Mustard Milanese

The Smitten Kitchen cookbook arrived in the mail a few weeks ago. Really good cookbooks present a problem for me, because once I get them I get so excited about everything that I can’t just choose a recipe and make it. Instead I declare that I want a four-course meal of everything in the book and then realize that even I can’t juggle that many burners at once. So I waffle about which recipe to make until 10PM and then it’s too late for proper dinner so we have plain pasta.

The SK cookbook is a really good cookbook. I try not to make too much fried food, but any recipe with mustard in it is completely irresistible to me, so out came the frying pan and oil. Then a week later, we made it again. It’s that good.

Ingredients (serves 2, adapted from the Smitten Kitchen cookbook)

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast (about 3/4 lb)

1/3 cup flour

3/4 cup bread crumbs

1 egg white

2 T mustard

salt and white pepper to taste

vegetable oil for frying

Directions

Place the chicken breast between two layers of saran wrap.

Fold a kitchen towel over the chicken.

Hulk out. No, really, just lay into it with a rolling pin or other blunt object that isn’t likely to break. You want smashed chicken breast no more than 1/4 inch thick.

Pour some oil into a frying pan and set it over medium-high heat. Mix the mustard, egg white, salt, and pepper in a dish and ready dishes for the flour and bread crumbs as well.

Dredge in flour, then mustard mixture, then bread crumbs. Fry about 3 minutes on the first side.

Fry another 2-3 minutes on the second side.

Serve with a salad with an extra-tart vinaigrette.

A bit of lemon juice at the end does improve this, but isn’t necessary if you always seem to be out of lemons. It also goes well with roasted artichokes and couscous.

 

Chicken Liver Pate

So, odds are if you’re reading this you have at least one holiday party or New Year’s Eve party to go to. If you’re lucky, this means small, intimate dinner parties with family or friends, the kind where everyone brings a dessert or a bottle of something in spite of the host’s protests that there’s already too much food. It’s the end of the year, and we’re all breaking out recipes that we’d never make without the holiday excuse, because they’re fancy or time consuming or expensive to make.

Pâté is neither time-consuming nor expensive, but jaws will drop every single time you tell anyone you made it at home. It can be added unobtrusively to the appetizers present at most parties, or you can keep it to yourself and use it to round out a simple lunch of a cheese plate and salad.

Ingredients (makes about 3 cups, which is more than anyone needs)

about 1 1/4 pounds chicken livers

2 T butter

2 cloves garlic

1/2 cup wine or brandy

1/4 cup whipping cream

2 T apricot jam

1/2 t salt

1/4 t white pepper

mustard seeds to taste

Directions

Melt butter over medium-high heat.

Mince or press garlic and cook until translucent.

Add the chicken livers. Cook briefly–not more than 2-3 minutes per side.

You still want to see some pink when you chop the livers with your spatula.

Scoop the livers into the bowl of a food processor or blender.

Clean your pan and add the wine or brandy to it.

Bring to a boil and reduce the liquid by about 1/2. It is okay to estimate this.

Add the reduced wine, whipping cream, salt, spices, and jam to the bowl of the food processor.

Puree until smooth and creamy. This takes about 1 minute.

Scoop into ramekins or old mustard jars or whatever dish you plan to serve it out of.

It needs to chill before serving. Once it is cool, pour enough clarified butter to cover the surface over the top and return to the refrigerator. This serves the dual purpose of adding delicious fat and keeping the pâté from drying or discoloring.

Serve with salad, crackers, crudités, fruit, or a cheese plate.

Watch everyone marvel at your culinary genius, even though you and I both know it wasn’t hard at all.

Curried Chicken and Potatoes

I seem to have developed an addiction to garam masala. It’s good in curries, on cooked greens, even sprinkled over popcorn. The fact that I’d never even tried Indian food until a few months ago seems to be no deterrent at all to now trying a new Indian recipe every week or two. It’s delightful; how did I go almost twenty-seven years without tasting the cuisine of an entire sub-continent?

Last week Mr. B and I were both sick, in need of comfort food, but also in the mood for something new and different. A curry of chicken and potatoes, spooned over warm naan, fit the bill perfectly.

I adapted this recipe rather heavily from e-curry (a blog I can’t seem to stop reading), replacing tomato sauce with one made from carrots among other things.

Ingredients (serves 4)

For the marinade:

6 T Greek yogurt

3 T lime juice

1 T turmeric

1 T chile powder (less if you don’t want it too hot. Hatch pepper is pretty mild, though)

1 t mustard powder

1 t salt

1- 1 1/2 pounds chicken thighs or breasts

For the curry:

3 T vegetable or olive oil

1 potato

2 t garam masala

1 t turmeric

1 t salt

marinated chicken

1/2 cup carrot sauce (substitute tomato sauce if you like)

2-3 hot chiles

1 T brown sugar

2 cups chicken broth

1/4 cup lime juice

1 cup peas (optional)

Directions

Combine all marinade ingredients (except the chicken) in a zip top bag.

Mush them together and add the chicken. Marinate at least an hour. Overnight is better.

Cut the potato into large chunks (about 12). Heat the 3 T oil in a large pot over medium-high heat and add the potatoes.

Sprinkle the potatoes with turmeric and garam masala and salt.

Crank the heat down to medium-low and add the chicken and its marinade.

Add the carrot sauce* (or tomato, if using)

Add the broth and stir well. Split the chiles lengthwise and add them as well.

Stir in the brown sugar.

Cover the pot and lower the heat to a bare simmer. Let it cook for 15-20 minutes.

Remove the lid and Stir in the lime juice. Cook an additional 5-10 minutes until the sauce is the desired consistency. Add peas directly if you like. Mr. B does not care for peas  so I cooked them separately and stirred them into my portion.

Serve with warm naan or over rice.

This is good, hot, just-spicy-enough comfort food. For a little more kick, add a few dried pequin peppers before simmering, or a dash of very hot sauce.

* I’ve made carrot sauce here before, but (1) frankly I’m embarrassed at how this blog used to look (not that it’s all that much better now…) and (2) that sauce is bay-leaved and parmesaned and otherwise Italian influenced, so here’s a more basic straight-up carrot sauce.

Ingredients (makes 2 cups)

1 lb carrots, peeled and chopped

2 T olive oil or butter

2 t salt

2 cups chicken broth, vegetable broth, or water

1/2 cup white wine

Directions

Heat the oil or butter in a pot over medium-high heat and add the carrots. Sprinkle with salt and cook, tossing occasionally, until the carrots caramelize.

Add the broth or water an simmer, covered, about 15 minutes

Remove the lid and add the wine.

Continue cooking to reduce the liquid by about half.

Turn the now-soft carrots and liquid into a sauce using an immersion blender, a blender, a food processor, or a potato ricer and patience.

Add any flavors you like, serve over pasta or use to replace tomato sauce in any recipe.

Butter Chicken (sort of)

For years I’ve scoffed whenever someone described meat with the term “melt-in-your-mouth”. It’s meat, people. It’s tough and resistant and you have to tear it apart with your teeth like a predator. That’s even part of the appeal!

This chicken? It melts in your mouth. Like butter. It just dissolves, like popcorn in a glass of milk.  A yogurt marinade followed by a long, slow simmer apparently causes some sort of chemical witchery (that’s a technical term, folks) to occur. It is completely amazing.

Now, all that said, butter chicken is apparently supposed to have tomatoes in it. Even the few recipes I found without tomatoes had almonds, which I have no objection to but don’t usually keep in the house.  To call this recipe a departure from the norm is therefore perhaps too charitable.

I don’t care. It’s one of the best new things I’ve made in years.

This recipe is adapted from the Bollywood Cookbook, which is generally just a charming read, for recipes and otherwise.

Ingredients (serves ~2)

For the marinade:

1 1/4 cups Greek yogurt

1 T garam masala

1-2 t chile flakes

1-2 t ginger

2 t salt (I used a chipotle-lime salt, because why not?)

1/2 to 1 lb chicken, cut into bite-sized pieces

For cooking:

2 cups chicken broth

garlic, to taste

juice of 1 lime

3 T turmeric

1 T garam masala

2 T butter

4 T cream or yogurt

Directions

Combine the marinade ingredients (except the chicken) in a zip-top bag and knead it  to mix.

Add the chicken to the bag.

Knead again to evenly coat the chicken. Marinate for at least 4 hours or overnight.

When ready to cook, melt 2 T of butter in a skillet over medium heat. Cast-iron is my preference, but not necessary.

Brown the butter. You don’t have to, but it’s oh so good.

Add the chicken, reserving the marinade for later.

Brown the chicken.

Sprinkle the chicken with the turmeric, lime juice, and garam masala.

Add the chicken broth and garlic. Once the mixture comes to a boil, turn the heat down to a bare simmer and let it cook, covered, for 30 minutes.

Add the reserved marinade and stir.

Add the remaining 2 T butter, allow it to melt, and stir again. Cook another 5 minutes before serving.

Serve with naan and saag paneer.

Words do not do this dish justice.

Teriyaki Chicken

I am the person you’re embarrassed to be seen with in a sushi restaurant. See, I don’t eat shellfish, the idea of cold fish wrapped in seaweed makes me gag, and I’m not even a fan of sake. So when we go out for Japanese food, I have teriyaki or tempura and Mr. B tries to pretend he doesn’t know me while he orders eight types of fish I can’t even recognize on sight.

Chicken, on the other hand, has a wider appeal. This chicken is perfect, with orange and soy and even a bit of sake to round out the sauce.

Ingredients (serves 2)

3/4 lb chicken parts

flour, for dredging

2-3 T oil for frying

3 T soy sauce

3 T sake

Juice of 1/2 of an orange (Satsuma or Clementine, not Navel)

1 T sugar

1 head of broccoli

Directions

Dredge the chicken pieces in flour.

Cook in heated oil in a wok for 1-2 minutes a side.

Set the chicken aside and drain the oil. Combine the soy sauce, sake, sugar, and orange juice in the wok. Stir to dissolve the sugar and heat over medium heat.

Add the chicken and flip to coat once the sauce begins to simmer.

Cut the broccoli into florets and toss in with the chicken.

Cover for about 5 minutes to steam the broccoli.

Toss everything in the sauce one last time before serving. Serve with rice and fried lotus root.

This is incredibly quick to make; even when juggling three hot pots and pans and a camera, everything was finished and plated in fifteen minutes. I like the addition of orange to the sauce, because our favorite Japanese restaurant adds a whole orange on the side of their teriyaki and the best bites are the ones the orange has oozed into. It’s tangy and delicious.

Artichoke Pesto

Pesto has been in short supply in our apartment this summer, since the heat has so thoroughly stunted the growth of basil that we haven’t been able to save up enough for a pesto. I kept looking back at the pea pesto  posted on Smitten Kitchen back in June, but Mr. B hates peas. He hates them like a four-year-old boy, making faces and stomping his feet if I even talk about putting peas in something he has to eat, too.

We both love artichokes, though. And if pureed artichokes can be used to fill pierogis, I couldn’t see why they wouldn’t make a perfectly good pesto.

I was right. It’s creamy and rich, but still fresh and light as a pesto should be.

Ingredients (serves 2)

8 oz frozen artichoke hearts, thawed

1/4 pound asparagus

1/2 cup grated parmesan

1-2 cloves garlic

2 T lemon juice

1/4 cup olive oil, plus a few teaspoons for cooking the vegetables

salt and pepper to taste

6 oz. dry pasta

2 chicken breasts

a few basil leaves

2 T butter, oil, or schmaltz

Directions

Heat a splash of olive oil and the 2 T of lemon juice over high heat.

Add the artichokes.

Sauté the artichokes until they are well browned.

Set aside the artichokes and add the asparagus to the pan.

Sauté the asparagus as well. Also the garlic, if your garlic has not been stolen by a squirrel.

Put the artichokes, asparagus, and garlic into the bowl of a food processor. Add the olive oil.

Process until it forms a smooth paste.

Add the parmesan, salt, and pepper and process it again.

Set the pesto aside. Heat some oil or butter or schmaltz over medium-high heat in a grill pan.

Add the chicken and some basil leaves to the pan.

Cook the chicken 4-5 minutes a side until it’s fully cooked through.

Remove the chicken from the heat and chop the chicken into bite-sized pieces.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta.

Drain the pasta and top it with the pesto.

Stir in the pesto.

Divide the pasta among your plates and top with the basil chicken.

Serve immediately. The pesto might be easier to stir into the pasta if you thin it out with a bit of pasta water, but I never remember to reserve any and it was delightful without alteration. We had a bit of pesto leftover and spread it over some toasted French bread for lunch the next day. If you like artichokes, this pesto is a must.

 

 

Guiness Marinated Cornish Hen

This may be the best way to cook a chicken that I have ever encountered. I tend to say that about every type of Cornish hen I make, but this time I mean it. It’s tender. It’s dark. It’s smoky. All the bitterness of Guinness and mustard and molasses come together to turn the meat into something more decadent than I could possibly have guessed. And you won’t believe how easy it was to make.

One of the more delightful things about Cornish hens is the fact that they’re small. This means they don’t take as long to cook. This means you have to almost try to overcook the little things to end up with tough breast meat. So while this recipe would surely work for a nice big butterflied fryer if you cooked it longer, I urge you to stick with wee little hens. You’ll thank me when you pick up a drumstick and the meat slides right off of it onto your plate.

Ingredients (serves 1 per half-hen)

One and a half Cornish hens, bisected (or one hen to serve two, or two hens to serve four.)

1 bottle Guinness extra stout, or your favorite stout. Don’t use Guinness draught. I’ll know, and I won’t be pleased.

3 T mustard powder

3 T olive oil

1 T salt

2 T molasses

3 cloves garlic

Directions

Pour the beer in a bag. I like to prop a gallon zip-top bag up inside of my 2-quart soufflé dish so that it can’t fall over and cover the counter, the floor, and the corvid with marinade.

Scoop in the mustard powder.

Lots and lots of mustard powder.

Then the olive oil.

Then molasses. No, I didn’t actually measure the molasses. It’s too sticky.

Now we need some salt. I didn’t measure that, either, because there’s no such thing as too much salt.

Then garlic. I always seem to be out of fresh garlic, and the ones we planted were uprooted and carried off by a maniacal squirrel, so we’re using dried today. Fresh is better.

That’s your finished marinade. Seal it up and shake/squish it until everything is fully mixed.

Put the hens inside and pop the whole bag in the fridge for a few hours or (better) overnight. Flip the bag over a few times to keep the marinade even.

When ready to cook, heat the oven to 425°F. Arrange the hens skin side up in a cast iron pan big enough to fit them without crowding. Pour the marinade over them and sprinkle the skin with a bit of salt.

Bake 30-35 minutes at 425°F.

Serve with colcannon and asparagus.

Sorry about that last picture. My camera battery died before I could take more than one. The chicken is delightful. I agree with our lovely dinner guest that the only necessary improvement would be a chicken made only of the crispy skin (so good!), but this was delightful. I mean absolutely and purely fantastic. Make this soon, you won’t regret it.

Greek Cornish Hens

The easier it is for me to get food on the table, the happier I am. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s worth it to slowly stir risotto until it’s just right, and I render my own duck fat, which is more than a little time consuming. But also simple–I can bring whatever I’m reading into the kitchen and stir with one eye on the pan.

Roast chicken is even easier. You don’t even have to be in the kitchen while it cooks. That translates to the ability to try new flavors with impunity. Olives. Artichoke. Orange. When you cut a Cornish hen in half (and I always do before cooking one) and lay it over anything, from potatoes and garlic to curried greens, the flesh absorbs the flavor and the chicken juices drip all over the other stuff. And of course there’s the obvious advantage of cooking your vegetables in the same pan as your meat–only one pan to clean, and no racing around the kitchen making sure all the components are going to be ready at the same time.

Ingredients (serves 2)

1 Cornish hen

1 T olive oil

scallions and basil to taste (or whatever herbs you want.)

20 (ish) kalamata olives

8 oz frozen artichoke hearts, thawed

1  orange

1 cup white wine

Directions 

Preheat the oven to 450°F. Cut the hen in half and remove the spine. Chop the herbs you’re using, and rub them, along with some olive oil and salt, under the skin of the hens.

Slice the orange and quarter the slices. Cut each olive in half. Arrange the oranges, olives, and artichoke hearts in the bottom of a cast-iron pan or oven-proof dish.

Place the hens, skin side up, on top of the mixture and pour the wine over everything.

I had a couple of extra slices of orange, so I slapped them on top of the chicken. Pop the pan in the oven for about 30 minutes, and you’re done! If I hadn’t been running late I would have turned on the broiler for about 5 minutes to brown up the skin, but otherwise this was perfect. The wine and juices of the pan fruits/vegetable soaked up into the meat and made it incredibly tender. The orange slices on top actually became crunchy, and crunchy blackened orange skin is now something I want to grind up with some salt, because it’s delightful (Yes, I ate a slightly burned orange peel. Are you trying to tell me that’s weird?) I spooned the artichoke hearts and olives onto toasted slices of ciabatta, far healthier than buttering bread and even more delicious. In other words, this is a perfect meal for a lazy day. Or a day when you’re going to work the evening shift and want a nice hot lunch first. Either way. Perfect. I’ll be making this again soon.

 

 

Chicken Francese

The first time I made this was a revelation. Fried chicken. Velvety coating. Rich, creamy, alcoholic sauce. I describe myself (less jokingly than is healthy) as a carbivore. I usually can’t handle more than four ounces of meat but can eat a whole baguette in one sitting.  Ladies and gentlemen, The first time I made this I chose to forgo my side of bread in order to eat more chicken.  Mr. B’s jaw just about hit the floor.

This is crazy easy to make. Messy, but fast and easy. You can dress it up with grilled asparagus and toasted french rounds, or down with biscuits and steamed veg, or anything in between.

This is one of those not-so-kosher deals where I eat poultry with milk because chickens’ mamas do not produce milk, so there. But you could substitute some schmaltz for the butter and skip the Parmesan and it’d all be good.

Ingredients (serves two, easily doubled)

For the fried chicken:

1 pound chicken breast meat

1 egg, beaten

1/4 cup grated Parmesan mixed with 1/2 cup flour

3/4 cup bread crumbs

vegetable oil for frying

For the sauce:

2 T butter (or schmaltz)

2 T flour

1/2 cup white wine

juice of 1/2 of a lemon (about 1 1/2 T)

3/4 cup chicken broth

salt and pepper to taste

capers (optional, but awesome)

Directions 

Heat a layer of vegetable oil over medium-high heat in a nice big sauce pan. Dredge strips of chicken breast in flour mixture, then dip them in egg goo, then dredge that mess in bread crumbs. Your fingers, as well as the chicken, will be well-breaded for frying.

Fry chicken about three minutes a side. Wash your fingers. They would probably smell delicious frying, but you wouldn’t like it. Unless you’re very masochistic, in which case it still isn’t a good idea. Plop  the chicken on a bed of paper towels to rest while you clean the frying pan for the sauce.

Heat the pan over medium high again, and we’ll start with a roux. A lot of things start that way, and they tend to be delicious. Melt butter (or schmaltz) and whisk in flour.

Add the wine and lemon juice and stir just until the consistency is uniform.

Add the chicken broth and bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat to simmer. Add the fried chicken and cook gently for about 2 minutes a side. This soaks into the breading, which makes it not soggy but velvet-soft and intensely flavorful.

Top with a small handful of capers if you have them on hand. Serve with anything you like. I’ve had it on a bed of angel hair, which nicely soaks up the excess sauce, with asparagus soufflé, with a small Caesar salad; it really works with almost anything.

Chicken Enchiladas and Refried Beans

As promised, an easy weeknight dinner for leftover chicken. Although I recommend using poached pulled chicken, any leftover chicken can be pulled or chopped and used in this. If you’re not a fan of mixing chicken and cheese (or are a vegetarian), the refried beans I make as a side dish are a great topping instead. Just substitute some beans wherever I use chicken.

I don’t make rolled enchiladas like most people. I make them flat and crunchy, almost like a sandwich, because the first place I had enchiladas was Maria’s in Santa Fe (wow, their website is terrible), and I don’t like change. I like the crunch that these have, and not needing to use a pound of Velveeta cheese substitute to drown all the other flavors in them. And those flavors are simple: sharp cheese (I used cheddar, but a pepper jack would be lovely), sweet corn tortillas, tender flavorful chicken, sweet and burning chile, cool soothing sour cream. That’s it. You could top them with lettuce and/or tomato for a bit of extra crunch and the benefits of vegetables, but I don’t think it really needs it.

Ingredients (makes 4 enchiladas, serves about 2. Which is weird, because in the restaurant I can only eat one. Oh well.)

1/2 pound pulled or chopped cooked chicken

4 ounces shredded cheese

8 corn tortillas

1-2 T vegetable oil, for frying tortillas

Sour cream to serve

New Mexican red chile (or chile or salsa of your choice) to serve

Directions

Heat the oil in a small skillet over high heat and fry the tortillas, one at a time, until crispy.

Heat the oven to 350°F  and arrange half the crispy tortillas on a cookie sheet. Top each tortilla with a handful of pulled chicken and a big pinch of shredded cheese.

Top that with another tortilla and a bit more cheese, and pop the whole lot in the oven for five to seven minutes to get the cheese molten and delicious. I like to serve these with tortilla chips (yes, chips on the side of my tortilla-based meal. What?) topped with refried black beans, which are insanely easy to make.

Ingredients

1 can of plain black or pinto beans, drained

2 T butter

1 oz grated cheese, plus more to garnish

Directions

Drain the beans, then mash them. There is an easy way and a hard way to do this. The easy way is to pulse them in the food processor for about 20 seconds. The hard way is to smash them in the cooking pot with the back of a spoon. Since I actually like having some whole or only partly mashed beans in mine, and I didn’t want to wash all five parts of the food processor, I went with the spoon.

Add the beans and butter to a small saucepan and heat over high to melt the butter. Reduce the heat to low and stir the butter in.

Add the shredded cheese and mix that in as it melts. Scoop the mixture onto a pile of tortilla chips and serve alongside enchiladas or any other New Mexican dish.

Top with a dollop of sour cream and a splash of chile. It’s simple. It’s fast. It’s appreciated by Mr. B, and crunchy and delicious for me!