over chicken in baking dish. Distribute artichokes, olives and feta over the chicken and sprinkle with oregano. Place in oven and bake for 30 minutes or until thighs are done. If using whole chicken, bake for 45 minutes.

Options: Slice up oil-cured sundried tomatoes and scatter them over the chicken with the other ingredients. Or, instead of feta, add 1 large can stewed tomatoes to make a rich, braised dish.

Truly Verde Enchiladas

Apologies to Al Gore, but reducing your carbon footprint is so last year. Anyone who's been even vaguely listening in the last few months is hearing the growing chorus of voices from the likes of Michael Pollan, Barbara Kingsolver and, most recently, New York Times columnist Mark Bittman about bringing green to the table. And they're not just talking parsley.

The chicken mixture with extra roasted tomatillos (at top in photo) for a future batch!

Even Monsanto is trying to (falsely) jump on the bandwagon with a new tagline that trumpets the giant agrichemical, GMO-promoting corporation as "committed to sustainable agriculture." Though I almost threw an (organically grown) tomato at the radio when I heard that on NPR's business show, Marketplace, yesterday. (Don't they vet those sponsor taglines for accuracy?)

But I digress. The point of this post is to share a recipe for chicken verde enchiladas that I stitched together, Frankenstein-like, from a recipe from my brother's friend Shauneen (about 75%), a recent batch of tomatillo salsa from Mark Bittman (15%) and my own messing around (10%, if that).

Assembled and ready to go in the oven.

And yes, nearly all of the ingredients are organically grown (though not necessary certified). The brilliant thing about Shauneen's recipe was that it called for a roasted deli chicken instead of a) roasting it just for this recipe, way too much trouble for me, and b) using leftovers, still a good idea but we often don't have enough remaining.

To make it Dave-safe, I used extra-sharp cheddar (a serious transgression, I know, but fake cheese is worse) and tofu sour cream (from Tofutti, my fave fake product) for garnish. Otherwise, like I said, totally green!

Chicken Verde Enchiladas
From a variety of sources (see above)

For the roasted tomatillo chile salsa:
1 lb. tomatillos, husked and rinsed
1 yellow onion, peeled, sliced and quartered
4 garlic cloves
2 ancho chiles, roasted, skins removed, stemmed and seeded
2 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. salt (plus more to taste)
1/2 c. chopped cilantro leaves
1 lime, juiced

For the enchiladas:
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1/2 med. onion, diced
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 c. all-purpose flour
2 c. chicken stock
1 roasted chicken (from the deli, about 3 pounds), boned, meat shredded
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
10 lg. (approx. 8" diam.) flour tortillas
1/2 lb. Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
2 c. sour cream
Chopped tomatoes and cilantro leaves, for garnish
Guacamole, optional

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. On a baking tray, roast tomatillos, quartered onion and garlic for 15 minutes. Transfer the roasted vegetables and any juices on the bottom of the tray to a food processor. Add the roasted chiles, cumin, salt, cilantro, and lime juice and pulse mixture until well combined but still a little chunky. Add more salt to taste.

Meanwhile heat the vegetable oil in a large, deep frying pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until soft and caramelized, about 5 to 7 minutes. Add the garlic and cumin then cook for a further minute. Sprinkle on the flour and stir to ensure the flour doesn't burn, then very gradually add the chicken stock to make a veloute. Continue stirring over a low simmer until the flour cooks and the liquid thickens. Turn off the heat, add half of the roasted tomatillo chile salsa and fold in the shredded chicken meat. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Lower the temperature of the oven to 350° and begin assembling the dish. Take a 9" by 12" baking dish and smear the bottom with some of the reserved tomatillo salsa. Take the flour tortillas and coat each tortilla lightly with the reserved salsa mix. Put a scoop of the shredded chicken-enchilada mix on top of the tortilla followed by a sprinkle of the shredded cheese. Fold the tortilla over the filling and roll like a cigar to enclose it. Line up the tortillas in the baking dish and continue to do the same with all the tortillas. Finally pour over the remaining salsa, spread evenly and top with the remaining shredded cheese. Bake uncovered for about 30-45 minutes until bubbly and cracked on top. Garnish with cilantro and tomato.

Serve hot with sour cream and fresh guacamole, if desired. (Chipotle sauce also adds a nice smokiness.)

Quick Curry Dinner

Some mornings I get up with the whole day in front of me thinking, "This is the day I'm going to get through my list of things to do and still have time to make a lovely dinner for my family."

About that time the cat sprays the refrigerator, the dog throws up on the carpet (I'm not naming names here) and the washer starts leaking during the rinse cycle. By the time I've cleaned up the messes and only checked a couple of items off the list, I hear the dogs barking to let me know that Dave's home from work and that lovely dinner I wanted to prepare vanishes in a puff of smoke.

With any luck, though, there's a bag of frozen chicken thighs from Trader Joe's in the freezer and a can of light coconut milk in the pantry. Some curry powder, onion and a couple of cups of raw rice and my ass isn't looking so much like grass.

Curried Coconut Chicken

1 Tbsp. vegetable oil
4 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 Tbsp. (+ or -) curry powder
1 can coconut milk
1/2 tsp. salt
2 c. rice

Cut chicken thighs into bite-size pieces. Heat oil in deep skillet, add chicken and brown on all sides. Add onion and garlic and sauté till tender. Add curry powder and sauté 1 min., then add coconut milk, bring to bare simmer. Cook for 30 min.

Heat 4 c. water and the salt and bring to boil. Sprinkle in rice, return to boil and turn down very low, cooking till water is absorbed. Rice and curried chicken can be served together or separately with steamed frozen peas or a salad. Indian chutneys or Mark Bittman's tomato jam are terrific alongside.

Farm Bulletin: Fenugreek Follow-up

Hot on the heels of his treatise on fenugreek from last week's Farm Bulletin, Anthony shares a response and a pair of recipes from reader Rahul Vora.

"Methi leaves are treated more like a green than like an herb in Indian cooking, though dried methi (also called kasoori methi) is sometimes used in northern Indian cooking as an herb in lentil soups (dals) to give an earthy, slightly bitter aromatic accent. In Ayurvedic medicine, methi (in leaf and seed form) is considered to have many medicinal properties and nutritive values. Lots of info on that on the web."

Aloo Methi (Potatoes cooked with Fenugreek greens)
This is a popular North Indian dish.

1 1/2 c. fresh methi (fenugreek) leaves (cleaned, washed and chopped)
2-3 med. potatoes peeled and cut into 1" pieces
1 med. tomato (chopped)
1-2 cloves garlic (crushed)
Salt to taste
1/4 tsp. turmeric powder
Red chili powder (or cayenne or paprika) to taste
1/2 tsp. cumin seeds
2-3 whole dry red chilies
2-3 Tbsp. vegetable oil

Heat oil and add crushed garlic and fry till brown. Add cumin seeds and dry red chilies.
When cumin seeds are slightly browned and chilies turn brown add salt, turmeric, chili powder and chopped tomato. Sauté for a moment. Add potatoes and mix well. Cook till potatoes are half done on a medium flame. Add some water if the potatoes get too dry.

Add methi and cook on a medium flame till done and most of the liquid has evaporated. Adjust salt and squeeze a little lime juice. Serve the aloo methi hot with chapati, naan or rice accompanied with some plain yogurt. I like it with whole wheat tortillas - you can make a delicious burrito/wrap with aloo methi as the filling and a little yogurt for dressing.

Murgh Methi (Chicken cooked with fenugreek greens)
Adapted from A Taste of India by Madhur Jaffrey
This dish comes from the Hyderabadi cuisine of southern India. It combines the earthiness of the fenugreek greens with the tanginess of yogurt to create a delicious sauce in which browned pieces of chicken are braised gently. It is important to pick just the leaves and discard all the stems for this dish to ensure a sublime sauce. In another variation, chopped fresh dill is used instead of fenugreek leaves for an equally delightful version called Murgh Sooa.

(serves 4-6)

3 lb. chicken pieces (I like thighs), skinned.
1" piece of ginger, minced
6-8 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. ground turmeric
6 Tbsp. vegetable oil
3 lg. onions, cut in half lengthwise and cut crosswise into fine half rings
1 1/4 c. plain yogurt (preferrably whole milk)
1 1/4 tsp. salt
1 c. well-packed chopped fresh cilantro
2-4 fresh serrano chillies, slit but kept whole.
1 cup well-packed fresh fenugreek leaves

In a wide-based pan or dutch oven, heat the oil and sauté the onions until they brown lightly. Add the chicken pieces. Stir them around until they turn golden brown. Now add the ginger, garlic and turmeric. Stir and cook on a medium-high heat for another 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to low and add the yogurt and sat. Stir, scraping the bottom. Bring to a simmer. Cover and simmer gently for 15 mins, until the chicken is almost done.

Add the cilantro, chillies and the fenugreek greens along with 1/2 cup water. Simmer for 5 mins. until the sauce has thickened and clings to the chicken. Serve with naan or basmati rice.