Showing posts with label CHICKEN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CHICKEN. Show all posts

Makes 4 servings

I taste France in every bite of this dish. The chicken, which roasts
undisturbed in a covered pot, is moist and fragrant, having picked up the
aromas of its pot-mates: lemon and herbs, carrots, shallots and garlic, which
cooks to beyond golden and just about melts in the process. The chicken
doesn’t get crispy and dark — it’s not that kind of dish — but it gets deeply
flavorful. And then it gets even more flavor when you pop out some of those
garlic cloves and use them and the pan drippings to make a sharp vinaigrette
to drizzle over both the meat and a green salad. It’s an all-in-one meal, the
kind you used to be able to find in classic bistros throughout France and
now mostly find only in the homes of cooks with a taste for simple goodness.
The success of the dish doesn’t depend on technique — you put a chicken
in a pot and don’t open the oven until it’s done — but on the quality of the
bird. The best choice for this is, not surprisingly, an organic, free-range
chicken. Be generous with the herbs and don’t be disturbed when you lift the
lid and discover that some of your vegetables have charred — it’s all in the
service of making a terrific vinaigrette, since you’ll be using the pan
drippings to replace the usual oil in a vinaigrette. I like to add a drizzle of
walnut oil to the mix — it’s a background flavor to be sure, but it adds depth
and another touch of Frenchness.

For the chicken
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 carrot, scrubbed, trimmed and sliced into 1-inch-thick rounds
1 shallot, sliced, rinsed and patted dry
4 sprigs fresh thyme
4 sprigs fresh rosemary
4 sprigs fresh sage
2 bay leaves
Fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1 chicken, about 4 pounds (1¾ kg), patted dry
½ lemon
1 head garlic, cut horizontally in half
¾ cup (180 ml) white wine

For the vinaigrette
About ½ cup (120 ml) water
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard (preferably French)
3 tablespoons sherry vinegar
Fine sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1 teaspoon walnut oil
Mixed salad greens (3 to 4 handfuls), for serving
Fleur de sel or flake salt, such as Maldon, for serving

TO M A K E T H E C H I C K E N : Center a rack in the oven and preheat it to 450
degrees F.
Put 2½ tablespoons of the olive oil in a 5-quart Dutch oven. Toss in the
carrot, shallot, 2 sprigs each of the thyme, rosemary and sage and 1 of the bay
leaves. Season with salt and pepper. Rub the chicken with the remaining ½
tablespoon oil, season inside and out with salt and pepper and stuff with 2
sprigs each of the herbs and the remaining bay leaf.
Put the chicken in the pot. Squeeze over the juice from the half lemon and
pop the lemon inside the chicken. Tie the legs together with kitchen twine, if
you have it. Put one half of the garlic head, cut side down, on either side of
the chicken and pour in the wine. Cover the pot, slide it into the oven and set
the timer for 90 minutes.
When the buzzer rings, pull the pot from the oven and very carefully lift
off the lid — lift it away from you to avoid the steam. The chicken may not be
browned, so if you want some color, you can place it on a foil-lined baking
sheet and run it under the broiler. (Reserve the contents of the pot.)
Transfer the chicken to a platter, cover it loosely with a foil tent and let it
rest while you make the vinaigrette.
TO M A K E T H E V I N A I G R E T T E : Pour off all but 6 tablespoons of the pan
drippings from the pot. (If your drippings have mostly cooked away, gotten
dark or actually burned, all’s not lost — they’ll still make a good vinaigrette
after you loosen everything with the water.) Discard the vegetables, herb
sprigs and bay leaf, but hold on to the garlic. Pour the water into the pot,
place over medium heat and cook, scraping, until you’ve picked up all the
good bits (and flavor) that were stuck — add a little more water, if needed. If
you the sauce is too chunky, strain.
Squeeze 6 to 8 of the softened garlic cloves into a small bowl and mash
them into a paste with a fork or spoon. Whisk in the mustard and vinegar
and season with salt and pepper. Whisking gently, slowing pour in the
reserved pan drippings and the walnut oil. Taste the vinaigrette and decide
if you want more salt and/or pepper, or if you’d like to add more of any of the
other ingredients.
Carve the chicken and drizzle over a little of the vinaigrette. Lightly dress
the salad greens with some of the vinaigrette. Serve the salad alongside, over
or under the chicken, passing the remaining vinaigrette and flake salt for
extra seasoning at the table.

S TO R I N G : Leftover chicken can be kept tightly covered in the refrigerator
for up to 4 days; the vinaigrette will keep in a covered jar equally long.
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Makes 6 servings

Tagines (ta-jheens) — stews — are best known and most treasured in North
Africa. A little French, a little African, a little Middle Eastern, they are
recognized for their slightly sweet spices, their heady aromas, their
versatility — they can be based on meat, fish, fowl or vegetables — and the
fact that they are traditionally cooked in a pot that carries their name. A
tagine is a wide, shallow, round vessel, often made of flameproof pottery,
with a cover that looks like a chimney pot or a dunce cap. It’s tall and swoops
up into a point, and its purpose is to trap every droplet of steam and to send
it back down into the stew. But if you don’t have a tagine, you can use a
Dutch oven.
This particular tagine, combining chicken, slow-cooked onions and
chunks of acorn squash, comes more from my imagination and what I have
in the pantry than it does from heritage, but the lead seasoning, ras el
hanout, originated in Morocco, deep in the heart of tagine country. Ras el
hanout translates from the Arabic as “head of the shop,” suggesting that it is
blended from the best spices. As with garam masala, which has the same
soft-spice sensibility, and which can be substituted, there are many spices in
ras el hanout — and I’d doubt any mixture is the same as any other — but
you’ll be able to pick out some by scent: cumin and cloves, for sure, and often
allspice, cardamom, ginger, chiles and peppers.

About ¼ cup (60 ml) olive oil, or more if needed
2 large onions, halved, thinly sliced, rinsed and patted dry
2 tablespoons water
Fine sea salt
12 chicken pieces, preferably skin-on, bone-in thighs and drumsticks, patted dry
Freshly ground pepper
1 small acorn squash, scrubbed
2 tablespoons ras el hanout (see headnote) or (see garam masala)
1 tablespoon honey
1½ teaspoons ground sumac or finely grated zest of 1 large lemon
2 wide strips lemon zest (if using sumac)
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 cups (480 ml) chicken broth
Juice of 1 large lemon (optional)

Pour 2 tablespoons of the oil into a large tagine or a Dutch oven and warm
over medium heat. Add the onions, stirring to coat them with oil, then stir in
the water and season with salt. Cover the pot, reduce the heat to low and
cook, stirring now and then, until they are very soft but haven’t colored,
about 30 minutes. This long, gentle cooking brings out their flavor.
Meanwhile, brown the chicken: Working in a large skillet, preferably
nonstick, over medium heat, warm the remaining 2 tablespoons oil. Add the
chicken pieces — do this in batches if it looks like cooking them all at once
will crowd the pan, adding more oil if needed — and cook until golden brown
on all sides, about 4 minutes per side. Transfer the chicken to a large plate
and season with salt and pepper.
Trim the squash, halve it from top to bottom and scoop out and discard
the seeds and strings (or clean the seeds and save to roast). Cut the squash
into 8 wedges and then, depending on the length of the wedges, cut each into
2 or 3 pieces. You want the pieces to be chunks that are easy to eat.
Remove the cover of the tagine or Dutch oven, increase the heat to
medium and season the onions with pepper. Stir in the ras el hanout or
garam masala, honey, sumac or grated zest, strips of lemon zest (if using
sumac), turmeric, 1 teaspoon salt and the cayenne. Stir to blend the spices
evenly into the onions and then pour in the broth. Arrange the chicken
pieces skin side up in the pot (discard any liquid that accumulated on the
plate) and fit the squash among the chicken pieces — don’t worry if the
liquid doesn’t cover the chicken and squash; everything will still cook evenly
and be moist.
Bring the liquid to a boil, then lower the heat, cover the pot and simmer
gently but steadily for about 45 minutes, until the chicken is fall-off-thebone
soft and the squash is fork-tender. If you can, resist the urge to peek
while the tagine is simmering — you want to keep all the aromatic steam in
the pot and around the chicken.
Taste for salt and pepper and, if you’d like, add a squeeze of lemon juice.
The liquid in the pot will be thin (like jus) but full of flavor. If you cooked
this in a tagine, bring the pot to the table; if you used a Dutch oven, transfer
the chicken, onions and squash to a large serving platter or bowl, spoon over
the jus and serve.

S TO R I N G : You can keep the tagine covered overnight in the refrigerator and
reheat it the next day, but nothing beats having this dish freshly made.

C H O I C E S : On weekdays, I serve the tagine with plain couscous. When I’ve
got more time — or when I’ve got guests — I add chickpeas and sometimes
toasted sliced almonds to the couscous and make a sprinkle-overeverything
mix of chopped cilantro and parsley, grated lemon zest and a
little finely chopped ginger. Think North African gremolata.
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Makes 4 servings

I had my favorite kind of problem with this recipe — I couldn’t decide
whether to make it with chicken or pork, since it was so good with both. The
dish is a simple sauté-then-braise affair and the sauce is a simple chili and
soy mixture. Together, they make something so good and so versatile that
the only right thing to do is to pull the recipe out regularly.
Whether made with chicken or pork (see recipe for the tenderloin
version), the dish is weeknight-easy, but it’s also the kind of recipe that you
could happily serve for a party — double it, if you’d like, and make a pile of
rice to keep it company. It’s not fancy; it’s just what everyone wants.

2 tablespoons canola or other neutral oil, or as needed
1 medium onion, finely chopped, rinsed and patted dry
1½ to 3 teaspoons minced peeled fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves, germ removed (see sidebar) and minced
Fine sea salt
¼ cup (60 ml) white wine
8 chicken thighs, with or without skin and/or bones, patted dry
Freshly ground pepper
½ cup (120 ml) (see Thai sweet chili sauce)
⅓ cup (80 ml) soy sauce
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard (preferably French)
1 to 1½ teaspoons Sriracha (to taste)
Sliced scallions and crushed red pepper flakes, for serving (optional)

Warm 1 tablespoon of the oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the
onion, ginger and garlic, season lightly with salt and cook, stirring, until they
soften a bit and are translucent but not browned, about 5 minutes.
Add the white wine, increase the heat and cook, stirring, until most of the
wine evaporates, about 2 minutes. Again, don’t color the onions and friends.
Transfer the ingredients to a bowl.
Return the pot to medium heat and add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil.
Place the thighs in the pot and brown on all sides, adding more oil if
necessary. (If the thighs will be crowded, do them in two batches.) Pour off
and discard the oil. If you’ve got burned bits stuck on the bottom of the pot,
remove the chicken and scrub the pot, then return the chicken to it. Return
the onion mixture to the pot, along with any juices that accumulated, add
the chili sauce, soy sauce, mustard and Sriracha and stir to blend. Season
lightly with salt and pepper and clap the lid on the pot.
Turn the heat down to low and cook the chicken, basting occasionally, for
30 minutes, or until it is opaque in the center; an instant-read thermometer
inserted into the thickest part of a thigh should register 165 degrees F.
Transfer the chicken to a serving platter (or don’t — serving from the pot
is just fine) and spoon over some of the sauce. Sprinkle with scallions and
pepper flakes, if you’d like. Pass the rest of the sauce at the table.

S TO R I N G : Leftovers can be kept in a tightly covered container in the fridge
for up to 3 days.

SWEET CHILI PORK TENDERLOIN

For 6 servings, use 2 pork tenderloins (each about 1½ pounds/567 grams);
pat them dry. Brown them as above and then cook over low heat as above for
35 to 40 minutes, until the meat measures 145 degrees F at its thickest part.
With pork, it’s always best to test by temperature rather than color — the
meat may or may not still be rosy when it reaches the right temperature.
When the tenderloins are cooked, transfer them to a cutting board and let
them rest for 5 minutes before slicing and serving with the sauce.

SWEET CHILI CHICKEN THIGHS

by on 06:44
Makes 4 servings I had my favorite kind of problem with this recipe — I couldn’t decide whether to make it with chicken or pork, since it wa...
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