chicken & sausage & lemons, oh my!

I’ll admit it right here, I like Nigella Lawson. I think she’s a great menu planner and hugely entertaining to read (I’ve never seen her on TV), and I own several of her books. Strangely, I sometimes find her recipes disappointing (such as a nearly flavorless chocolate cake), but I generally forgive her the details because I like her general concepts so much.

One recipe of hers that stuck in my mind when I saw it was a sort of mishmash of chicken pieces, sausages, lemon, onions and sage, squished together in a pan and baked. I don’t know why I found the idea so fascinating, but I’ve been just waiting for my chance to try it. So on Saturday I combined the chicken and marinade, and on Sunday J put it all in the oven while I was at work. We were a little short of vegetables in the house, so I cooked some frozen spinach to go alongside.

The verdict? I liked it. It’s not going to be my go-to comfort meal from now on, but it was fun and simple. If I make it again I’ll add loads more sage to it, and maybe use hot Italian sausages instead of sweet, and serve it with a big salad or lots of green beans or something to cut the richness. The chicken did have a really nice sharp lemony flavor and the skin was beautifully crisp, and the onions were lovely combined with bites of sausage. We had a lot of leftover Portuguese white wine with a definite barnyard edge to it, and it went really well with the chicken. So it was a successful dinner. And the leftovers were even better the next day.

a surprisingly good soup

I think I tend to like the idea of soup a lot more than the soup itself. I especially like making soup - it’s so fun to toss things into the pot and see how the flavors meld - but I’m not always inspired by the result. I wasn’t very excited about this soup - a “white chili” with salsa verde, chicken and white beans - but much to my surprise, it turned out fabulously tasty.

The whole reason I made it in the first place was a container I found in the freezer: chopped grilled poblanos and jalapeños mixed with grilled corn taken off the cob. I had no memory of putting it in the freezer (we did a LOT of grilling last summer), but it seemed perfect for a soup.

I cut up some boneless chicken thigh meat and browned it with cumin seed and slivered garlic. I added chicken stock and simmered it until the meat was cooked through, then dumped in the frozen grilled vegetables, a can of Herdez salsa verde and a can of Progresso white beans (normally I do cook my own beans, but I was feeling seriously lazy). I brought it all up to a simmer, then put it away in the fridge until evening.

What a shock! It was delicious - the corn gave it a rich sweetness that contrasted with the sharp pepper and tomatillos flavors, and the beans were plump and sweet. I finished the leftovers the next day at lunch with cheese and crackers, but a quesadilla would have been nice, too. Another soup that probably can’t be replicated, but it’s always nice when thrown together things work out this well.

curry & parathas

One disadvantage of this otherwise rather nice town is that there is not a single Indian restaurant. During the time we’ve lived here there have been two: a decent enough place attached to a motel that turned into (yet another) Mexican restaurant a couple years ago, and a really great place with a real tandoori oven, which turned into an office furniture shop. Now there’s nothin’. This is part of the reason we cook so much Indian food at home. Besides, it’s fun.

We had friends over last weekend, and fixed up a pretty standard set of dishes to take care of any Indian cravings: red lentil dal, basmati rice, spiced okra, flatbread and chicken curry. The bread and the curry were (pretty safe) experiments: I made paratha for the first time, and the curry was the Chicken Simmered in a Tomato Sauce (very straightforward title) from Meena Pathak’s book.

Matzoh ball soup with celery root

We got our first celery root (also called celeriac) of the season at Dunbar Gardens last week! Possibly the ugliest and least edible looking vegetable around, but it has a beautiful, delicate celery flavor. I love what it does for chicken soup, especially matzoh ball soup.

I didn’t have matzoh growing up - I don’t think I even saw it until I went to a seder in California when I was 21 (yes, I was the youngest person there - I got to read the questions!) So I don’t have many preconceived notions of what matzoh ball soup should be like - I know it’s traditionally just carrots, chicken stock and matzoh balls, but I like my soup to have a little more oomph. So I generally put chicken meat in, and usually celery root for flavor and peas or spinach for color. For the balls, I just follow the recipe on the box - matzoh meal, eggs, oil, seltzer and salt, mix with a fork, leave in the fridge for an hour while you get the soup going. No big secret family recipe. Unless my family wants to give me one, of course…

Note about cutting up celery root: it’s so knobbly and hairy that it doesn’t pay to be overly careful. I just whack the edges off so it becomes a sort of cube, then dice from there.

Chicken pot pie

Last week we suddenly had a hankering for pot pie. Once something like that gets in your head, you just have to go with it, so I made one for Sunday night dinner. We used to eat this embarrassingly often, and I am likewise embarrassed to admit that I always used to make it with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. I have since decided that I don’t need to put that much salt and MSG into my system, so I did this one from scratch. It could have used a touch more salt, but I think it was the best pot pie I’ve ever produced. Comfort food extraordinaire!

I like my pot pie topped with drop biscuits, and my favorite biscuit recipe of the moment is the Buttermilk Biscuits from Kitchen Sense by Mitchell Davis. As long as I had the book out I ended up loosely following his recipe for pot pie, as well. I ignored some of his seasoning suggestions and did not put in any sherry. Here’s the version I made, more or less:

Zuni chicken and Bonny Doon pigato

I’ve always liked roast chicken fairly well, although for a long time the main reason I made it was to be able to make chicken stock afterwards. The chicken itself didn’t seem all that exciting. Then I bought the Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers (ostensibly as a present for J, but really of course for myself) and was enticed by her roast chicken recipe. I don’t have a wood burning oven like she does, and I find it difficult to find chickens small enough (the first time I tried it I had somehow found a two-pound chicken and it was ambrosial), but it still makes a chicken that’s downright exciting to eat.

The keys to the method are: salting the bird thoroughly at least a day ahead of time, earlier if it’s a bigger bird; stuffing herbs under the skin - I like fresh bay leaves best; and roasting at very high heat.

Black pepper chicken curry

Earlier this week, knowing we wouldn’t be eating dinner at home again for a while, I looked at the vegetables lurking in the refrigerator to see what needed using. A bunch of slightly faded Tuscan kale got eaten for breakfast (with a fried egg on top, yum), which left a bag of cute little cauliflowers, slightly spotted with brown, from our last trip to Dunbar Gardens. Cauliflower usually leads to one of two things around here: cauliflower gratin or Indian gingered cauliflower. We wanted to go the gingered route, so I went combing through our multitude of Indian cookbooks to find something to go with it.

Ah, autumn!

 Fall really came in with a bang this year. One week, we were having the most gorgeous warm evenings of the entire year, then the next week it rained. And rained. And the wind started blowing. Then it hailed. So much for summer. At least the leaf colors have been fabulous this year, when it stops raining enough to see them.

On the down side, we’ll miss the grill. But on the plus side, we can get going on the braises, the roasts, and casseroles, and the squash and greens. I love the first really seasonal food of any time of year, whether it’s the first asparagus of spring, the first cold noodle salad of summer, or the first batch of holiday cookies. Because we try not to buy out-of-season produce (much), it makes it all the tastier when its time does come. On our last couple of forays to Dunbar Gardens we’ve bought Delicata squash, leeks, Burgundy apples, lettuce, poblanos, tomatoes and chard. At the farmer’s market we’ve gotten potatoes, cheese, cauliflower and eggplant. Eventually the farmstand and market will close for the winter and we’ll be free to buy brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes at the store, and they will seem like a treat because we’ve been waiting for them.