Savour Fare » Poultry

Chicken Bouillabaisse (Electric Pressure Cooker Recipe)

Kate — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 13:48:10 +0000

Ordinarily as a Californian, I decry hot weather. “We get plenty of sunshine!” I say. “Bring on the rain and the fire’s cozy glow.” Well, here it is, the end of March, and I realize I am spoiled. This winter was dry as a bone, but with spring has come the rain and the wet and nights in the 30′s. And flu season. Working on my second cold in as many weeks and a single warm maternity cardigan, I cry uncle. I’m ready for our usual spring weather (heck, our usual weather) — 75 degrees and sunny. I want sandals and sundresses and time in the hammock. I have optimistically assembled adirondack chairs and ordered outside rugs for the deck, only to watch them soaking in the rain. (We won’t address the fact that “tired of cold weather” may translate in my bruised and battered psyche to “tired of being pregnant” with May seeming very far away indeed.)

This will probably all come back to bite me this summer when I face yet another triple digit day at home with an active preschooler (almost kindergartener! How did THAT happen?) and a baby who wants to be held all the time (which is, IME, all babies), but right now I could use some sunshine, even if it’s just sunshine on a plate. Eating a springtime salad for dinner when it’s 50 degrees inside your house just seems wrong, but by March I am done with hearty beef stews and warming casseroles. Enter chicken bouillabaisse. Sure, it’s a stew, but one that is lighter, fresher than your typical stew, singing of warmer climes and summer.

Along the Cote D’Azur, pretty much every restaurant offers a version of fish soup. Made with the local catch, it is always served with croutons, rouille (a garlic and saffron mayonnaise), and cheese. I had been craving a good soupe de poissons but not the trip to the fishmonger to get the bones to make the stock and the fish to puree into the soup and .. . well, you get the idea. Chicken bouillabaisse, though less traditional, is infinitely simpler, and offers many of the same flavors. I make mine with fennel, herbes de provence, and, because I had it, a pinch of lavender, all of which are ubiquitous in that part of the world. Served with the requisite croutons, rouille, and cheese, I could almost imagine myself on a terrace covered with rosemary, sipping my chilled rose next to the Mediterranean.

I made the rouille in my mini food processor,adding the olive oil a little at a time. It’s best to make it in advance so the saffron gets a chance to infuse the mixture. I used pasteurized eggs to minimize the risk of food poisoning with le bebe — I would ordinarily take my chances with raw egg yolks, but that’s your call. If you’re short on time or lazy, adding some minced garlic, cayenne and saffron to prepared mayonnaise will also do in a pinch.

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Apple Cider Pulled Chicken Sandwiches with Apple Slaw {Sponsored Post}

Kate — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 10:00:36 +0000

Does anything say “fall” more than apples? One of my favorite rituals when I lived in New England and New York was to hit the apple orchards every September, picking my own apples, sampling different varieties (my favorite was the New York empire apple) and filling my sacks (always multiple sacks) with dozens of sweet, juicy, crunchy apples. The aroma would fill my dorm room or apartment, and I would be supplied with snacks for weeks to come. Sometimes I would turn the apples into an apple cake, or applesauce, or baked apples, but mostly the apples were the perfect snack: sweet and crunchy and portable.
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Pretzel Crusted Chicken Breasts

Kate — Thu, 05 May 2011 22:52:45 +0000

Somehow, chicken has become the default American protein. It’s understandable, I suppose. We’re still a meat and potatoes culture at heart; the day is far away that we will generally wholeheartedly embrace legumes as the fallback. Eggs have too much cholesterol, dairy too much fat. Eating seafood involves navigating a minefield of ethical, environmental and safety issues, with buzzwords like “Mercury”, “Overfishing”, “PcBs”. Plus, a lot of (misguided) people just won’t eat fish, because it’s too … fishy. (Go figure.) Beef has its own issues with the environment and health issues, leading many people to “give up red meat” for unspecified reasons. And they usually lump in lamb, too. Pork is either too fatty or too lean, depending on who you’re talking to. And so we’re left with chicken. Preferably boneless, skinless chicken breasts, the completely inoffensive meat.

All of this is tongue and cheek of course, as I like a varied diet and believe in everything in moderation, but we do find ourselves eating chicken at least once a week, on average. And so I’m always looking for new and tasty ways to prepare what has become, for most of us, a staple. Without resorting to the use of ingredients like grape jelly, pandan extract or fairy dust, the application of “foam”, or freeze drying anything.

This pretzel crusted chicken is a perfect easy, weeknight meal. It’s an adaptation of a dish that I used to eat at the City Bakery in New York, where it was often part of their (excellent and ruinously expensive) salad bar. The ingredients are easy to find (and not ruinously expensive), the preparation is simple. It can be served hot or cold. And the result is just novel enough to break out of those chicken blues.

Recipe: Mustard Baked Chicken with a Pretzel Crust

8 oz. hard pretzels (I used tiny twists)
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup whole-grain mustard
2 T Dijon mustard
2 T water
3 T red wine vinegar
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 large skinless, boneless chicken breast halves, cut in half lengthwise (to make 8 flatter chicken breast filets)

Preheat oven to 400 Degrees. Place a shallow rack over a baking sheet.
Place the pretzels in a gallon ziploc bag and run a rolling pin over them until they’re coarsely crushed but still identifiable as pretzels. Place into a wide, shallow bowl.
Add the mustards, water and vinegar to a bowl and whisk to combine. Whisk in the olive oil until the mixture is homogeneous. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Add the chicken to the mustard mixture and toss to coat. Lay each chicken piece in the crushed pretzels and turn to coat.
Arrange the pretzel coated chicken pieces on the rack set over your baking sheet. Bake 15-20 minutes, or until firm. Slice and serve.

Thai Green Curry, the Authentic Way, and Shopping in Ethnic Markets

Kate — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 21:36:09 +0000

Reason number 453 I love living in Los Angeles: the huge variety of cuisines we have here. Whatever you want to eat — French food, Oaxacan, Tibetan, Filipino, Fusian Korean-Mexican — not only can you find it, but there’s probably a truck that will serve it to you right outside your office building. As an Angeleno and a foodie, eating, and cooking, ethnic food is second nature to me. My weekly shopping usually involves a swing through Koreatown, a stop at the Armenian markets in Glendale, or a visit to the Chinese supermarkets in the San Gabriel Valley. So when it came time to choose a dish for Project Food Blog’s second challenge, Cooking outside your Comfort Zone, I was a bit flummoxed.
I could have tried to discover some cuisine or microregion I hadn’t actually cooked (“Hmm, I’ve never tasted the cuisine of Chad!”), or gone for broad irony (“After a visit from my mother in law, I’ve determined that nothing is more foreign than the cuisine of the Southern United States!”), but in the end I decided to go for an old favorite: Thai Green Curry.

We eat Thai food a lot. We’ve sought out Thai street festivals, upscale Thai restaurants, and neighborhood takeout joints. I, always looking for the next thing, am eager to try a different dish every time — Tom Ka Gai, Larb, Mee Krob. But my husband always orders the same thing: green curry. He’s ordered it in fancy Thai restaurants, Japanese restaurants inexplicably, serving Thai food, takeout lunch buffets, and classic Thai joints in Thai town. He’s probably at least eaten a hundred different versions of green curry in the 12 years I’ve known him. I’ve tried to make it, using the Thai Kitchen curry paste I found in the supermarket and a can of coconut milk, but the flavors weren’t there. I knew if I could make a good, authentic, green curry, my husband would love me forever. (I hope he’ll love me forever anyway, but I figured a good green curry wouldn’t hurt).

And what’s more, this harried cook went way outside her comfort zone in the preparation. Instead of my usual MO, which is all about maximum flavor in minimum steps (and minimal dirty dishes!) I decided to strive for true authenticity, which meant a shopping excursion in North Hollywood, and pounding my homemade curry paste by hand in a granite mortar and pestle, the way a true Thai cook would do it. After perusing several recipes on the internet, I decided to go for this one by the lovely Pim Te. First, Pim actually IS Thai, which helps, I think (I’m looking at YOU, Bobby Flay), second, she says everyone else is doing it wrong (which in my mind, is always a market for true authenticity), and third, she lives in a major metropolitan area in California, which means we’re likely to have access to similar grocery items.

The shopping part was fun. I used to avoid ethnic markets because I was always afraid of buying the wrong thing, but after a few years of discovery, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve. The Savour Fare Guide to Shopping in Ethnic Markets is as follows:

Know what your ingredients look like. At the market I went to, turmeric root (which I didn’t need) and galangal (which I did), were right next to each other, both unlabeled. They’re both rhizomes (similar to fresh ginger), commonly used in Thai cooking. Fortunately, I had looked at a few pictures of what I was looking for, so I was able to correctly use galangal.

Read ingredient lists. Not everything is identified in English, or identified with the name you’re looking for, but US labeling laws means ingredients are listed in English. I was able to find kapi, or shrimp paste, by picking up a few likely jars and reading the ingredient lists (shrimp, salt, sugar)

Be flexible. Even at a huge and well-stocked market, you’re likely to have a few duds. I couldn’t find Kaffir Limes anywhere. I bought some kaffir lime leaves, figured it would add some of the flavor, even if it wasn’t totally authentic, and moved on.

Be adventurous. Most ethnic markets have a wide selection of prepared foods. I always try to pick up something new, even if I can’t identify it. On this trip that led me to some delicious buns filled with pandan custard.

I got my ingredients home, and proceeded to make my curry paste. Which involved chopping all the ingredients into tiny pieces (which took FOREVER, and I even got the Nuni to help me peel all the garlic), then pounding them individually in my granite mortar and pestle (mine is actually a granite molcajete, which is slightly different than the traditional Thai krok). The pounding also took forever, and required frequent breaks — those pestles are heavy! I followed Pim’s advice on pounding order and also discovered a few tips on my own. First, while you’re pounding, move the bulk of your paste to the sides of your mortar before adding a small amount of the unpounded ingredients — get those pulverized, then incorporate them into the paste. Second, when they say pound, they mean pound. A mortar and pestle is often used with a circular motion rubbing the ingredients against the sides, but I found for this, particularly for the fibrous ingredients like lemongrass and galangal, an up and down pounding motion worked best. Pounding is supposed to be better than a food processor because it releases the essential oils of the ingredients, and I could tell that the paste was incredibly moist, even from the dry ingredients like lemongrass. There was also something very soothing about the rhythmic pounding, and seeing the heavy pestle do so much damage.

Once the paste was made, I went on to make the curry. Having experienced first hand the number of chilies in the dish, I was expecting the final product to be unbearably spicy, and I was tempted to only use some of the paste, but I trusted Pim. The final product was spicy, yes, but enough to make it exciting, not inedible. The incredible texture of the curry paste made the dish substantial and far less soupy than the Thai Kitchen version. And the flavors? Hot, sour, salty and sweet are the four cornerstones of Thai cooking, and this dish had all of them in spades.

As for the husband, I fed him the curry and eagerly awaited his verdict. He said “I think you should quit your job and make this every day.” I guess that means he liked it.

Am I going to be making hand-pounded curry paste again? If I have a lot of free time and aggression to get out. Or if I want to be a really really good wife.
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Chicken Curry

Kate — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 12:27:38 +0000

I grew up in the kitchen. From a tender age, I watched my mother cook dinner every night, and began “helping”, by stirring a sauce here, adding a pinch of herbs there. But soon I began branching out on my own. I have a very clear memory of pulling the kitchen chair over to the counter so I could make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which is a staple for any kid. As I got older and I was allowed to do crazy things like use a knife or turn on the stove, my preparations got more elaborate (grilled cheese!). And then there was the night I actually cooked dinner for my entire family. And this is what I made.

Chicken curry. Not an authentic, subcontinental masala, but a simple, 1960′s version of the classic, cribbed from my dad’s old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. The recipe calls for chicken that has been previously cooked, so not only is it another great use for leftover roast chicken, it also is a great recipe for an adolescent me to cook without running the risk of poisoning my family with undercooked chicken. The rest of the ingredient list includes pretty standard and nonthreatening pantry ingredients — apples, onions, butter, flour, milk, chicken broth, and curry powder (I always use Sun brand Madras curry powder, which is the same kind my mom kept around when she was growing up).
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California Pizza Kitchen Barbecue Chicken Chopped Salad

Kate — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:48:23 +0000

Back in the day when I lived in New York, I was more than a little homesick. I pined and yearned for my home state of California, and pounced on everything I could find that reminded me of home. I wore flipflops at the very first sign of spring in the city (and narrowly avoided frostbite in the process), I saw the movie Sideways 3 times in the theaters, and bought the DVD when it was released; I traveled all the way to TENTH AVENUE to find a tiny taqueria in the back of a bodega that sold real tacos; I listened to the Beach Boys on repeat. So you can imagine how happy I was when the last apartment we lived in in Manhattan was right next door to a California Pizza Kitchen (it also had a balcony, which means my poor husband was sent outside to grill in 50 degree weather. He was happy when we finally moved to California because I immediately started wearing black and wanting to see foreign films in a desperate cling to my New York days). Now I realize that California Pizza Kitchen is about as truly Californian as Red Lobster is truly a restaurant of Maine, but I was desperate.

And the truth is, I kind of liked their food. Sure, peanut butter is not my FAVORITE topping on pizza, and some of those combinations were just weird, but the barbecue chicken chopped salad was quite tasty and quickly became my go to order.

And then I moved to L.A., and I could get REAL Mexican food, and if I want fancy pizza I could go to Spago, where it all began. And California Pizza Kitchen was no longer convenient, and when you actually live in California, it’s probably not something you’re going to go out of your way to visit. So no more CPK for me.

But I missed that chicken salad. Salty, crunchy, a little sweet, with the tang of barbecue sauce and the mellowness of ranch dressing. I WANTED that chicken salad. So I decided to make my own.
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How to Roast a Chicken, the Zuni Cafe Way

Kate — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 20:54:56 +0000

I was roasting a chicken the other night, and I realized that I’ve never posted a roast chicken recipe on my blog, which I really should. It’s my go to Sunday night supper, one we have at least once or twice a month. It’s elegant enough for company dinner, but simple and casual enough for a kitchen supper (if you had an eat in kitchen, which we don’t. Say it’s casual enough to eat while curled up on a couch, with a glass of $4/bottle Tempranillo and a DVD of Mamma Mia. Don’t judge.) It appeals to kids, picky eaters, those who don’t eat red meat. It doesn’t require fancy ingredients. And it creates wonderful leftovers which can be repurposed into all sorts of great things — chicken salads, chicken curry, and chicken stock (more on all of those, later). In short, roast chicken might just be the perfect meal. And as such, it’s my duty to share a recipe with you.

I’ve tried many different roast chicken recipes — Martha Stewart’s Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic, Thomas Keller’s Roast chicken (which, incidentally is almost identical to my family roast chicken recipe, which was given to us by the Moroccan cook at my godmother’s in-laws’ villa on the Cote D’Azur), and the standard rub with butter and roast at 350 until it’s done recipes, but I always come back to this one, which I found in Judy Rodger’s marvellous Zuni Cafe Cookbook (incidentally, this is one cookbook I think every serious cook should own. The techniques are amazing, the recipes flawless, and the dishes wonderful). Judy Rodgers has converted me to dry brining — sprinkling the chicken with salt well before you want to cook it — which yields a tender and juicy chicken with a crisp, salty skin that is seasoned all the way to the bone. Dry brining can yield great results in any meat (even the Thanksgiving turkey), but a dry brined chicken is a thing of beauty and should be in everyone’s repertoire.
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Maple Mustard Chicken with Goat Cheese and Arugula

Kate — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 02:30:09 +0000

The summer after I graduated from college, I took off for Europe. I wasn’t living the bohemian life with a backpack and a Eurail pass (Quel horreur!), I was traveling with my parents and about 30 college juniors on a summer program for my mom’s university. The downside of this plan was that I spent three weeks in a hotel room with my parents in what may be the most boring down on the French Riviera. The upside was that we got to take a leisurely coach ride (OK, it was a bus, but coach sounds much more romantic with its regency overtones) from Paris, through Southwestern France, and into Provence. We visited Chateaux in the Loire Valley, peered over the defensive walls in Carcassonne and tasted wine in the caves of Bordeaux. But the experience that really stuck in my mind was the day we visited the goat farm. We drove up through bucolic pastures into a fenced yard which held any number of baby goats, and then we were ushered to a small restaurant where we ate a five course lunch featuring goat cheese. There was goat cheese quiche and goat cheese flan, and aged cheeses with fruit. But the dish that I loved the best and that I still remember, many years later, was a goat cheese salad with honey. The sweetness of the honey perfectly balanced the pungency of the cheese, and the vinaigrette on the salad added a lovely acid note.

It was that dish that I had in mind when I created this maple mustard chicken with goat cheese. I’m always looking for new things to do with chicken, which seems to be the ubiquitous protein, and to add some flavor to chicken breasts. In this dish, Chicken breasts are pounded thin, and then marinated in a sweet vinaigrette of maple syrup, mustard and lemon juice. They’re then spread with good fresh goat cheese and some arugula (which adds a lovely nutty taste) and then baked.
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In the Rotation – Chicken Sausage with White Beans and Sage

Kate — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 06:32:45 +0000

When you’re cooking dinner for your family every night, it’s easy to get into a rut and/or run out of ideas (yes, even if you’re a food blogger. I often panic when I sit down to make my weekly grocery list, then I start by looking through cookbooks and websites for ideas, which turns to procrastinating by looking through Facebook and CNN, which oddly enough do not provide many meal planning ideas, before I give up and make the things we had last week because hey, we liked them then.) The point is, when I see something that looks like it might become a regular in my family dinner plan, the heavens open up and choruses of angels sing Hallelujahs. Hey, inspiration is a glorious thing.

And that is why, when I saw this rather unassuming dish on Peanut Butter and Jargon via Tastespotting (which seems like it should be an excellent source for meal planning but usually leaves me craving melted cheese, gooey desserts and cocktails. Not that I’m complaining) I jumped on it. It contained all sorts of things I like in a meal – it’s reasonably healthy, easy to prepare and made from simple fresh ingredients. I love a good casserole but I so rarely see ones that aren’t dripping with cheese or cream of something soup, and this one — made with onions, white beans and chicken sausage and topped with breadcrumbs — was like a breath of fresh air.
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A Turkey You’ll Want to Gobble — Dry Brined Roast Turkey

Kate — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:10:37 +0000

Hosting Thanksgiving dinner can be awfully anxiety producing. First, there’s the worry about seating logistics – is your table big enough for your number of guests? Do you have enough chairs? (Here’s a tip — don’t seat anyone who has graduated from high school at the kid’s table). Then there’s the anxiety about what to serve — Uncle Jim insists on green bean casserole but Cousin Imogen hates mushrooms. Your husband always had mashed potatoes when he was growing up, your brother prefers roasted potatoes and your great aunt Cassie (who isn’t really your aunt but everyone calls her aunt anyway because she went to summer camp with your grandfather’s sister) thinks potatoes have no place on the table, only parsnips. But nothing creates as much anxiety as the traditional centerpiece of the Thanksgiving table: the turkey.

When I was a kid, nobody really liked turkey. I remember many Thanksgivings of tasteless Butterball birds, on the dry side, that you politely took a slice of before digging into the stuffing. When I started hosting my own Thanksgiving dinners, I, armed with this newfangled thing called the internet, set out to make a delicious, juicy turkey that would be a pleasure to eat — a true centerpiece. I read all of the literature — I tried flipping the bird halfway through cooking (have you ever tried flipping a hot turkey? No fun), Tenting it with foil (the bird was very juicy — so juicy it fell apart in the oven and couldn’t be carved), lathering it with butter (great, crispy skin, but the meat was still decidely blah) and finally the current conventional wisdom, a wet brine, which involves immersing the turkey in a salt water bath for a few days prior to roasting, assuming that the water will seep deep into the turkey’s core. The wet brining was quite a daunting proposition — finding a tub big enough to hold a turkey and the brine, finding a place to put it in the refrigerator (because you don’t want to leave a turkey brining at room temperature), and then roasting it only to discover that the turkey was juicy and flavorful, but the brine really cured the turkey, giving it a slightly watery texture and a flavor closer to ham than the roast turkey of my dreams.

Luckily for you all, though, I have discovered the secret to flavorful, juicy and EASY turkey, and it doesn’t require an industrial walk in refrigerator — the dry brine. I learned about the dry brine from Judy Rodgers in the fantastic Zuni Cafe Cookbook. A dry brine — which involves salting the meat well in advance of cooking, which first draws the juices out of the turkey due to osmosis, then draws the seasoned juices back in — is the secret to my favorite roast chicken recipe, served at the Zuni Cafe in San Francisco. I reasoned — if the method delivers a delicious, juicy, flavorful roast chicken, then why shouldn’t it work on turkey?
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