Category Archives: Poultry

French chicken in a pot

Posted on by

I’ve been wanting to try this method of cooking a chicken for a long time, but just haven’t wanted to pay the price of a free-range chicken this big.  While marketing the other day I found on marked down so I thought it was finally time to try this out.

The basic recipe is from Cook’s Illustrated (Published January 1, 2008. )  Since this was the first time that I’ve cooked a chicken by this method, I wanted to follow the recipe rather closely before I try  changes, so all that I altered was the herbs and vegetables:  I used shallots instead of onions and garlic, and  sage instead of the rosemary).  The chicken is browned and in the oven now.

♥♦♥

Later, after the chicken is out of the pot…It’s definitely a keeper recipe.  I’m amazed at how well the seasonings penetrated the bird.  With it sealed up in the pot you don’t get to smell it as you would open roasting, but when you open the pot, it’s a real blast of wonderful smells.

We had this with roasted potatoes and haricots verts, and baked figs for dessert…a simple, but delicious meal.  We had this with Paul Lehrner cuvée Claus 2007 which is 85% Zweifelt and 15% Blaufränkisch.  Wonderful!

Next step is to try this with a game hen or petit poussin to adapt this for single-serving cooking.

Budget shopping

Posted on by

Mostly I don’t like shopping–unless it’s food related shopping.  So most of the time, I like going to the grocery store (even if it’s just the supermarket). I make lists for things like dish detergent, or paper towels, and the like, but I don’t make lists for my food except in a very general way.  I want to shop for what looks good, is priced right, or maybe even something unusual.  In short I do meal-planning on the hoof.

Yesterday was one of those shopping days–I came out feeling like I had gotten some bargains and that doesn’t happen often.  I went to get milk specifically, but my general list was for meals for the weekend and into the first of next week.  Since I have had a bit of a splurge on eating out recently (OnlyBurger two days in a row) it’s time to eat in.

When I’m shopping where I’m comfortable about the quality of the meats and produce and the handling of perishables , I’ll sometimes find some real bargains.  Yesterday was one of those days.

I found tuna medallions at a great price which means that I’m going to be making some tuna confit to have for lunches or light suppers since that will keep in the refrigerator for two or three weeks (if it lasts that long).

My next “find” was a rib-eye steak that had a healthy mark-down tag on it–its sell by date was yesterday evening, but it looked good so that came home with me for supper last night.  (It was really tasty.)

My other glorious find was a plump 4-1/2 or 5 pound, free range chicken that had been marked down to half price since the sell-by date was today.  That means that as long as I’m planning to cook the chicken tomorrow and treat it appropriately in the intervening day (I keep my refrigerator really cold, about 34 or 36 ° F, constantly monitored with a thermometer), I’ve gotten a real bargain and something that I would not usually buy.

True, it’s a lot of chicken for one person and I may be looking to invite friends for a meal and still have more meals for me (and the cat) but I haven’t made roast chicken in a while.  Now I can have fun perusing the wine selection and thinking about how I’m going to cook that bird.  Weather permitting, it may go on the grill to be smoked, but I’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Growing & cooking with French tarragon

Posted on by
French tarragon

French tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus)

For me, another “must have” fresh herb is  French tarragon (Artemesia dracunculus var. sativa)–now.  Until I tasted the French variety fresh, I disliked it intensely.  I simply could not understand why people would rave about it as seasoning for anything.  Dried tarragon was what I tasted first–and threw it out: it was harsh and hay-like.

Then I decided to try the fresh herb–fresh is better, right?  I trundled off to a garden center and bought a “tarragon” plant.  Tarragon is tarragon, right?

That plant grew well, had nice tall, straight stems, but the taste did nothing for me; in fact I thought it was somewhat bitter.  I did realize that sometimes the flavor of herbs varies–just as anything live and growing varies from one to another.  So being somewhat stubborn, I went to a garden center with a larger selection of herbs and I bought another plant…this one labelled as French tarragon–the botanical name was shown on the tag.  (I almost didn’t buy it because while it was nice and green, it was rather straggly looking and it was expensive (compared to other herbs and the first tarragon plant I had bought).  But–I did buy it as it was the only tarragon  there; it grew slowly and was rather weedy looking–not a pretty plant.  When I was finally able to  pick some leaves to use,  that first taste made it obvious to me that this was something different.

I did some research and discovered that there are two kinds of tarragon:  Russian and French.  The Russian can be grown from seed, is a more robust looking plant, cheaper,  and is what you are likely to get if you buy a plant that just called tarragon.  On the other hand, the French tarragon will likely be more expensive, not as sturdy looking, must be started from cuttings or root divisions as it does not produce seeds; it’s also slower growing–but, the flavor is awesome!

The lessons from this?  Don’t bother to buy dried tarragon unless you like the flavor of hay, and don’t buy a tarragon plant unless it’s labelled French tarragon (Artemesia dracunculus var. sativa).

Once you get this treasure home, you’ll need to see that it has excellent drainage and lots of sun.  This particular herb has a few idiosyncrasies:   it likes a light, richer soil than other herbs such as  thyme, sage or oregano and while it is a hardy perennial, it actually needs (requires) a cold dormant period.  It will die back to the ground in the fall, but should survive the winter if it is in well-drained soil.

[Note:  If you live where you don’t get that kind of cold in the winter you may have trouble growing French tarragon as a perennial; instead of trying the Russian you might want to try Mexican tarragon (Tagetes lucida) also know as marigold mint.  The flavor of this is slightly sweeter and more licorice-like than French tarragon, but better than the Russian tarragon.]

It may be so slow to show in the spring that you’ll think that it’s not coming back–be patient.  In an extremely hot, humid climate, I’ve found that it does well with about six or eight hours of sunlight and then some shade during the hottest part of the day.  As it is rather slow growing, it may not need dividing for three or four years.

Now that you have this in your herb garden, what can you do with it?  To harvest it for use, you can cut almost anywhere, but don’t take more than half the plant at one time–it needs enough leaves left to have strength to grow back.  By pinching tips you can keep it a bit more bushy–but it’s always going to be a kind of weedy looking herb.

It’s best used as soon as it’s harvested, but it can be stored wrapped in a damp paper towel in a sealed zipperlock plastic bag in the refrigerator for three or four days, but one of the reasons for growing it is to use it at its peak flavor–right away.

The flavor of French tarragon is described as sweet and anise-like, with minty and peppery sensations–complex!  (It contains some of the same essential oil that is found in anise.)  It’s best to add it near the end of cooking because, like some other herbs (basil, for example), it loses some flavor with heating.

This is not an herb that you reach for as your basic “go to” like thyme or oregano but it’s a classic with chicken, mild seafood, and eggs.   A simple lemon/butter sauce is delightful on seafood with a bit of tarragon added.  The sweet, anise-like flavor is also good with root veggies like carrots, beets; fresh vegetables like peas, asparagus, green beans.   You can use tarragon with fruits as well as vegetables:  melon, peaches or stone fruits.  An intriguing suggestion  I’ve seen (but not yet tried) is with citrus sorbet such as grapefruit or lime; sounds like a great summer cooler–I also  wonder about adding it with grapefruit when making aqua fresca for hot weather drinks.

It’s part of some classic herb mixes such as the French mixture called fines herbs and herbes de Provence (actual herbs used and proportions will vary with the producer).  It’s also use in the classic Béarnaise sauce, frequently served with a good steak.

You’ll find your own uses for this herb if you have it readily available.  As always, smell and taste and see what clicks with you; even though there are classic combination, there are lots of other possibilities.

A son goût!  

Chicken braised in milk.

Posted on by

Always on the lookout for a new taste experience, while checking out favorite blogs and  websites, I found a recipe that I just had to try:  chicken braised in milk from Jamie Oliver’s website.  I’ve made pork braised in milk (a recipe from one of Marcella Hazan’s cookbooks) and it was scrumptious!  Reading the recipe for “Chicken in Milk” I was intrigued by the seasoning–sage, garlic, cinnamon, and lemon.  Not a combination that I had thought, but considering the source I thought it worth a try.  Not wanting a whole chicken, I decided to try it with my favorite chicken parts–thighs.  It seemed like another great dish to test out the petit brasier.  I even found a friend willing to test the results with me.

Since I had about half the weight in thighs of the chicken called for in the recipe, I went halves on the seasonings as well.  What I learned was that chicken parts were okay, but maybe not the way to go with this recipe, and that halves on the seasoning was too big a cut.  The flavor combination was a success–it was somewhat earthy, and “round” and balanced, but I think I need to try it again with more than half the amounts of seasoning. We both felt that it could have been more highly seasoned, but it was a recipe that definitely goes into my “keepers” file.  Work on modifying it as a one-person meal is going to continue.

This was one of the times that I broke a rule that I usually follow:  make the recipe just “as is” before you try modifying it; so it’s back to the kitchen with this one–probably going to have to invite friends and do a whole chicken before I try cutting it down again;  I need  to know  what it would be like as intended so that I know how to modify the seasoning.  It’s not always easy to modify a recipe for single-serving cooking, but it’s a worthwhile endeavor.

Now that the holidays are past and things are settling down a bit, I think I’ll give it another try–my friends are used to me having a “food crisis”–and usually willing to participate.  I think it would be a good time to check out a bottle of good white Burgundy wine as well.    Since I’ve been considering this, I nabbed a couple of Cornish game hens on one of my trips through the grocery store, thinking that this might work as a single serving adaptation.  You can expect updates on this to follow–the full recipe and adaptations for one or two servings. If you need (or want) to serve four, it’s a recipe worth making!

Take four chicken thighs…

Posted on by

If you are going to cook for one, you need to get away from recipes that specify exact quantities–it’s a step toward learning to improvise as you cook.  I’d urge you to take a look at Kitchen Express by Mark Bittman–you don’t have to buy it, thought it’s a great book to have; go to the library and check it out. (It’s also available for Kindle, too)  Other simple, and simply good recipes can be found at The New York Times, and at Mark Bittman.com.  You will find recipes that are easy to do for one because they are “quantity-less” in the sense of the typical recipes.  They don’t call him “minimalist” without a reason–a very few ingredients can make some wonderful eating.

Now for those four chicken thighs, cooked as described in “The Microwave in my Kitchen”, here’s what has been done with some, and what is intended for that fourth one:

1.  Chicken salad for a sandwich, quickly made by adding some minced red onion, a bit of cutting celery (See Herbs page) leaves and stems, salt, fresh-ground black pepper, a squeeze of lime juice (or lemon juice), and a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil.

2.  A warm meal of chicken with  part of a can of chickpeas left from a previous use.  Sautéed a handful of onion in olive oil until softened, added a big clove of garlic, the chicken cut into bite-sized pieces, added some halved grape tomatoes, about a tablespoon of chopped sun-dried tomatoes, a dash of Syrian oregano (still growing on my deck); finish with salt and fresh-ground black pepper to taste.   Add a  single-serving salad of mixed greens and had a quick, satisfying meal.

3.   The third piece went to make some quick chicken hash for Sunday breakfast as follows:  In a 12-inch nonstick skillet sauté a handful of diced onion  in olive oil until just starting to brown.  Add two minced garlic cloves (I like lots of garlic),  and cook for two or three minutes.   Meanwhile, open a can of diced potatoes (I told you this was quick–obviously you can start with raw potatoes and sauté them until tender) and brown them lightly. Rinse and drain the potatoes, add to the skillet and sauté until they start to brown.

Remove half the potato mixture–this is destined for another use.  Remove the meat from the chicken thigh if it was bone-in and dice the meat.  Add this to the potato mixture in the skillet, along with some (about 1/2 teaspoon) fresh thyme (again still growing on my deck) and continue to sauté.  When the potatoes and chicken are slightly browned, remove to a plate and keep warm.  Cook one egg (or two if you are really hungry) to medium, and serve over the chicken hash.

The portion of potatoes that you removed from the skillet can be used in different ways: the are likely to become a kind of quick version of a Spanish tortilla by just  warming and adding a couple of eggs and serving with a salad or vegetable.

4.  With the broth obtained from cooking the thighs in the microwave, I plan make a meaty chicken soup using that fourth chicken thigh, using that bit of  rice left  from another meal.  I’ll add more veggies, perhaps a bay leaf, and some of my “lazy” favorite (and only) herb mix, herbs de Provence. I’ll see when the time comes–since I don’t do leftovers, I probably shouldn’t do predictions either.

There will be a follow-up on that fourth piece of chicken to let you know where my improvisation lead me.  I’ll give you another example, using a recipe from Kitchen Express for a lentil soup that just blew my mind (See An Awesome Lentil Soup).  It was such an unexpected combination of flavors, and it is one that I keep using to improvise with other ingredients, as well as coming back to the original.  It’s a recipe where I could also make use of the last piece of chicken.

The microwave in my kitchen

Posted on by

I guess I’m not really fond of many small appliances or kitchen gadgets.  There seem to be a lot that just take up drawer space or counter space and don’t work that well.   In many ways the microwave has mostly been just a “gadget” in my kitchen.  Most of the microwave recipes that I found were just not that good: edible, but that’s about it. Many of the early cookbooks that I looked at seemed to suggest that anything could be cooked well in the microwave.  Admittedly, I’ve not looked at a lot of newer ones because they seemed so uncritical about what does or does not cook well in the microwave.  So for me it was for melting chocolate, making popcorn, heating a cup of water….

I’ve revised my opinion slightly after finding the Microwave Gourmet cookbook by Barbara Kafka.  This author is a traditionally trained chef, and approached the microwave in a very skeptical frame of mind, and that has produced a useful microwave cookbook.  There is no hesitation in saying what NOT to cook in the microwave.

One of the really useful features of this book  is a dictionary where you can look things you might want to know about cooking in the microwave, and find times, suggested container sizes in which to cook it.  I’ve use this more than almost any other part of the book, except possibly the information on how to arrange foods in containers in order to have them cook properly.

I’ve tried the microwave risotto, and it’s not bad for times when you don’t want to spend the time standing by the stove stirring for 25 minutes or so.  (I’m anxious to compare the results of this with the Cook’s Illustrated simplified risotto.)

The most-used recipe in that book for me is the one for quick chicken broth or stock.  I’m mostly a stove-top or oven stock maker, but this is great when you don’t have canned stock or want some really good broth for soup.  Here is the recipe:

Use bones (carcass from the roast chicken, or necks, backs, wings, or giblets (except liver).  You can collect these in the freezer until you have enough, or if you’re lucky, you can buy backs cheaply and make this whenever you need to.

  • 2 pounds chicken
  • 4 cups water

For 4 cups, place the bones and water in a 2-quart dish and cover tightly with microwave plastic wrap.  Cook at 100% for 30 minutes.  (Cook 40 minutes for broth that will jell.)

For 2 cups, use 1 pound bones, and 2 cups water.  Cook for 20 minutes.

This cookbook has directions for making  the classic stocks and broths in the microwave–including vegetable and fish/seafood broths.  Although I’m sure I will not give up the stove-top or oven long, slow preparation of stock I think that I’ll turn to the microwave more frequently, especially in hot weather.  I’ve not done a side-by-side tasting of each method, but this is certainly better than canned!

I’ve also cooked chicken in the microwave according to instructions in this book and been pleased with the results.  I use chicken thighs instead of breasts, but instructions/times can be found in the Dictionary section of this cookbook.  An unexpected benefit of cooking the chicken this way  is some very good strong broth; just enough to make one good  serving of chicken soup.  To me the texture of the chicken is a bit different when done in the microwave– more chewy, but not tough, or disagreeable at all (I actually like that “chew”).  I expect that I’ll be using the microwave more often to cook chicken now.

More on duck with fresh fig sauce

Posted on by

This duck with fresh fig sauce is such wonderful treat that I’m experimenting with ways to do this for one, or maybe two people.  I’ve always made stock from the leftover duck carcass and put that in the freezer.

I have also made the duck-fig bouillon to just short of the final reduction and put some in the freezer, with the figs (no idea how they will fare) to see if I can adapt this recipe to be done with pan-seared duck breasts, which seem to be readily available from the supermarket.  I want to be able to taste the bouillon from the freezer with some made with just the frozen duck stock and fresh figs to see how it has held up to the freezing.

I have enough friends who like duck that I can do a whole roast duck occasionally, and have the carcass to make stock so it’s always on hand from the freezer; however, if you don’t want to do the whole duck or the two-duck recipe, you can obtain duck-veal demi-glace from D’Artagnan and that would certainly be a good starting point from which to begin.  I have used this  product before in making cassoulet and was very pleased with it.

I’ll be reporting on the results of this experiment soon as the weather is cooling off and more robust food begins to appeal–and the last of the figs on the tree are ripening.

Roast duck with fresh fig sauce

Posted on by

No–it’s not a single serving, but it’s so good that you just have to make it when there are fresh figs available.  So invite friends and enjoy.

Adapted from In Search of the Perfect Meal, a collection of writing by Roy Andries de Groot, pp 148-150.

  • 2 Long Island ducks (one about 2-1/2 pounds, and one about 4-1/2 to 5 pounds).
  • 1 lemon cut in half
  • 1 medium yellow onion, peeled and chopped
  • 2 medium carrots, chopped
  • 2 ribs of celery, chopped with leaves
  • 3 springs of fresh parsley
  • kosher salt to taste
  • freshly ground white pepper to taste
  • 12 whole fresh figs (I like black mission, but any good ripe fresh fig will work)
  • 2 ounces French Orgeat, almond syrup
  • about 2 cups chicken bouillon
  • 1 cup white wine, preferably Sancerre
  • 2 tablespoons minced shallots
  • 2 tablespoons sweet butter

Ducks: Preheat the oven to 350 ° F.  Rub the ducks inside and outside with the lemon. Prick the underside skin to allow fat to run out.  Place the ducks on a rack in an open roasting pan and roast until the breasts are pink (usually no more than about 45 to 50 minutes).

Stock: While the ducks are roasting, put chopped onion, chopped carrots, chopped celery and parsley springs into  a 2-quart sauce pan. Pour a pint of cold water over these and bring rapidly to a boil.  Stir, and reduce heat to a simmer and continue simmering until the duck carcass is ready to go in.

Figs: Put figs in a 1-quart saucepan.  Dribble the Orgeat over them and pour enough of the chicken stock over them to cover. Heat this to a gentle simmer and continue simmering, covered, until the figs are warm and puffed up (usually 5 to 10 minutes).  The stock should be vaguely sweet with the fig juice.  Remove the figs (carefully) and keep warm in a covered container.

Now boil the fig-chicken stock hard to reduce to about half and concentrate its sweetness.  Hold covered until you need it later.

Back to the roasting ducks: When the breasts are pink, put the larger one in a covered casserole and let stand tightly covered over extremely low heat on top of the stove, gently ripening in its own juices for about an hour.

Carve off the breast, legs, thighs and wings of the smaller duck and put them into the covered casserole with the larger duck.

Chop the carcass of the smaller duck into pieces, about 8 pieces, and put them into the 2-quart saucepan with the vegetables; press the pieces down into the liquid fairly tightly. If necessary add more water to cover.  Continue simmering, covered, until the stock is needed later.

Skim off the fat from the pan in which the ducks were roasted and set the pan over a burner, and deglaze with the cup of white wine, scraping the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon to loosen the fond.  Pour this deglazing mixture into the simmering duck bouillon.

Completion and assembly: Preheat grill.  Strain the duck bouillon, return to the saucepan and boiling it hard to reduce it and concentrate the flavor.  Reheat the fig bouillon to just bubbling.  While finishing the sauce here, you must taste continually the duck and the fig stocks to get them just right to combine.  If the sauce is too sweet it will overwhelm the duck–you want just a very delicate on sweetness in this sauce so that you still appreciate the “duckiness” of the meat. Defat the duck stock.  Pour the fig bouillon into the duck stock, add the 2 tablespoons of shallots, and continue boiling to further reduce the combined sauce.

Place the figs on a platter and quickly glaze them under the broiler–for just a minute or two.

Now, carve the duck (the whole bird) and the parts from the casserole. Set portions on warmed plates and garnish with the glazed figs.  When the sauce has just the right sweetness, turn the heat down to below simmer, add a fair amount of white pepper–enough to cut across the sweetness of the sauce, but not enough to “prick your throat”.  Do not let the sauce boil after adding the pepper or it will have a bitter taste.

When the sauce is just right, monter au beurre. (Melt the butter on the surface, a small piece at a time, stirring in.  This will give the sauce a luxurious, velvety mouth-feel.  Pour the sauce around (not over) the duck and figs on the plate.  Rush them to the table.

Wine: Because of the sweetness of the sauce, red wine is not  quite right with this dish.  The recommended wine (from the French restaurant where this dish is served) is a white burgundy.  I did this with a Meursault and it was luxurious.   For domestic wine, a California PinotChardonnay from the Alexander Valley was recommended.

Even though this is a fairly complicated preparation and definitely not a single serving it is an exquisite dish.  If you have duck at other times, by all means make stock from the carcasses and freeze it. If you have the stock, you can do this sauce at any time you have the fresh figs available and perhaps serve with pan-seared duck breast without roasting the whole bird.