the SIMMER blog

the perfection of roast chicken

It may not have snowed much in our part of New York this year, but there have been some pretty darn cold days -- and nights. And on those cold nights, there's nothing I crave as much as a simple roast chicken. Piping hot, makes the house smell nice, and while it's at its best when I plan ahead and do a one-day brine and one-day let-dry-in-the-fridge, it's also great if I just oil it up, pop it in the oven, and wait.

Sides can be anything you want -- I'm fond of green beans slow-cooked with bacon, McHenry-style -- but a sweet potato cooked either in or out of the pan is a great choice, and you'll see here a mashed-up melange of potato and celery root also has its place.

The best thing about roast chicken is how it makes the house smell. The second best thing? Leftovers.

 

(Cooked down the picked-over chicken bones to make stock, added soy and hot sauce and noodles and scallions and whatnot, seasoned with ginger and garlic and star anise. Don't eat the star anise.)

under the weather

Been a little quiet here lately, for which I apologize -- trying to get out from under a bad cold. I hate this kind of sickness, where my head is just cloudy enough to sllllow everythinnnnng dowwwwwn. Blech.

But the good news is, I'd already put a chicken in brine for Saturday night's dinner before my health took a turn for the worse, so that roast chicken gave us not only a full meal for Saturday night and snacks on Sunday, but enough homemade stock and shredded meat for a Monday lunch of spicy, rich, savory, sinus-clearing chicken noodle soup.

 

Recipe-like list of stuff for two large servings:

• 3 cups of chicken stock
• half a package of rice noodles (I like a very noodle-y soup)
• 1 cooked chicken breast, shredded
• 3 scallions, sliced
• 1 clove garlic, sliced
• 1 tsp powdered ginger
• a few splashes of soy sauce
• a little lemon juice
• a big glob of sambal oelek (or sriracha, or Tabasco, or something else for HEAT)
• 1 star anise (don't forget to remove before eating)

Ah. Yes. Breathe in the steam. Slurp up the noodles. Don't leave any of the broth. And get some rest!

 

chicken scarpariello

Time for some more healthy cooking experiments!

So as fairly devout watchers of "Best Thing I Ever Ate", we here Chez Simmer were excited to see a new crop of episodes start appearing on the DVR back in June. And on one hand, you can sort of see how they're starting to stretch themselves thin, but on the other hand, there really are always new places out there, and the nicest thing about being a home cook is that you don't even necessarily have to travel to be inspired by the show. You can take inspiration from what they're doing, and bring it into your own kitchen.

So is this the chicken scarpariello that Anne Burrell raved about having at Rao's in Vegas? Not really. But is there now a chicken scarpariello we rave about having here at home? There sure is.

 
Seriously, I've made it about four times now, and unfortunately I didn't document every little step, so you're left with these pictures of one of the iterations, which was not the absolute final version we loved.

 
But it gives you the basic idea. Now, if you want the official Rao's version, you can find the recipe here, which involves bone-in chicken and a pretty large batch size.

What we ended up with in the final supertasty iteration:

• surprisingly, boneless skinless chicken breasts cut into cubes instead of larger skin-on bone-in chicken pieces. Yes, the bone imparts some flavor, but it means a longer cooking time, less flavor penetration into the meat, and a much messier eating experience. Plus that whole health thing. And as long as the liquid isn't allowed to boil too vehemently, the white meat stayed decently tender.
• regular sweet red peppers were $6.99 a pound at the store. Cubanelle peppers (mild, pale green) were $2.99. I bought cubanelles. They rocked.
• cut up the cherry peppers instead of leaving them whole.
• keep the liquid minimal, and go heavy on the brine.
• actually, add extra brine at the end.
• and then let it sit in the fridge an extra day. Seriously.

The sour tang of the cherry pepper brine really gives this a neat flavor profile, especially when it has that extra day to soak in. As you can tell, I thought serving it with quinoa and green beans was a fine idea, although it was also good served in a deep bowl as more of a stew.

Best thing I ever ate? Maybe not. Best chicken scarpariello I ever ate? Darn tootin'. 

italian chicken meatballs

So, about that new leaf thing.

It's going well. And with a few iterations, a few experiments, it's amazing how quickly a just-okay dish becomes a real victory. Plus, with a few practice runs, I get faster and faster, so my weeknight repertoire expands to embrace things I might have previously considered too time-consuming or fussy.

Like, let's say, meatballs.

I love meatballs. The tiny little lamb meatballs I make as tapas, especially. And the more traditional kind, beef with breadcrumbs, that cook for hours in a Sunday gravy. But for health reasons and speed reasons, ground chicken is on hand more often than not, so that's what I've been experimenting with. And I've gotten it down to a science.

 
No binders, no breadcrumbs, no egg, no nothing. Just ground chicken mixed with a very generous helping of seasonings -- a mix of dried Italian herbs like basil and oregano, plus sriracha, garlic powder, black pepper, Worchestershire sauce, and red pepper flakes. And I mix it by hand right in the container it came in (take that padded lining thingy out first) and then pinch and roll the meatballs and drop them directly into the hot pan, working quickly enough that by the time the last meatball is in, it's time to turn over the first one.

chiles en nogada: the sauce

So I'm putting the sauce third in this set of three steps -- chiles, filling, sauce -- although, truth be told, they could be done in any order. And you want the sauce to sit in the fridge for a bit, although I didn't follow the recipe exactly and serve chilled sauce over warm stuffed chiles. I brought the sauce to room temp before serving.

Anyway. Getting ahead of myself. The point is, I have found a kitchen task that makes all other previously tedious kitchen tasks -- peeling fava beans! supreming clementines! -- look like a walk in the proverbial park.

Peeling walnuts. No, not shelling. Peeling.

 
Yeah, yeah, there are still bits of skin left here and there, but if you realize that it took me an HOUR to even get this far -- on a mere cup of nuts -- you might see the futility of going for 100%.

Here's what my setup looked like:

chiles en nogada: the filling

Here we are with step 2 of the chiles en nogada story: the filling. If I were going super-authentic it would be a picadillo (see the recipe I posted yesterday), but I made some edits, so "filling" is plenty appropriate.

One of our dinner guests for this meal eats chicken and fish but not beef or pork, so I went with shredded chicken thighs as the meat. Braise in a couple inches of water, remove, cool, shred, chop. (And the liquid left behind is basically chicken stock, so save that for another use.)

 

Then I mixed the meat with an oddly eclectic assortment of ingredients: onion, garlic, cinnamon, cloves, tomatoes, a pear, an apple, cranberries, and -- hold onto your hats for this one -- dried kiwi.

 
(I had the kiwi on hand anyway, believe it or not, and since the original recipe called for candied cactus, I thought it was about as close as I was going to get. Hey, at least it's green.)

That's it for the filling. Stuff into the peppers, and then you're ready for the sauce.

Oh, the sauce.

We'll talk about that tomorrow.

chiles en nogada: the beginning, and the chiles

So, I'm really white. The food of my people is Anglo-American-Eastern European food: casseroles, Cornish meat pasties, potato-and-cheese pierogi. The food of my childhood is solid American midwestern fare: Salisbury steak, ground beef spaghetti sauce, shepherd's pie. But the food I love is more exotic, with different flavors from around the world, and I end up getting excited about other people's food, and it leads to things like this molé-making class at Astor, and the resultant need to make Mexican food at home, although I am clearly about as non-Mexican as they come.

So I set out to make Mexican for a dinner party. And then I decided to make chiles en nogada, which is right up there with molés as super-authentic and complicated Mexican food (plus, and yes I noticed this, it wasn't even part of the class that I took that was my excuse for why I needed to make Mexican in the first place.)

But they are SO pretty. Finished picture first, so you can see where it's all headed:

 

Red, white, and green, which are not only the colors of the Mexican flag, but also pretty Christmas-y, so I thought it was a good season to make them. Plus, you really need pomegranate seeds, and the dead of winter is a good time to find pomegranates.

Pomegranates, like beets, are full of red stuff that wants to stain the bejeezus out of you. But there's an easy trick: fill a bowl with water, cut the pomegranate in half, and then hold the fruit underwater while you pull the seeds out of it. The seeds sink to the bottom, the white inedible pithy stuff floats to the top, and you don't get any red stuff on your clothes, your hands, or your wall. You just get these beautiful little jewels, fuss-free:

 
 

So. Chiles en nogada. The chiles in this case are poblanos, the big dark green ones, which you roast, peel, split, seed, and stuff. Nogada is a creamy walnut sauce. 

Of course I started my search for a good chiles en nogada recipe in the traditional way: I asked Twitter.

 

weeknight chicken and broccoli

Some nights are big wild crazy kitchen extravaganza nights.

Most nights are not.

Some nights you just look into the fridge and see what you've got, and remember all those calories you packed away eating earlier in the week -- the lamb burger at the Breslin, too many curries at Tabla -- and you say, well, broccoli and chicken tenders will do the job.

But even chicken and broccoli, when properly attended to, can be lovely. 

 
Broccoli just roasted in the usual way, somewhere around 425, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt -- on a baking sheet lined with foil for easy cleanup, by the way.

Chicken tenders, yes, are among the most boring ingredients available, but this method of preparation was such a success I'll certainly be doing it again: pound lightly until flat, sprinkle with salt and let rest 20 minutes or so, then dredge lightly in flour seasoned with cayenne, smoked paprika, and black pepper, and fry in a small amount of canola oil until lightly browned on both sides.

(Lightly, lightly, lightly: you see a pattern here?)

 
Washed down with one of our favorite wines, an Esprit de Beaucastel Blanc from Tablas Creek.

Not bad for a weeknight. Not bad at all, really.

 

wholly molés at the astor center

I promised you this post some time ago, and here it finally is: another great cooking class experience at the Astor Center, this one led by Chef Ori, and all about the making of molé.

 

If you think of molé at all -- do you? -- you probably think of the long-simmered dark brown one, with chiles and chocolate. We made that.

 

But we also made a lot more. Check out this spread!

 

With dried chiles and fresh ones, with tomatillos and pumpkin seeds and almonds and tomatoes and...

 

make vs. buy: ground chicken

So, longtime blog readers may remember that time I made crackers. In the end, the verdict was this: you may be better off, all told, just buying the damn things. The make vs. buy decision can apply to anything -- clothes, quilts, corporate acquisitions -- though of course, here on the blog, it applies most to food.

With this in mind, I did a little experiment. We're trying to be healthy around here. And in general, that means finding new favorites -- like Mark Bittman's recipe for pork in curry-mustard sauce -- and not just trying to de-calorie old standards.

We eat a lot of Indian-spiced chicken burgers. Like, a lot lot.

Ground chicken is a little hard to work with compared to ground turkey, because it's softer. It's also not quite as healthy. But: it's also a lot more moist, which makes it more delicious. Like ground turkey, it is sold in those tiny rectangular packages which seem to have a reasonable price until you realize you're not even getting a pound.

What's a budget-minded chicken-burger-craver to do? Grind your own, of course.

(warning to vegetarian readers: great big meat close-ups after the jump)