Classic with a Twist

I started cooking in the most American way..... it did not involve days in the kitchen with my grandma, nor holidays spent mastering family recipes.  Though my mother is a fantastic cook, she thought better than to move an unwilling ADD child into the kitchen to mess up her groove.  I started cooking from a Rival Crock Pot and a Fix it and Forget it cookbook.  About a month later, I had grown accustomed to skipping the drive thru, but was quite sick of soup.  My next cookbook purchase was entitled "chicken".  My aspirations were not high in the beginning years.  I still have that ten year old crockpot, and on occasion, break it out for a slow simmered meal.  

My family has come to expect chicken soup on at the first sign of a cold, allergies or general bad day.  As I walked my youngest into school last week amidst a sea of hacking children, I was sure fall's first cold was upon us.  This recipe from Food Network Magazine takes your everday chicken soup and gives it a twist.  With lemon zest, fresh dill and a sprinkling of feta cheese, this soup is delicious and unexpected.  Simple to prepare, it is the perfect thing to throw together pre work, and enjoy with a crusty piece of bread in the evening.

Slow-Cooker Chicken and Pasta Soup
Food Network Magazine April 2010 (adapted somewhat)
Ingredients:
4 carrots quartered lengthwise and cut into 1 inch pieces
4 long strips lemon zest
4 sprigs fresh dill plus 2-3 TB chopped
kosher salt
4 skills, boneless chicken breasts
4 cups low sodium chicken broth
1 cup small pasta
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
1/2 bunch fresh spinach, stemmed
freshly ground pepper
4 ounces feta cheese
Lemon wedges and crusty bread

1. Combine the carrots, lemon zest, dill sprigs, olive oil and 1/2 teaspoon salt in 5-6 quart slow cooker.  Season the chicken with salt and add to the cooker.  Add the broth and 4 cups water, cover and cook on low, about 8 hours.  
2. About 20 minutes before serving, bring a small pot of water to a boil and cook 1 cup pasta according to package instructions. Drain, and reserve. (The original recipe suggests placing the dry pasta into the crock pot 20 minutes before serving.  I don't like doing this as I think the pasta takes on a weird texture.) 
3. Remove chicken from the crock and using two forks, shred into bite sized pieces.  Return to the crock pot.  Stir the chopped dill, peas, and spinach into the soup and cover until the spinach wilts, about 2  minutes.  Add pasta, and season with salt and pepper.  Ladle into bowl and crumble feta on top.  Serve with lemon wedge and crusty bread.  

What a fantastic take on traditional chicken noodle; a perfect way to ward off your fall sniffles, or just end a long day in the cold. 

Uneducated Lessons and a Roasted Chicken

Two years ago I embarked on a quest to host 52 dinner parties.  One year ago, I hosted the fifty-second party and one year later... what?

This blog has become a nagging relative that I've avoided like high fructose corn syrup.  My delima?  I have no idea what this blog is about or what business I have telling people how to cook.  I'm not a classically trained chef, nor a certified nutritionist. Why would anyone take cooking advice from me?  It finally dawned on me that this is not a classroom, it's a blog.  This is not a how-to site, but a snapshot of what mealtime in my home looks like on a given day.  Why is this  blog-worthy?  Because a meal can be a celebration.

I am certain of one thing in life: change is inevitable. Some changes are exciting, and others are scary but both require action.  I think that action, forms our personal journey through life.  In this journey we encounter both celebrations and sorrows, but more than anything, we encounter the day to day routine;   the fearful steps into the unknown and the constant push towards a better future.  Why not elevate each day with a good meal? Each week, I plan meals for the family to enjoy quickly and healthily Monday through Thursday, and ones to splurge with Friday through Sunday.  If we are expecting Guests, I plan particular meals depending on the who and the when.  For Jeff, it's a fried pork chop for dinner, for Sha it's a bowl of hummus for cocktail hour, and for my mother, its pasta for a soul-warming evening.   In my house, food is how we show love, celebrate time together and give thanks for family and friends.  So, as I jump into a new year of dedicated blogging, this is my focus: cook often, cook with love and share  stories good and bad.

I hope you enjoy my recipe journal and hope even more that it inspires you to fire up your oven and celebrate your day.  If not, well..... you would not be the first to find me impalpable.

Roasted Chicken: 
Last year, my youngest and I adopted Wednesday date days.   Each Wednesday I would pick her up from school with the intention of spending the entire afternoon together.  We used this time for zoo visits,   art excursions and the occasional playground jaunt.  When dinnertime rolled around,  I craved something quick and soul satisfying.  Roasted chicken proved to be the best option.  While my favorite roasted chicken recipe changes with the wind, my current love is courtesy of Ina Garten's most recent cookbook  How Easy is That?.   In an effort to be organized, I would prepare the chicken for roasting early Wednesday morning, enjoy the afternoon outings and upon our return, simply preheat the oven and slide in dinner.  Budget friendly tip: As part of our healthy weekday efforts, my husband and I avoid wine consumption Monday- Thursday.  Sunday evening, I pour any leftover wine into small tuperware containers and store in the freezer poised and ready for use in stews, sauces and roasted chickens.

Jeffrey's Favorite Chicken:
Recipe By: Ina Garten: How Easy is That?

Ingredients:

1 4-5 lb free range chicken
salt and freshly ground pepper
2 lemons quartered
1 head garlic split in half horizontally
2 Spanish onions peeled and thickly sliced
1/2 cup white wine (see note)
1/2 chicken stock
1 TB AP flour

Preheat oven to 425
Remove and discard the giblets. Rinse and pat the chicken dry. Liberally salt and pepper the inside of the chicken. Place two lemon quarters inside the cavity along with the garlic. Brush the chicken with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Tie the legs together with kitchen string and tuck the wing tips under the body of the chicken. (I also put a bit of tin foil on the tip of the leg if I see it's starting to burn!) Place the chicken in a small (11x14-inch) roasting pan. (If the pan is too big the onions will burn.) Place the reserved lemons and the sliced onions in a large bowl (I used a ziploc baggie!) and toss with 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper. Pour the mixture around the chicken.

Roast the chicken for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, until the juices run clear when you cut between a leg and a thigh. (Mine took much longer, and I used a thermometer - 165°!) Remove the chicken to a platter, leaving the lemons and onions in the pan. Cover the chicken with aluminum foil, and allow to rest for 10 minutes while you prepare the sauce.

Place the pan on top of the stove over medium-high heat. Add the wine and stir with a wooden spoon to scrape up the brown bits. Add the stocks a and sprinkle on the flour, stirring constantly for a minute, until the sauce thickens. Add any juices that collect on the platter under the chicken and taste for seasoning. Carve the chicken onto the platter and spoon the onions and sauce over it. If the lemons are tender enough to eat, serve them, too. Sprinkle with salt and serve hot or warm.

French Food at the Southern Table

Romantic and elusive; that's how I describe French cuisine.  With a minimal understanding of the flavor profile and techniques, I assumed that the creation of anything beyond French Toast  required a stint at Le Cordon Bleu, a quaint apartment that is food market adjacent and a Vespa with a basket full of fresh flowers.  I was quite discouraged until I came across French Fridays with Dorie Greenspan.  Each week Dorie guides foodies through her newest book Around my French Table  as she answers questions and reads various blog posts.  So, last week when a dear friend suggested taking our children to the museum,  I suggested that we continue our fall celebration by heading back to my house for a post-museum dinner with an attempted French flair.  Old habits die hard. 

Our first course was the tastey and unexpected Dijon Tart.  Had this recipe not been accompanied by a beautiful picture, I most likely would have lost my nerve.  Mustard as a main ingredient? To say I proceeded cautiously would be an understatement.  After enjoying a plate of fresh bread and cheeses, I presented my guests with this creation.  The taste?  Nothing short of amazing.  The delicate crust encased the fresh vegetables and fluffy egg and cream filling with elegance and ease.  As someone who rarely adds mustard to anything but a hot dog, this was the perfect dish to expand the palate.  

After an appetizer such as this a roasted chicken with vegetables seemed the perfect entree.  Like many new cooks, there was a time when I avoided whole chickens fearful of the whole 'cleaning' process.  Now I have roasted dozens of chickens and suggest one of two solutions: have your butcher complete the task for you, or purchase a free range organic chicken which usually has the inner parts safely packaged in a bag that you can pull out and dispose.  I'm so happy to have cleared this hurdle as a roasted chicken is a one pan dinner that is easy delicious and oh so beautiful.  For years I followed a recipe for all of my chickens, however I now fly solo with the following.


Roasted Chicken 
Recipe created by: Lori Pierce
Ingredients:

• 1 5-pound Free Range Chicken
• 1 lemon cut into fourths
• 2 yellow onions, 1 cut into fourths 1 thinly sliced
• 1 head garlic cut in half and left in the skins
• 2 sprigs fresh rosemary
• 1 bay leaf broken into pieces
• 4 carrots peeled and sliced into thirds
• 4-5 yukon gold potatoes cut into fourths
• 3 TB unsalted butter, softened
• dry white wine
• sea salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Take a deep breath, clean the chicken and place into a roasting pan.  Liberally salt and pepper the chicken inside and out.   
3. Stuff chicken with the lemon and onion wedges, garlic, rosemary and bay leaf.  
4. Rub the chicken with the butter being careful not to tear the skin.  Scatter the carrots onions and potatoes around the bird and sprinkle with salt and pepper. 
5. Pour white wine into the roasting pan; I use to fill the bottom of the pan by about a quarter of an inch.  This is depending on your taste. 
6. Roast for about 45 minutes before you start checking the chicken.  It is fully cooked when you pierce the leg and the juices run clear, or when it registers 180 on a meat thermometer. (I like to take the chicken out at 165 degrees as it will continue to cook during the resting period.) 
7. Remove the chicken from the roasting pan and set on a cutting board, cover with foil and allow to rest. 
8. Toss the vegetables in the roasting dish and return to the oven for 10-15 minutes more roasting time.
9. Once the vegetables come out of the oven, uncover and carve the chicken.  Serve and enjoy! 

This meal was a backdrop for a fantastic evening.  The children continued their playdate by painting what I'm sure are French Impressionists portraits, the adults enjoyed some wine and conversation before we all gathered around the table. It seems that Dorie's French Table transitions well to my Southern table.  

*For the Dijon Tart and other fantastic recipes, I encourage you to purchase Dorie Greenspan's  Around My French Table available via My Loves on Amazon.  

Sunday Comforts

Friday dinners are a time to celebrate, but Sunday dinners are a time to savor.  Sunday dinners are more reflective and more relaxing than the weekend kick off enjoyed a mere 48 hours prior.  I enjoy them not only for their change in pace, but their dictated cuisine.  While Friday evenings are a time for culinary experiments and new dishes, Sunday dinners demand the best in comfort food.  With this thought in mind, I'm sharing a recipe for chicken pot pie.  Remember the chicken pot pie from our childhood?  A gummy crust filled with gray pieces of chicken, mushy vegetables, and a glue-like gravy?  Not today.  This dish brings together your fresh vegetables, cornbread, and roasted chicken all in a savory gravy you will scrape up with your fork.  

Chicken Pot Pie with Cornbread Crust
Recipe created by: Christina Ferrare (Oprah's favorite cook.... other than John Travolta )
Christina's recipe calls for rotisserie chicken, however I like to roast a few chicken breasts that I season, pound thin and slice into generous chunks.  I also prefer to parboil both the potatoes and carrots as fully cooking them runs the risk of mushiness.  Finally, since potatoes are readily available at the Farmers Market, I like to use fresh red or new potatoes with the skin on; the rusticity has never been better suited! 
Filling:
1 TB Olive Oil
1 TB unsalted butter
1 medium onion, chopped
1/4 cup flour
2 cups chicken stock, heated
2 cups cooked chicken
1/2 cup frozen sweet peas
1 potato, diced and boiled
1 1/2 cup chopped cooked carrots
1/2 tsp salt
Cracked pepepr
Dashes of Tabasco Sauce
Crust:
3/4 cup white or yellow cornmeal (I prefer stoneground)
3/4 cup AP flour
1 TB baking powder
1 1/2 TB sugar
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
2 TB canola oil

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Spray a 2 quart casserole with cooking spray.  In a large sauce pan, heat the olive oil and unsalted butter together. Add onion and saute until tender, about 4 or 5 minutes.  Add in flour until blended.  Slowly stir in 2 cups of heated chicken stock, whisking well. (Note: The chicken stock is the basis for your gravy; I recommend homemade stock or a high quality organic product.)   Cook mixture over medium heat until thickened and bubbly, about 4 minutes.  Stir in chicken, peas, potato, carrots, salt, pepper, and Tabasco.  Pour into the prepared 2 quart casserole.  
2. In a bowl, stir cornmeal, flour, baking powder, sugar and salt.  In a separate bowl, stir milk, egg and canola oil until well combined.  Stir wet ingredients into the dry ingredients.  Spoon the batter evenly on the filling.  Bake until the top is golden brown 22 to 25 minutes. 

This is the stick to your ribs meal you want on a Sunday afternoon.  Enjoy it with a salad, some good wine and good people and you will go into the new week ready to take on the world.