Chicken with plums

I've acquired some new cookbooks recently and I'm going to be trying them out. This simple recipe from Claudia Roden's New Book of Middle Eastern Food was great for a week night.

Originally, this Turkish recipe (Tabaka Piliç) was made with a whole boned chicken but she calls for chicken fillets, both white and dark meat. I shopped at the co-op and all they had was chicken thighs so I skinned and boned them and flattened them into fillets. These simply get sauteed in a skillet and then the plums added to soften. The co-op plums were big and a bit hard so I cut them up to soften more quickly. The real addition here is a sauce made of plum jam (St. Dalfour) with a Tbl of vinegar, a crushed garlic clove and a pinch of chile pepper flakes. I also cooked up some bulghur wheat from the co-op (too much, two cups!) and sauteed some zucchini to stir into that. Nice little meal.

Web recipes

Among the many wonders of the Web are the wonderful recipes that pop up from various corners. There are Epicurious and Recipes.com and various blogs but you just never know where a good recipe is going to come from -- a wine site, a cooking store email, wherever.

I printed out a recipe for Braised saffron chicken with pasta the other day, and I honestly have no idea where it came from. (Update: It's not where I found it, but it turns out the recipe comes from Epicurious.) It was really good and a simple dish for a weekday. You brown 2-1/2 lbs. of chicken thighs ("with skin and bones") in 2 Tbl olive oil, set them aside and sautée 2 c. chopped white onion with 6 peeled and crushed garlic cloves. Then you add 2 c. (!) white wine with 1 tsp crushed saffron and boil it down to half. Then you add 2 c. chicken broth and the thighs, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 1 hr., turning halfway through. You remove the thighs, let cool, then remove skin and bones and separate meat into bite-size pieces. You skim the fat off the braising juices, and 1 c. heavy cream and 2 Tbl lemon juice and reduce that, then add chicken pieces to heat through. You cook 1 lb of paccheri or rigatoni, drain, put back in pot, pour chicken mixture over, toss, and add 2/3 c. of chopped basil and serve. We also sprinkled parmesan on individually.

Update: Two Web recipes in a row. Last night it was Spanish pork burgers that I found on Recipes.com by googling. Very simple. Sautée 3 c. sliced onions (they say Spanish onions, but nobody seems to really know what that means), then chop up half to mix with the ground pork and save the other half to put on the bun. Mix 1 lb. of pork with the chopped onions, 2 tsp of pimenton (doesn't say, but I presumed sweet), 4 cloves chopped garlic, salt and pepper. Don't overmix, then divide into patties (three or four, we like them big). To accompany, mix some lemon zest, lemon juice and a pinch of saffron with mayonnaise. Grill 10-12 min. Delicious, a real keeper!

Pot-roasted chicken with gnocchi

This is a kind of Italian version of chicken and dumplings. It is the first recipe I've tried from my new Canal House Cooking #5, and it appealed to me because it's a simple recipe for a weekday meal, given that I skipped the gnocchi-making and just bought fresh gnocchi at Whole Foods. It turned out well enough but I'm not convinced about this cookbook series.

You are supposed to rub 2 Tbl spoons of softened butter onto the chicken. My butter was soft and my chicken was dry, but it just clumped along the skin and did not spread at all. Oddly, then, I thought, you also rub 2 Tbl of olive oil onto the chicken once you've put it in a enamel cast-iron pot. You salt and pepper it, pour in 2 c. water and 3 sprigs of fresh sage. Then you cover and put the pot into a preheated 375-degree oven.

So far, so good. But then it says to roast a 3-4 lb. chicken (mine was 3.5 lbs.) only 30 min. before taking off the lid, basting the chicken, adding 4 carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds, and returning to oven uncovered -- for only 15 min.!

I was skeptical about the time and I was right. The chicken was still snow white after 15 min. (supposed to be crispy, golden), so I turned up the heat and after another half hour (total 1 hr 15 min -- about what I would have expected), it was golden enough to be presentable and the juices ran clear. It was still plenty moist (I basted it some more in between). You remove the chicken and let it sit 10 min. before carving.

You cook the fresh potato gnocchi in batches in simmering, salted water, removing with a slotted spoon after they float on the surface for 10 sec. and put on a heated plate. When the gnocci are done, you toss with melted butter and parmesan. Then you serve gnocchi in a wide bowl, with slices of chicken on top, spooning over some broth and carrots. The chicken has a great flavor, the broth is rich and rounded from the sage and carrots, and the gnocchi are a lot like dumplings.

It worked fine for a weekday meal. I see a problem for serving it to guests, though, because getting it to the table with everything hot is a challenge. I'm also concerned that the timing was so far off. Added to that, the cookbook has a quirky selection of recipes and I don't see too many that I'm interested in doing. Bottom line: May not get another Canal House cookbook. I got this one because one of the authors in a book I'm reviewing recommended the series. Pretty photos seem to be the main attraction.

I may try to follow their recipe for gnocchi some weekend, though. It doesn't look that hard, just a little time-consuming for a weekday.

Chicken and dumplings

One of the strongest food memories from my childhood is the time we went to a Methodist church supper for chicken and dumplings. We attended Catholic schools, and I worried that it was vaguely sinful to go to a Protestant church for dinner. But what a revelation! These anonymous ladies at the Methodist church created a fabulous meal with plump dumplings, a luscious broth and melt-in-your-mouth chicken.

My mother never cooked chicken and dumplings because her fried chicken was so good. Perhaps because the standard was set so high by the Methodist ladies, I've rarely attempted it myself. But the recipe in Molly Stevens' All About Braising was too appealing to resist.

Rather than the traditional method of poaching the dumplings in the broth the chicken is cooking in, Stevens has you cook everything separately. So first you sear the salted and peppered chicken parts in 2 Tbl. butter (I elected the thighs and legs option instead of the cut-up chicken). She insists that you just color the chicken pieces frying 4 min. a side, not brown them. Remove, pour off the fat, heat 2 more Tbl. butter, and sautee 1 medium onion chopped into 1/2-in. pieces, 2 celery stalks likewise chopped, 1 large shallot chopped, 2 strips lemon zest, and scant 1/4 tsp. grated nutmeg with sprinkling of salt and pepper until vegetables are soft. Add 1/2 c. dry white wine and simmer for 7 min. (until 3/4 of the wine is gone), add another 1/2 c. wine and simmer another 6 or 7 min. Add the stock and bring to simmer, then add the chicken pieces (if using cut-up chicken, keep the breasts out for the first 10 min.). Check heat after 10 min. to make sure braise is at a slow simmer, turn chicken pieces (add white meat) and simmer a further 25 to 30 min.

Remove the chicken pieces to platter and loosely cover with foil. In the meantime, you have mixed the dumpling batter, whisking 1 c. flour, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1/2 tsp. coarse salt, 1 Tbl. chopped parsley, 1 Tbl. chopped chives or scallion ends (I just used 2 Tbl. parsley), and scant 1/8 tsp. grated nutmeg (call it a pinch). You make a well in the dry ingredients, put in a whole egg at room temperature and add 6 Tbl. milk. Whisk ingredients together, adding up to 2 Tbl. more milk if batter is too stiff (mine was still pretty stiff with all 8 Tbl. milk), then whisk in 2 Tbl. butter, melted and cooled. Don't overmix, Stevens warns, because that will toughen dumplings. Form the dumplings with 2 tablespoons and put into the braising liquid, which you have strained to remove the aromatics (and skimmed for fat, a step I skipped). Simmer for 5 min. on one side, then gently turn and simmer for another 5 min. Remove to platter with the chicken.

Whisk together a liaison from 2 egg yolks, 1/2 c. heavy cream, salt and pepper. Whisk in a ladle-full of the braising liquid, and then whisk the liaison back into the pan with the rest of the braising liquid, stir and avoid bringing to a boil. If sauce tastes starchy, add a squeeze of lemon (I did anyway, what the heck). When sauce has thickened, pour over chicken and dumplings, sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve.

This was different than the church supper, but it was extremely good. The Stevens book has been a great find, with many wonderful braising recipes.