Deconstruction of a Chicken

Chicken tomato stew tonight (chicken, tomatoes, onion, mushroom, peppercorns, bay and spices to taste; cook all day on high so the bones really soften and release everything they can). Tomorrow's lunchtime leftovers will be the last of the chicken. So a four pound chicken works out to the following:

Initial dinner for 2
2 chicken and rice lunches
Chicken pizza for 2
1 chicken and rice lunch and 1 chicken skin lunch
Chicken stew dinner for 2
Chicken stew lunch for 2

I looked at the $17 price tag on the chicken and thought "yowzers." But the bird has given us the main course for 12 meals. Not bad. Arigatou, chicken-chan.

Chicken-Basil Pizza

Felt like something good and easy, so a nice gluten-free basil-chicken pizza. As an aside, the basil was frozen from last year's harvest. As Basil Fawlty would say to Mr. Hutchinson in The Hotel Inspectors, "it was fresh when it was frozen!"

Instructions for this one: Make or use a crust. I was lazy and used a gluten-free brown rice crust. Dice and combine 4 mushrooms, 3 large garlic cloves, 2 oz basil leaves, 1/2 onion, 1/2 md tomato. Spread tomato sauce on the readied crust. Shake over dill, oregano, thyme, parsley or other dried herbs to taste. Generously coat with crushed red pepper. Distribute the mixed veggies over. Grate 2-3 oz cheddar over. Grate 2 oz Locatelli over that. Dice chicken and press into the cheese. Bake at 450F for 12 min or until everything is cooked and bubbly but not burned. Serve hot.

Eating notes: Again, arigatou Mechazawa-san. This is the first chicken pizza I've ever had that I liked. The strong basil and garlic flavors also helped. A nice use for leftover chicken.

Mind-blowing Ur Chicken

Intended to make some sort of fancy pressed grilled chicken. But after making 4 batches of cat food and doing a goodly number of weekend chores, decided to be lazy. Remembered something I'd seen in my cruisings (and unfortunately can't remember enough to credit the source of) where they talked about oven-roasting a chicken over a pan of potatoes so the potatoes would be continously basting in the chicken juices and fat. I decided why not try this with Mechazawa-san (the large Egg). Now I don't know if I ever can go back.

Instructions: Take a whole chicken (mine was just over 4 lbs.). Cut up some root veggies (I used a medium-sized russet potato plus 2 md carrots). Put the chicken on a vertical roaster in a pan and lightly coat it with ghee or butter. Place root vegetables around it (see first post picture). Preheat the egg to a very healthy 375F or so (I pushed it up to 500F and then closed it back down). Put the pan on the grill and let the grill die down so it settles in the low 300F's and roast for 2-1/2 hours or so. If you're not yet ready to eat, just close the Egg off at that point and it will stay warm. Serve.

Eating notes: Wow. We each had a drumstick and a wing (See picture above). The bones came off easily but the chicken was still outrageously juicy (arigatou, Mechazawa-san!). The skin was crispy but still had fat attached. The vegetables were really crispy-crunchy-carmelized on the outside and had soaked up tons of chicken fat and juices, while they retained a carrot/potato flavor. It will be hard to entice me to cook a chicken any other way. Ever.

Stuffed Chicken without Preconceptions

Preconceptions first. Chicken that isn't "fully" cooked is bad. People who serve chicken that isn't so cooked are bad.
Recipe:
(Serves 2)
1 boneless skinless chicken breast (3/4 lb or so)
2T pecan meal
2T parmesan
scattering of marinated mushrooms
1 to 2 oz soft cheddar (I used a stout cheddar) sliced thin
salt and pepper to taste
2 oz sour cream
1/4 c dry white wine
3 - 4 thin slices prosciutto
2T ghee
4 oz frozen cooked zuchhini or summer squash
Instructions: Take one chicken boneless, skinless chicken breast (see picture immediately above) and pound it thin (see picture immediately below).
Mix sour cream, wine, and salt and pepper to taste until smooth.Sprinkle pecan meal over. Dot with mushrooms. Slice cheese and arrange (see next pic). Put grated cheese over. Put prosciutto over. Fold in half, so that if there is a stray "limb" of meat it is folded inside (see pic below).
Heat ghee in heavy pan until very hot. Saute folded chicken 4 min on each side. Plate.

Updated because I forgot about the zucchini!: Add the zucchini to the pan and saute until cooked, about 4 min. Plate zucchini around chicken.

Pour cream and spice mixture into pan and deglaze/reduce until of a nice sauce consistency. Pour over and serve (see first pic).

Eating notes: Phil was not at all amazed that rare poultry is ok and, in fact, good. For me it was a revelation. The poultry was moist and not at all gummy. It clearly was rare meat, but I didn't feel the need to snatch up the plates and rush back to the microwave. I need to think on this some more.

Curried Chicken Gizzards

Tonight I wanted to use up the zippy bag of chicken gizzards. Searched around a bit and finally found a Sri Lankan recipe that sounded interesting at this site. Adapted it a bit as follows.

Recipe:
(serves 2, with sauce left over; mis en place shown above)

1 lb chicken gizzards
1.5 T ground coriander
1T ground cumin
1/4 c ghee or other fat for frying
1 md onion (I used half an half red and white)
5 cloves garlic
1T fresh ginger
2t paprika
2t cayenne
1t ground turmeric
1/4 c tomato paste
3/4t salt (mix with tomato paste)

Wash and clean the gizzards and cut into their natural parts.

Finely chop the onion, garlic and ginger

Measure out the other ingredients.

In a small dry heavy pan, stir the ground coriander over low heat for a few minutes until it turns a farily dark brown and is giving out a pretty strong (but not burning) smell. Dump it into the mis en place bowl holding your other dry spices. Do the same thing with the cumin.

Heat the oil in a large heavy pan. When hot, add onion, garlic an ginger and saute unti the onions are soft and start turning golden brown.

Add dry spices (except salt).Cook, sitrring to mix, 1 min, then add tomato paste and salt and stir well. Pic above shows it at that point.Add gizzards and stir until well coated (as shown right above). Add water to cover and simmer 1 hour. Serve hot.

Cooking Notes: There is a lot of sauce per unit solids. The recipe says to mix it in over rice, but I decided to save it as a pasta sauce for tomorrow instead.

Eating Notes: Definitely not "meat" in the muscle meat sense. We both really liked it, but it's not the kind of thing you can pass off on people pretending it's little bits of steak or whatnot. Phil liked it better than liver and on par with non-liver organs. I was just pretty happy.
As the picture above shows, it was plated with a dense yogurt. I used the plain, whole fat yogurt from Three Greek Gods, which is my favorite main dish yogurt. This is a good foil to any spicy European/African dish.

Courtney's Rule of 4 Liver and Green Beans

Tonight I had a pound of chicken livers to dispose of. Also, some good green beans I was in the mood for. Went through a bunch of recipes and absolutely nothing appealed, so made something up myself I don't mind taking credit for. First post shows the finished dish. Pic above shows the main ingredients - liver, beans, and some onion.

Recipe:
Courtney's Rule of 4 Liver and Green Beans
(Serves 4)

1 lb liver (I used chicken; any would be ok I think)
12 oz fresh green beans
1/2 c chopped onion
1/4 c cranberry liqueur or port
1/2 t dijon or other sharp mustard
1/2 t Worcestershire sauce (I used Lee and Perrins)
1/4 c sour cream (please use full fat)
Salt and pepper to taste
2T fat for frying (I used a combination of lard and lamb heart fat)

Trim the stem ends off the beans and cut into thirds. Blanch by steaming 4 minutes, then rinse in cold water to stop the cooking.

If using chicken livers, in half along the natural divide. If using other livers, cut into approx. 1/3" slices/cubes/pieces/whatever. Heat the fat until melted. Pic below shows the amount of lamb heart trimmings I used, which I supplemented with lard to make about 2T fat total.
Saute the livers for 4 minutes and remove from the pan. Picture above shows the livers after cooking.

Add the onions and the blanched green beans and saute 4 min. Add liqueur/port and stir to deglaze; add mustard, Worcestershire, sour cream and salt and pepper, stir the livers back in, and blend well. Serve hot.

Eating Notes: Another ZOMG. With menneh!11! The beans were cooked but crispy. The sharp/sweet taste of the cranberry liqueur was a perfect foil to the chicken livers, and the livers themselves were just gently cooked and really nice. We only could eat about half, so Mr. Bento gets to enjoy them for lunch tomorrow; we'll see if they also make great leftovers.

Chicken Hearts Tartare

Lots of discussion over tonight's offal offerings. Chicken Hearts Tartare, thanks in large part to Hunter Angler Gardener's recipe for wild duck hearts tartare. I'm not a hunter, I'm one of those inept people who get fed by hunters. But I recognize that and appreciate and applaud (and crave the results of) their efforts.That said, I thought, well, are chickens all that much different from wonderful wild fowl brought down in their prime? Yah, ok, I answered that question. So I re-adjusted my expectations and said, I have chicken hearts. What can I do with them?
Answer: Chicken Hearts Tartare

Recipe:
Serves 2 (can be doubled)

1 lb chicken hearts
2 garlic cloves
1 1/4" slice onion
1 radish
2 garlic-stuffed olives
4 t small capers
2 t lemon juice
dash lemon oil
1 t olive oil + to fry in + to drizzle
1/4 t mint bitters
1/4 t Tabasco
1/2 t dried tarragon
salt and pepper to taste
romaine lettuce leaves for service

Trim off the tops of the hearts with the fat and valves coming off. Clean out overtly coagulated blood, but no need to be obsessive about it. First picture (after the one of kitchen goddess Nadja with her tithe) shows the bag of hearts; the second shows the hearts after I've trimmed off the offending parts. There probably is something I could do with those, but I couldn't think what...

Mince the hearts into a bowl. I used a meat grinder, and then I minced what was left in the grinder by hand. You also could easily do the whole job by hand using a chef's knife.
Mince the onion, olives, and radish. Combine lemon juice, lemon oil, mint bitters and 1t olive oil. Picture shows the mint bitters, oil and lemon juice/oil, plus the capers and minced onion, radish, and olives. Stir the minced bits and the capers into the heart. Chill if needed (should be a bit cool). Gently stir in the juice, oil and mint bitters. Add the Tabasco and tarragon and salt and pepper and gently mix.

Finely slice the garlic. Saute in a generous amount of olive oil until toasted. Drain on paper towels.

Spread a couple of romaine lettuce leaves on each plate. Spoon the heart mixture over. Make a slight indentation and drizzle 1t olive oil over each serving. Sprinkle the toasted garlic bits over. Serve and sigh.

Eating Notes:

Another success. Use the leaves as a wrapper to pick up the heart tartare and resort to the fork only after you've run out of greenery.
If you had told me I'd ever take a bunch of raw chicken hearts, shove them through a meat grinder, mix them with a bunch of stuff and eat them just like that, I'd have said you were nuts. But here it was and it was really good. More tender than the best steak tartare I have ever had. Fortunately, nobody wants this stuff. Otherwise, how would I have been able to convert basically the heart output of a small slaughter into one really good dinner for two?

Chicken with cumin and chili

This is a modification of a recipe from somewhere. I can’t attribute it because I have neither a clue where the original came from nor what it was called. Quantities are highly variable because I have nothing written down and I use what I have on hand outside of the core ingredients of chicken, Jarlsberg cheese, sour cream and cumin. Ok, that’s pretty much the basic recipe, but it is easily modified to change other flavor notes.

1 1/2 lb Chicken, breast or boneless thighs
1-1 1/2'ish C sour
1/2 lb’ish Jarlsberg cheese
1 – 4 oz can green chili
1-2 Serrano chili
1/2 C flour
Cumin
Salt and pepper
2 T some oil

Cube chicken into 1-1/2 inch chunks. Grate cheese. Mince chilies. Mix four and 1 T cumin and salt/pepper to taste for dredging chicken. Heat oil in pan for a quick sear of chicken. Dredge chicken chunks in flour mix and add to pan in non-overlapping single layer, will need to do this in batches. Brown chick on and remove to platter. Don’t cook to death or dry it out.

When done with chicken, toss chilies into pan and cook over low hear for a minute or so. Add sour cream, start with 1 cup, and gently warm. Add cheese and mix until melted. Add extra sour cream to create desired consistency. I add extra cumin if desired (I do.) Add chicken and any juices back to pan and gently warm. Serve with rice.

Serves 4

Chicken and broccoli semi-fail

Tonight my intention was to make a modified version of Lane's rosemary chicken and some broccoli casserole of some sort. Aaaahhhh, best laid plans. When I went to start smoking the chicken, it was still partially frozen, so stuffing under the skin was out of the question. Therefore, the chicken is just Chicken slow smoked (under 275F at all times) for four hours a la Mechazawa, which is of course fabulous in its own rights.

I tried again (and semi-failed again) with the broccoli. I sort of made up a recipe from an amalgam of things that didn't involve cheese (which I didn't want, because I already was having meat). I swapped out rice flour for the wheat flour. I was hoping for a souffle, but as you can see in the picture, I sort of got a custard. I'm going to give the recipe, because it was fluffy and really good, so even if it doesn't turn into a souffle it's worth the effort. Hopefully I'll take advantage of my own notes at the end to make it superlative the next time.

Broccoli Souffle - or Custard
Serves 4

12 oz fresh broccoli
4 eggs
1/4 c fat (I used butter)
1/4 c flour (I used rice)
1/4 t salt
1/4 t pepper
1/4 t cayenne
1 c milk
2 t lemon juice
1/8 t nutmeg
1/4 t cream of tartar

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a souffle dish with whatever fat you're using to make the roux.

Steam the broccoli for 12 minutes or until done. (see note below)

Separate the eggs. Whip the egg whites until soft peaks form. Beat the egg yolks until well blended.

In a large saucepan, heat the butter. When it is just beginning to bubble, add the flour, salt, pepper and cayenne. Cook until bubbly but still white. Add the milk, stirring constantly to avoid lumps. Cook until thickened. (see note below)

Temper the egg yolks by slowly adding about half the hot roux to them while stirring rapidly. Pour this back into the pan. Add the lemon juice and nutmeg. If your saucepan is large enough, also add the broccoli (mine wasn't, so I just put the broccoli right into the souffle pan.). Fold in the beaten egg whites. Pour all into the souffle pan. If the broccoli was already in the souffle pan, stir gently to combine. Bake 40 - 45 minutes.

NOTES: OK, the broccoli was supposed to fluff up a lot, but as the picture shows, it didn't. Some thoughts:
1. (my most probably explanation) the saucepan was too hot and cooked the sauce prematurely so it didn't have a chance to rise in the oven. Take the saucepan off the heat once the roux is starting to thicken, and do everything else off the heat until you put it in the oven.
2. Maybe there's some element of gluten that makes things fluff and the direct rice flour-to-wheat flour substitution just doesn't cut it.
3. Maybe if I'd mashed or pureed the broccoli rather than leave it in bigger pieces, it would have risen more.

In any event, it was good enough to have like this, and to try to improve. So, onward!

Mechazawa-san Chicken and Ginger Carrots

Tonight I didn't expect to be hungry, but we both were. So it was chicken thighs plus some carrots. The chicken was straight out of the freezer, smoked on Mechazawa-san (the Big Green Egg) with pecan wood. The carrots were done in the oven.

Carrots were *really* good. Lots of ginger-garlic, but not in the least overpowering. Recipe so loosely inspired by the Woman's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery that I'm confident calling it my own:

Courtney's Baked Ginger Carrots
Serves 2

3 medium/large carrots
1" piece ginger
2 medium garlic cloves
2T lemon juice
1/4 t salt
pepper to taste
1T butter (+ enough to grease baking dish)

Preheat oven to 400F and grease a small baking dish with butter (picture above shows the baking dish with everything in it).

Peel ginger and cut in half lengthwise, then cut into thin slices. Wash carrots and slice. Combine and put into dish.

Press garlic and combine with lemon juice, salt and pepper (I used a lot, probably between 1/8 and 1/4 t). Pour over carrots, spreading the garlic evenly over the top. Mash the butter around in the dish you mixed the sauce in, then dot the butter over the carrots (picture above shows it made up and ready to be covered and put in the oven).

Bake 1 hour. Remove and serve.

The picture below shows it with Mechazawa chicken.




Something was wrong with Mechazawa-san's thermometer, because as you can see from the second picture the chicken came out overdone, even though the thermometer said it was perfect.

But I include that and the last picture as a sort of instructable. The second picture shows it just off the grill, with the chicken clearly overdone. The final picture is what was left. Because the chicken was done on the Egg, it was still completely edible even if it looked like charcoal on the outside. Because it was cooked longer than normal, I could eat off the (very tasty) ends of the bone, much of the bone itself, and almost all of the marrow. I am a well-fed middle-class person. I was eating all this not because I was particularly hungry, but because it tastes good. The final picture shows all I had left of 2 chicken thighs (the carrots were long gone!).

And now I'm full and closing up shop for the night and going to bed. Good night and good dreams to all who relish good food.

Tomorrow, I make ketchup, aspiring to 80 and no less. Lane will need to fill me in on what kitchen gear that will get me!

Mid week Dinner

Well, I was invited to contribute a while ago and am finally getting around to adding something. Holidays are rather hectic for me and this has been a time of running here and there and being less than organized. Last night was a simple low effort meal that was rather good and leaves a nice carcass for stock. I got no pictures, sorry. And, unlike my compatriot, I am not always so good with amounts in translation.

Roast chicken with Rosemary, Garlic and Lemon:
The chicken is important here, well always, but especially in a roast. That adage ‘it tastes like chicken’ to describe a generic meat is so wrong an shows what P*rdue and T*son have done to chickens, First, they are not yellow (unless being fed a diet yellow feed stuffs) and second, a good chicken has flavor. So spend more and buy from a small producer.

1 Chicken – 3 1/2 lb
5 sprigs rosemary
4 med cloves garlic
lg. Lemon
salt
pepper
olive oil
butter

Strip 4 sprigs of rosemary of leaves, mince with garlic and zest from 3/4 of lemon, (the rest is for the pasta) add a small amount of olive oil to make a paste and add salt and pepper to taste. Now you need to separate the skin from the flesh in as much of the breast and leg area as you can, be gentle and don’t rip it. Take the Rosemary/garlic/lemon mix and spread under the skin everywhere you can reach. Stick any leftover rosemary springs in chest cavity. Tie legs together.

I stuck it in a 9x9 pyrex dish with about a Tablespoon olive oil and 1-2 teaspoons butter. Bake at 350 until done, baste often once there is enough liquid to baste.

Pasta with sun-dried tomatoes and lemon
1/2 lb pasta - Pipe-Rigate
lemon zest from above
5-6 sun-dried tomatoes
4-5 T aged robusto cheese, grated
1 T butter

Chop tomatoes coarsely and mince lemon zest. Cook pasta, drain. Toss lemon, tomato and butter until well mixed, do this all while hot, add cheese and mix.

Eggplant
1 med firm eggplant
bread crumbs
Milk
Egg
Oil for frying

Peel eggplant and slice into rounds. Mix milk and egg. Process goes milk/egg/bread crumbs/fry. Cook until med brown, flip repeat add salt as desired. What you are looking for here is crisp on the outside and creamy center. Drain. Warning, these thing stay really hot in the center for quite a while.