Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, May 5, 2008 at 6:15 PM
I’ve heard about chicken wrapped in parchment paper, and even of chicken wrapped in foil. But the cooking of what is essentially chicken in a bag, had always (in my humble experience) taken place in the oven. I’ve never heard of chicken that’s sautéed in the foil bag on a skillet. It certainly was a weird feeling when I placed that foil package on top of a hot iron skillet and waited to see what would happen. Would it explode or catch on fire?
I actually wanted to do this recipe because of the foil balloon that Simple to Spectacular authors Mark Bittman and Jean Georges Vongerichten promised would happen. Because of the escaping steam, they said that the aluminum foil would puff up like a “Jiffy Pop”. But nothing much happened to mine. Perhaps it was the fact that I didn’t have the proper size of aluminum foil. They ask for the extra large 18-inch version; I only had the 12-inch kind. I ended up jamming in way too much chicken and perhaps didn’t seal the foil well enough. Either way, the loss of the spectacle was redeemed by extraordinary taste. The tomato gets flattened and kind of crispy, and all that Parmesan melts into a beautiful sauce that coats the rosemary-infused chicken.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, April 26, 2008 at 5:00 PM
Each Saturday evening we bring you a Sunday Supper recipe. Why on Saturday? So you have time to shop and prepare for tomorrow.
I don't know how it happened, but my favorite dish from my go-to neighborhood Italian restaurant happens to be a simple concoction of penne tossed with some good olive oil and some sautéd garlic and broccoli—all topped by a grilled chicken breast. I always picture it as their sop to dieters or calorie-concious diners, and I always feel like it's akin to ordering steak at a seafood joint.
I order it because over the past year or so, I've started getting the acid reflux after eating heavily tomato-sauced foods, and this lightly treated pasta preparation appeals to me. The price, however, does not. (I'm embarrassed to even mention it here because it's ludicrous for what actually goes into it.)
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Posted by Lucy Baker, April 25, 2008 at 1:45 PM
Today's cook the book recipe, excerpted from The Oprah Magazine Cookbook, is for a sensational Creole Gumbo straight from the Big Easy. Chef Leah Chase, owner of the restaurant Dooky Chase and arguably the Queen of Creole Cuisine, pulls out all the stops. Her version includes fresh crabs, oysters, and shrimp; veal and chicken; and two kinds of sausage. The recipe makes a lot—it serves 8 to 10—so mix up some Sazeracs and prepare it with a group of friends. This is soul food at its absolute best.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, April 23, 2008 at 12:00 PM
The following recipe is from the April 23rd edition of our weekly recipe newsletter. To receive this newsletter in your inbox, sign up here!
Oprah Winfrey is known more for her skills as a television show host and not for her work in the kitchen, so it makes sense that her book The Oprah Magazine Cookbook is her compilation of recipes from famous chefs. This recipe for African chicken in peanut sauce comes from Norma Jean Darden, cookbook author and proprietor of two restaurants and catering company in New York City. This dish calls for browning chicken in a skillet and finishing it off in a creamy coconut milk-based peanut sauce.
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Posted by Ed Levine, April 20, 2008 at 1:00 PM
This week's Cartoon Kitchen features Serious Eats' cartoonist in residence Larry Gonick's spin on cold chicken. —Ed Levine
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Posted by Robyn Lee, April 16, 2008 at 11:00 AM
The following recipe is from the April 16 edition of our weekly recipe newsletter. To receive this newsletter in your inbox, sign up here!
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall was so determined to raise his own livestock and grow his own vegetables that he moved from London to rural Dorset, England to set up the River Cottage Farm. In The River Cottage Cookbook he shares this simple recipe for pot-roast chicken and vegetables, which he calls his favorite one-pot dish, a satisfying way to cook chicken, vegetables, and gravy all at once. It can use either young roasting birds or old stewing chickens by adjusting the cooking time and temperature.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 9, 2008 at 4:30 PM
I've been having a lot of fun flipping through The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. It's unpretentious, easy to use, and full of tasty dishes that seem to be entirely too simple, if a little hard to believe. And this one is no different. The sauce is the perfect counterpoint to the broiled chicken—it takes on an almost mustard-like tang, but has a much brighter flavor thanks to the lemon. It's so perfect, in fact, that it's easy to forget that the recipe has raw potatoes in it.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, April 1, 2008 at 4:30 PM
I wasn’t sick, but I did have a lot of leftover chicken. For some unknown reason, I was struck by the need to make the most chickeny chicken soup possible. I had loads of onions and carrots and enough thick stock to make a real meal happen—but I was put off by the long process. The fiancée and I had some wedding plans to attend to and not much time to spend. A crazy chicken soup would have been too much so I downgraded my plans to this highly spiced soup I found on Epicurious.
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Posted by Lucy Baker, April 1, 2008 at 2:15 PM
I have never understood why many people are afraid of cooking fish. What's so hard about searing a little salmon? It's chicken, specifically roasting a whole one, that I find much more intimidating. Sure I've done it, but the occasion always fills me with anxiety. Should I butterfly it or stuff the cavity with onions? Set the oven at 425°F or 475°F? And just how do I know when it's done? I don't want to serve a desiccated bird, but on the other hand, few things are scarier than cutting into a bite of breast that is still cold and pink inside. (Just thinking about it makes me want to run for the anti-bacterial hand wash.)
But since reviewing these magazine recipes was, in part, an experiment designed to make me a better cook, I decided that it was high time I practiced my poultry skills. This week I prepared the ginger-roasted chicken from the April issue of Food & Wine.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, March 26, 2008 at 5:00 PM
At various times throughout this meal, I assumed failure. I hardly ever make curry, especially an African-based one I found in The Ethnic Paris Cookbook
. But it looked so easy that I had to give it shot, even if my instincts were rebelling. For one, besides some cloves, it only uses turmeric for spice. To act as some kind of insurance, I tossed out my aging old plastic bottle of the yellow spice and bought a brand new bottle from my local outlet of Penzeys Spice. Still, I had doubts.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, March 26, 2008 at 3:00 PM
Spring's here, it's warming up a bit where I am (at least for now), and that's got me thinking of picnicky foods. Like chicken salad. So for today's recipe from Nigella Express, I'm looking at the Mexican Chicken Salad she's got going on. Like (almost) everything in this book, it's quick and easy—and it's light, as it's not the traditional mayo-based chicken salad. It appears after the jump.
Win 'Nigella Express'
As is always the case with our Cook the Books, we're giving away a number of them this week. Enter to win Nigella Express »
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, March 26, 2008 at 1:30 PM
One of the first Madhur Jaffrey meat recipes I ever tried was a goat stew. Although she recommends that Americans replace the goat with lamb, I’m open to new meats, and someone at the Greenmarket was actually selling goat for stew, so I thought, why not?
Well, my adventuresomeness was not rewarded. I don’t know if it was the recipe (which included at least 8 tablespoons of oil) or the goat (which gave off a lot of fat), but the stew tasted mostly of grease and gristle.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, March 24, 2008 at 6:15 PM
The first of this week's recipes from Nigella Express is for a bacon-infused roast chicken. Roast chicken is always pretty easy to make, and this one is no different, except that the little bit of extra work it requires—frying up some bacon—pays off in a big way. The bacon and brandy glaze help bronze the bird and add beautiful flavor without becoming a distraction.
Win 'Nigella Express'
As is always the case with our Cook the Books, we're giving away a number of them this week. Enter to win Nigella Express »
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, March 21, 2008 at 4:15 PM
I can't even remember the last time I just bought chicken breasts at the store. In college I would buy the skinless, boneless version in enormous frozen bags, but I've changed since then. I usually go for a whole chicken now, which I either immediately roast or cut up and use how I see fit. But the fiancée and I were going away for a long weekend and just needed a quick meal that wouldn't leave any leftovers. Sparked by both curiosity and practicality, I set off for some chicken breasts.
We wanted to make a recipe from Christopher Kimball's The Kitchen Detective
because of a fantastic sounding pan sauce made of olives and capers. As I was reading the entry I realized the main focus of the recipe is actually how to properly cook a chicken breast without drying it out. The obvious tip is to leave the skin on and the bone in—that was easy. He also recommends a brine, which might be wonderful, but I just didn't have the time. It didn't seem to matter; the seared chicken came out beautifully moist, if a tad bland. Luckily, the rich sauce was more than up to the task.
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Posted by The Serious Eats Team, March 17, 2008 at 2:30 PM
This chicken soup can be served alone as a clear broth or with the addition of matzo balls, kreplach, lukshen, or soup nuts (mandlen). It's adapted from Jewish Home Cooking by Arthur Schwartz.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, February 22, 2008 at 10:30 AM
Roasting chicken always, always reminds me of Jeffrey Steingarten. I think the moment my crush on him bloomed into undying love was when I read his essay “As the Spit Turns” in the August 1999 issue of Vogue (reprinted in It Must’ve Been Something I Ate), in which he discusses his efforts to rig up an effective spit-roasting system at home. Two passages near the beginning won me over: “Whenever I have nothing better to do, I roast a chicken. …I’ll roast a chicken in the afternoon even when I am not hungry and have plenty of food in the fridge and a reservation for dinner. It’s like a hobby.” And then, “The great Brillat-Savarin declared, ‘We can learn to be cooks, but we must be born knowing how to roast.’ I often lie awake nights worrying about whether I was born to roast.’” I like a man who has his priorities in order. It is in this spirit that I offer you Marcella Hazan’s beautifully simple bird stuffed with two lemons. I suspect that many of you already love this very recipe, and if you do not know it yet, that you, too, are always tinkering with roast chicken, perhaps even roasting a bird whenever you have nothing better to do.
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Posted by Robin Bellinger, February 20, 2008 at 11:00 AM
As I wrote long ago in another forum, Joy of Cooking has never much appealed to me. A prudish child, I was, I think, put off by the way its title echoed The Joy of Sex (a subject I would have preferred never to hear mentioned or even hinted at), and as an young adult learning how to cook I was faithful to How to Cook Everything (which had something to do with my naively limitless reverence for the New York Times). Eventually, however, the man I would marry came into my life, and I was ready for it—“it” being, of course, Joy of Cooking, which had been his family’s standard text and now was his. Many skillets of refried beans, pots of stew, and countless muffins later, I’ve learned to give Joy its due as a classic of the American kitchen.
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Posted by Blake Royer, February 19, 2008 at 4:45 PM
What most people want in a roast chicken is crispy skin and succulent meat. Is it too much to ask? They want the leg to be done cooking before the breast gets tough; they want the skin to be as dry and crackly as possible while everywhere else should be moist and tender. Roasting a chicken is the attempt to achieve all of these contradictory elements in one place, and to do so with a limited number of variables: heat, time, salt. I love the challenge, the concept, the simplicity of roasting a whole bird. But I recently made a dish that in some ways made the whole chicken-roasting problem moot.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, February 16, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Each Saturday evening we bring you a Sunday Supper recipe. Why Saturday? So you have time to shop and prepare for tomorrow, of course!
I'm actually on a mini vacation in Ithaca, New York, as I write this, and, ladies and gents, it is cold here. And that's got me thinking of hot, comfort food so I thought I'd share this chicken pot pie recipe that I like to make. It follows, after the jump.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, February 4, 2008 at 4:15 PM
What a comedy of errors. I had some leftover chicken breasts from a roasted bird, and wanted to make a chicken salad sandwich to change things up and use the meat before it went bad. For some reason, I had curried chicken salad on my mind—a concoction I rather enjoy even if it usually only denotes a sprinkling of curry powder on regular old chicken salad. But this time I wanted to dig a little deeper, and see if this quick dish could be a little more flavorful and well rounded than my impromptu imitations. I found this fantastic looking curried chicken salad recipe from Cooks Illustrated that added honey, raisins, and lemon juice. And talk about easy, if the chicken was already done like mine was, then it it required no cooking. All it needed was a little mixing. How could this fail?
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Posted by Jenn Sit, January 30, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Jambalaya
adapted from Maryana Vollstedt's The Big Book of Casseroles
- makes six servings -
Ingredients
1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound chicken breasts
1 pound Andouille sausage
1 cup chopped onion
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 green bell pepper, seeded and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 cup long-grain white rice
1 large can (28 ounces) whole tomatoes, chopped, juice from can included
1 cup chicken stock
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 bay leaf
Freshly ground pepper and salt to taste
Your favorite hot sauce to taste (I like Cholula in this recipe)
Chopped fresh parsley
Procedure
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a Dutch oven over medium heat, warm 1 tablespoon oil. Add sausage and chicken until cooked through and slightly browned. Remove to a plate. Add onion, garlic, and green pepper and saute until tender in a little more oil. Stir in rice, tomatoes, stock, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, and seasonings. Return meats to pan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer, covered, 10 minutes. (The dish may be made ahead up to this point and refrigerated, but bring to room temperature before baking and allow an extra 15 minutes in the oven.)
Cover the casserole and bake 35 minutes. Remove bay leaf and discard. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.
Posted by Blake Royer, January 29, 2008 at 4:00 PM
I almost didn't survive the second stage of this recipe, when fermented fish sauce hits the hot pan, and it suddenly seemed like the the scent of a thousand dead fish had washed upon my kitchen's shores. I almost turned back. The nutty, cheesy, anchovy smell was overwhelming—how could this eventually taste good? But a short writeup in last week's New York Times food section had promised me a "bright, palate-awakening blend of salty, sweet and spicy" that could be made in 12 minutes. I pressed on.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, January 29, 2008 at 12:45 PM
As I try to eat healthier this year, instead of drastically changing my diet, I've tried to make familiar standbys more fit-friendly. And almost nothing's more familiar at lunchtime than the ol' chicken salad sandwich. I've taken to this recipe, which I've adapted to my own liking.
In it, plain nonfat yogurt replaces mayo, and plenty of herbs and fruit keep things interesting. Serve it on the bread of your choice, though I like it on a nice rye.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, January 19, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Each Saturday evening we bring you a Sunday Supper recipe. Why on Saturday? So you have time to shop and prepare for tomorrow.
As the name of a recipe, I've loved "Country Captain" since first reading about it I don't know when. It sounds so quaint and of-another-time, leading to speculation about who the original captain was and, stretching it, what he may have looked like—I imagine him as a combination of the Gorton's fisherman and Colonel Sanders.
I was reminded of this dish recently while reading through David Kamp's The United States of Arugula, which gives an interesting history of "the American food revolution." In a footnote, Kamp mentions that "the curry craze may well have been instigated, or at least stoked, by the Associated Press's widely read Cecily Brownstone, who started at AP in 1947 and was most famous for her recipe for Country Captain, a chicken dish served in a curry sauce studded with almonds and currants." The recipe, Kamp says, is thought to have come from Savannah, Georgia, and a nineteenth-century sea captain there who had visited India.
This article about Brownstone and the dish she made famous, however, offers a different origin story—and illustrates just how closely Brownstone presided over the recipe's history and various interpretations:
"Using a breast, can you imagine?" she said in a recent telephone interview. "I don't want to give names—I really don't want to get into that—but can you imagine that someone actually used cream? Cream! And they called it 'Country Captain'! It is very discouraging."
The recipe I'm going to attempt, given in James Beard's American Cookery, is Brownstone's. I'm adapting it here for this week's Sunday Supper.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, January 16, 2008 at 3:15 PM
Yesterday's Cook the Book recipe caused a minor stir because I chose a dish that was, admittedly, not so quick and easy and that used fresh lo mein noodles, which I even have a difficult time sourcing. I'm sorry about that—I should have been a little more thoughtful in my selection. Today's, for Jerk Chicken should do you right, though.
It's from The Culinary Institute of America's Techniques of Healthy Cooking
.
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Posted by Ed Levine, January 12, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Each Saturday evening we bring you a Sunday Supper recipe. Why on Saturday? So you have time to shop and prepare for tomorrow.
I'm a roast chicken freak, so I was immediately drawn to Simon Hopkinson's Roast Chicken and Other Stories
Hopkinson's book has become a surprise best-seller, and why not? The British magazine Waitrose Food Illustrated calls it "the most useful cookbook of all time." Now there's a blurb.
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Posted by Jenn Sit, January 3, 2008 at 1:30 PM
From time to time, I do experience some bouts of healthy eating, but one of the foods I find the hardest to resist is chicken fingers. It was always my poison of choice at KFC and although I try to avoid McDonald’s at all costs, last summer when I surrendered to this fast food fiend, it was for their snack wrap—crispy chicken with jack cheese and ranch sauce in a flour tortilla (so good, yet so very bad). With Ellie Kreiger’s recipe for crispy chicken fingers from The Food You Crave, I can give into my cravings without feeling like I’m selling out to Mickey D’s evil empire. I would make these in a whole wheat wrap or put them in a salad that would rival those secretly unhealthy premium salads that were all the rage at every fast food chain.
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Posted by Blake Royer, December 20, 2007 at 5:00 PM
There was no hope for brevity in titling this recipe—a salad can be made a thousand ways, and rarely is one transcendent or ubiquitous enough to merit its own name. Cobb salad is one; salad Niçoise—the grandfather of composed salads—another. This recipe didn’t land far from either of those trees, an elegant take from Tamasin Day-Lewis’s Good Tempered Food. "Composed" salads, as opposed to the “simple” or tossed variety with lots of leaves (which is what I’m used to calling a salad) are composed of carefully chosen ingredients—usually what’s in season—and are arranged elegantly for everyone to dig in to the varying flavors, textures, and layers. There’s usually a protein around, which makes them filling enough for a low-key light dinner.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, November 30, 2007 at 4:00 PM
Donna Hay’s Off the Shelf looked like exactly what I needed. It is all about using ingredients found in the pantry, which is pretty novel. It’s a beautiful book, too, with enormous color-filled pages. But when I thought about it more carefully, God knows what I’ll find in my pantry at any one time. It’s usually a rag-tag team of various cuisines and never enough of anything to make much of a difference. That’s my fault.
Luckily, this recipe was so simple that the usual pantry items needed to complete the picture were few and not very expensive. I had to invest in some chile paste, mint, and some yogurt. Everything else was, sure enough, in the pantry somewhere. And good thing, too. These simple ingredients work their magic quickly on the chicken, leaving it spicy, creamy, and delicious. Now if I could only find another use for that chile paste.
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Posted by Robyn Lee, November 12, 2007 at 2:15 PM
As promised, here is the first recipe from Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Asian Flavors of Jean-Georges
. He calls his roast chicken with chunky miso sauce and grapefruit recipe, whih combines crème fraîche, miso, yuzu juice, grapefruit and Thai chile, "the quintessential Vong dish, half French and half Asian." If you're not a big fan of chicken, another white meat such as veal or pork may be used instead.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, November 5, 2007 at 4:00 PM
How could this fail? With a bounty of apples, a huge hunk of locally cured bacon, and a nice chicken, I ran across a recipe that used all three in what looked like the perfect way. The chicken would be stuffed with apples and wrapped in pure porky delight. This meal appeared to be in the bag before I even turned on the oven.
But those apples didn’t quite work the magic I had imagined. Instead of infusing the meat, the waterlogged fruit decided to steam the bird, seemingly draining more flavor out of the chicken than if it had just been roasted normally. What a shame. Luckily the bacon saved the day. The pork basted the skin in glorious fat for the duration of the roast, leaving it succulent and full flavored. Ah, the miracles of bacon.
Oh yes, and there really should be three slices of bacon on that bird. I just didn’t have enough self control to wait and take a picture before I picked one guy off.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, November 2, 2007 at 4:45 PM
I’d always been scared of barbecue chicken. It was probably all those memories of dried-out chicken breasts lingering on negligent backyard grills. Why are those so bad? Turns out there is another way. All I did was cover a chicken leg (with all the glorious skin still on) with a chile rub. Then I sautéed it in a little butter on both sides until nicely browned, placed it in a preheated 375°F oven, and then coated it with a thick layer of barbecue sauce. I cooked it until the internal temperature hit about 140°, which is about 10 minutes. It came out juicy and succulent, with the spicy sauce dripping over every bite.
Where did this master sauce come from? The Joy of Cooking. Sure, the ingredient list is mighty long, and it’s probably far from authentic. But it has so much depth and character that you’d expect it to take hours to develop. Yet, this all was created from what was already in my pantry in about five minutes.
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Posted by Ed Levine, October 30, 2007 at 8:45 AM
Many, many years ago, before I even started writing about food, I went to Atlanta on a business trip. I have no idea what the business trip was about, but what I really went to Atlanta to do was taste fried chicken. I went to to the justifiably famous Deacon Burton's, Mary Mac's Team Room, and a new restaurant, the Horseradish Grill, because I had heard that the chef there had learned how to make fried chicken from the legendary Edna Lewis (pictured, right). Deacon Burton's chicken was truly fine, Mary Mac's was merely very good, but the chicken made by Scott Peacock (also pictured), Edna Lewis' protégé, was damn near perfect. It was crisp, greaseless, perfectly seasoned, and had that one-two punch of great dark brown crust and tender, juicy meat that all great fried chickens must have.
When I showed up last weekend at the Southern Foodways seminar, what was in our welcome packet? A copy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's food section from October 18, which was mostly devoted to the joys of making and eating fried chicken. It had recipes from all the places I mentioned and even threw in the late Austin Leslie's Creole Fried Chicken with New Orleans Confetti, another sure-fire Fried Chicken Hall of Fame entrant.
Then, to complete my fried chicken education, I got a chance to hang out with Peacock at the conference, and we talked a lot about his and Ms. Lewis's fried chicken recipe, which he serves at his current Atlanta restaurant, Watershed, on Tuesday nights.
You, however, can make it any night at home because you'll find the recipe after the jump.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, October 2, 2007 at 3:15 PM
Today's Cook the Book recipe is one that the late James Beard, "the dean of American gastronomy," describes as "one of the greatest—and simplest—chicken dishes" that he knew. "The whole process," he wrote, "takes less than 30 minutes, and you have a dish you could serve to the most critical group of food buffs." Coming from Beard, who moved among the most picky food folks of the time, that's a ringing endorsement. All you need to round out the plate is a salad or vegetable and a simple fruit dessert.
As with all the Cook the Book entries this week, this recipe comes from Beard on Food.
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Posted by Nick Kindelsperger, October 1, 2007 at 4:15 PM
I spent all last weekend locked up in a convent (honestly—it was for a marriage prep course). The experience was rather peaceful and not nearly as painful as I had thought it might have been. But the food was awful. While I might have been nurturing my spirit, my body was astonished at the food these nuns were stuffing down on a regular basis. I got weak and dreamed of sneaking out (Apparently, I’m OK with giving up my livelihood and career, but if anyone takes away my food, I get pissed). Even the group snack that we brought, California raisins, were skipped for Oreos and potato chips. We took them back.
The first thing I did when I got back was flip through my stash of cookbooks to find something worth my time to eat that included those little shriveled grapes. I pinned down this recipe from the New York Times Chicken Cookbook—an all-star collection of chicken recipes from the paper’s favorite contributers. This one is from the legendary Craig Claiborne. While it takes about an hour to prep, cook, and bake, it has a relatively short number of ingredients. It’s not nearly as sweet as I had expected, either, being more earthy and complex. I am at peace again.
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Posted by Ed Levine, September 14, 2007 at 7:21 AM
There's a hint of fall in the air, I'm feeling a tad frisky, so I'm finally going to tackle the Zuni Cafe roast chicken recipe. I've had Judy Rodgers' famous roast chicken and bread salad many times at her restaurant, and it is so fine, but I've always been intimidated by the thought of making it at home because, well, the recipe is 4 3/4 pages long in the Zuni Cafe Cookbook. 4 3/4 pages long! It's the Moby Dick of roast chicken recipes.
But I re-read the recipe last night, and realized that half of the 4 3/4 pages are devoted to the bread salad. Well, I just made an executive chef cooking decision to skip making the bread salad and concentrate on the roast chicken, which still takes a full weekend to prepare. As I might need a hug to get through this recipe, I'd like some other Serious Eaters to consider making the Zuni roast chicken as well. That way, we can suffer together, compare notes, and either swoon or cry in unison when we finally get to taste the fruits of our labor. Only when we taste will we know if Rodgers' obviously obsessive method for roasting chicken is worth the Herculean effort it entails.
Here goes.
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Posted by Mario Batali, September 13, 2007 at 4:00 PM
Our Acapulco-born babysitter, Leo, makes some of my favorite things to eat. At Christmas she makes turkey in a dark mole with toasted sesame seeds. In winter, she makes great enchiladas with soft, never-fried tortillas and a braised beef filling with queso fresco. She makes great albondigas (meatballs) with rice and beef or pork. And this week, she took some seasoned pork and made a kind of chili or sloppy joe mix with toasted dried corn that we ate as sandwiches on toasted burger buns.
But of all the things she makes, our favorite is a killer chicken and green sauce that she makes once a week.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, August 23, 2007 at 7:30 PM
The week's earlier Cook the Book recipes have been soups or sides, which is to be expected, considering the book is called Vegetable Harvest. But how about something a little bit heftier for a main dish? This recipe for chicken breasts gives a nod to the garden in that it uses mint. If you're lucky enough to have planned and grown a potager, like the book's author, Patricia Wells, then you've probably got plenty of fresh mint on hand. For the rest of us, this common aromatic herb is easy enough to find.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, August 7, 2007 at 1:45 PM
As Eric Gower says in his book The Breakaway Cook, "this is like pouring a cooked mojito over stewed chicken." The drink's signature ingredients of rum, lime, and mint—along with garlic and other flavorings—mix well with the juice from the chicken. Part of the mojito-like mixture serves first as a marinade for the chicken, while part of it roasts with the meat in the oven, becoming a zesty coating. Serve the finished chicken over rice, along with some lime wedges to squeeze over the plated dish.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, July 31, 2007 at 1:45 PM
The second featured recipe from Cucina del Sole is one that's as simple as it is delicious. The lemon and rosemary give the roasted chicken here a Mediterranean flavor, as is befitting the book's southern Italian theme, and the garlic provides a nice pungent counterpoint to the citrus.
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Posted by Ed Levine, June 5, 2007 at 3:45 PM
I don't even like barbecue chicken, but I like this barbecue chicken. Big Bob Gibson's Hickory-Smoked Chicken is absolutely amazing. I'm eagerly awaiting this weekend's Big Apple Barbecue Block Party, where I hope they'll be making this recipe, which follows after the jump.
And, remember, we're giving away the book that this recipe comes from, Peace, Love, and Barbecue. Enter to win here.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, May 15, 2007 at 5:45 PM
And with the unofficial start of summer just a couple weeks away, I thought this chicken salad recipe might be a good dish to feature for today's Cook the Book, which highlights Michel Richard's Happy in the Kitchen.
Richard recently won a 2007 James Beard Award for Outstanding Chef for his work at Michel Richard Citronelle in Washington, D.C. Happy in the Kitchen itself was nominated for Cookbook of the Year.
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Posted by Ed Levine, May 1, 2007 at 2:30 PM
Like a lot of people my age, the Silver Palate Cookbook became my go-to cookbook when I first started cooking for friends and girlfriends. In fact, the first brunch I ever cooked for my wife featured two recipes from the Silver Palate. Julee Rosso's and Sheila Lukins's recipes are simultaneously sophisticated and down to earth, and—here's the best part—they always work.
Rosso and Lukins are known for their chicken recipes. The Lemon Chicken recipe that follows rocks, and I think it's much better than the duo's Chicken Marbella, which everyone I know who cooks has made at least once in their lives. The crust gets all crunchy and golden brown and is so good you might find yourself picking it off your piece of chicken with your hands.
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Posted by Alaina Browne, April 19, 2007 at 6:15 PM
In honor of National Garlic Day, I'd like to share my favorite for garlic lovers only recipe. 40 gloves of garlic? Yes, 40 cloves of garlic. I know it sounds like a lot, but trust me (and Mr. Beard!) it's just enough. 3 heads of garlic should get you 40 (or more) cloves. Enjoy!
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Posted by SaraBir, September 13, 2006 at 9:53 AM
In honor (or rather acknowledgement) of Fashion Week, here’s a recipe from 1955’s Fashion Cooks, by the Fashion Group of Chicago. It was contributed by Patricia Dougherty Boysen, the past regional director of the Fashion Group of Chicago, and it’s the sort of recipe that never goes out of fashion. I’d omit the teaspoon of “kitchen sauce” (Kitchen Bouquet) from the recipe, on the grounds that these days, few people have such an item in their kitchen. If you brown the chicken sufficiently before baking, it should have a lovely color without the kitchen sauce.
Ingredients
(Serves 6 to 8)
2 young, small fryer chickens, each cut into 6 or 8 pieces
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
½ cup unsalted butter
1 cup dry white wine
2 to 3 tablespoons fresh tarragon leaves, chopped
1 teaspoon kitchen sauce, optional
Procedure
1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Over low heat, melt butter in a heavy skillet, and brown chicken slowly until golden brown, adding more butter if necessary (to avoid crowding the skillet, you may want to do this in two batches).
2. Transfer pieces to a casserole or baking dish, and add wine, tarragon, and kitchen sauce, if using, to the drippings in the skillet. Pour over the top of chicken, cover, and bake 45 to 50 minutes, until the thickest pieces are fork tender.
3. Arrange chicken on a warm serving platter. Skim fat from pan drippings; discard fat, and transfer drippings to a skillet. Over high heat, cook until reduced by at least half. Pour some of the reduced drippings over chicken, and serve the rest on the side. .
Note: Fashion Cooks encourages browning the chicken and placing it in the casserole with the sauce ingredients ahead of time. Cover and chill until baking time. "Pat serves this with a pilaf, a green salad and fruit dessert," the book says.
