Chicken and chores (1): Chinese Chicken Salad

I'm not chickening out with this blog, but sometimes my preoccupations lie elsewhere. Cooking then is done in advance for a few meals to have perfunctorily. I had chicken, I had veggies, so lots of things could be done. The Barefoot Contessa's Chinese Chicken Salad, a recipe for parties and 12 people seemed a good ticket to draw on a Saturday fraught with chores. I give original sizes. See my notes at the end.

Chinese Chicken Salad (From: Ina Garten, Barfoot Contessa, Parties!)

8 split chicken breasts
olive oil
salt, pepper

1 pound asparagus, rends removed, cut into thirds diagonally
2 red bell peppers, cored, seeded, cut into thin strips
4 scallions, sliced diagonally
2 tablespoons white sesame seeds, toasted

Dressing:
1 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/3 cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons dark sesame oil
1 tablespoon honey
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
1 tablespoon white sesame seeds, toasted
1/2 cup peanut butter
4 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 °F (I did at 180 °C)
Put the chicken in an oven pan, coat generously with the olive oil, and season with salt and pepper, roast for 35-40 minutes until it is just cooked. Set aside, until cool enough to handle.

Blanch the asparagus until al dente, combine with the bell pepper strips and the scallions. When the chicken is cool enough to handle, cut it in strips, and mix with the vegetables.

Combine all ingredients for the dressing, pour over chicken-vegetable mix. Lastly, add the scallions and sesame seeds. Can be eaten cold or at room temperature.

Notes
Great party idea, with some changes here:
I used small pieces of steamed broccoli instead of asparagus.
I used 1/4 of a red onion instead of scallions.
I used 1/2 teaspoon garam masala instead of honey (I never ever believe that in Chinese food sugar is original).
I didn't bother toasting those sesame seeds.
I used white sesame paste instead of peanut butter, and light sesame oil.

Quick curry

The pic is not that great, but while cleaning house I stumbled upon a recipe for a quick curry, I think by Livia Claessen and Henri Kleinblatt, from the magazine Feeling. Food on Saturday cooked extra muros.

olive oil
2 red onions, thinkly sliced
2 crushed cloves of garlic
1 tablespoon of chopped ginger
400 g chicken breast or freshly peeled shrimp
400 g canned tomatoes
6 tablespoons joghurt
1 tablespoon garam masala
cilantro (or my addition, parsley)

Stew onions until browned.

Next add garlic, ginger and chicken. Stew for 6 minutes. Note: for chicken breast I deemed this a bit short-I precooked the chicken somewhat in plain water.

Next, add the tomatoes and garam masala and stew for 10-15 minutes.

Before serving, add joghurt and cilantro or parsley.

Note: I steamed potatoes until tender and added them to stew with the chicken.

Why Kobe goes to Los Gatos

In an interview (Sabato, 13 June), young chef Kobe Desramaults from In de Wulf announced that he will be spending a month in restaurant Manresa of chef David Kinch, who is based in Los Gatos and who won "Best Chef Pacific 2010" from the James Beard Foundation.

Why does this young Belgian chef plan this internship? Most likely to broaden his command in the challenge of using whatever local surroundings yield in food, and to resort less to the automatic pilot that chefs ignite when buying their produce at Rungis.

Nothing wrong with Rungis - food mecca second to none, but chefs like Kobe Desramaults, in the wake of René Redzepi of Copenhagen's Noma, who have seen every new device under the stars, really want to work with impediments. They really are the new hunters and gatherers. And that's why Kobe goes to Los Gatos.

For this is what I imagine chef Kinch does: he visits the Love Apple Farm, his royal purveyor, a place where in another life I'd work, or in another life I'd try to recreate, and gathers the yield of the day for his kitchen.

Now here's what baffled me as well. Desramaults isn't using tomatoes until July. He has a Tomato Criterion.

Unlike last year, this winter I have continued eating tomatoes, solely on account of an extremely local producer (7 km) churning out baskets of cherry tomatoes out of his greenhouse. And in the past weeks, I've been eating this bounty from Holland (or the US?):
In short, conditions were such that I succumbed. Because organic seems to defy any season. Because organic goes colorful. I prepared this quick salad in a state of bewilderment, because it suddenly felt like cheating.

Green tomato salad

Green tomatoes (or if you have them, tomatillos)
1 avocado in its prime
cold cooked chicken breast
fresh tarragon leaves
olive oil
dash of lemon juice (optional)
generous sprinkling of sesame seeds
pepper (salt optional)

Lightly heat the oil over low heat and suffuse with fresh tarragon leaves. Pour leaves and oil over the ingredients, combine everything, serve.

Now start ruminating the Tomato Criterion.

Steamed chicken and bell pepper

Like May, June will have its share of disruptive moments due to home renovation. The little cuisine we do, will be of the most light and easy kind. Taty's steamed chicken and steamed bell pepper are ready in no time. Light food accompanied by a tasty bell pepper sauce.

Steamed chicken and bell pepper

From: Cuisine nature... à toute vapeur (Taty Lauwers)

4 chicken breasts (with skin if possible)
salt
lemon juice
4 red bell peppers

I oped for orange and yellow bell pepper, to distinguish from the yellow bell pepper strips.
Cut 3 bell peppers in long strips. Cut 1 bell pepper in little cubes.

Steam bell peppers for 5 minutes, then add chicken breasts, steam for 8-9 minutes more. If you like, first fry the chicken in a pan in some oil to give them some color.

Bell pepper sauce: Blend cubes of bell pepper, a bit of oil, with lemon juice and salt. The result is an unctuous sauce.

Eat, then proceed having a mind filled with other concerns.

Getting rid of old junk: simple oven-baked chicken

Get rid of old junk, my horoscope said, while I was sniffing away in hanky after hanky. So I looked at the squash that had been on my kitchen counter from before Christmas, cut up a pumpkin, collected whatever winter had left in the herb patch outside, and stuffed a chicken with that. In the chicken went lemon thyme and sage, and a big piece of fresh ginger. Just in case.

Simple oven-baked chicken

Cooking method from Françoise Bernard: bake chicken on its side

1 chicken
2-3 onions
olive oil
salt, pepper,
1 squash
1 small pumpkin
fresh herbs

Preheat the oven at 200 °C.

Rinse the chicken, coat it with pepper and salt, stuff it with herbs and ginger. Drizzle it with olive oil.

Put the chicken on its side in the oven pan, and put the whole onions around it. Put in the oven. In the middle of cooking time, turn the chicken on the other side. In the middle of cooking time, also add the squash and pumpkin, roughly chopped.

I had a chicken weighing 1,6 kg - this needed about 20-25' more than one hour.

Right after this feast, my taste buds went on holiday for three days. Morale: don't even try to cook or eat out then.

Paprika Chicken

Paprika is our word here for Bell Pepper, but also for the bright red and sweet goodie that fellow blogger Oleandri brought from Hungary last year. Time to put the spice to good use. For stewed chicken no one has been a better guide to me than Claudia Roden, whose chicken recipes are easy. From the book on Jewish cooking.

Paprika Chicken (Claudia Roden + from memory)

1 chicken, in four (or a variety of chicken pieces)
olive oil
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
1 big red bell pepper, deseeded, chopped roughly
1 big yelllow bell pepper, deseeded, chopped roughly
1 teaspoon of sweet paprika powder

Fry the chicken pieces in a pan in some olive oil until golden on all sides. Remove the pieces and set aside.

In the same pan, fry the onion and the garlic, and when soft, add the bell pepper. Stew for a bit, then add the chicken and the paprika powder and stew over moderate heat until the meat falls of the bones, and is done, about 45-60 minutes.

The bright color of this heartwarming dish and the sauce combine well with boiled potatoes.

Coq au vin

I'm back!

My mother who hardly cooks and has never liked it, had one culinary dish up her sleeve that stands out in the olden days: coq au vin. Totally uncustomarily, she spent hours on this delicacy. Meanwhile my dad took us kids out, and we'd return to the great smells of the Sunday meal. While my mom is still trying to extract this recipe from her files, I've already found a recipe in De keuken van ons moeder - The kitchen by our mom cookbook, by an 80-year old mom called Mieke Noels.

Coq au vin

Serves 6

100 g smoked bacon
100 g salted bacon in strips
fresh silver onions
butter
olive oil
3 kg chicken breasts and legs (with carcass and skin)
black pepper and salt
nut meg
1/2 glass of cognac
about 3/4 liter red wine
6 dl chicken stock
3 bay leaves
3 sprigs of thyme
corn starch (dissolved in water)
250 small white mushrooms
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
parsley, chopped
1 tablespoon sirop de Liège (regional specialty, a dark brown jelly from apples and pears, in color and sweetness comparable to molasses)

Note: the book has a tip from Mieke about this syrup.

Fry the bacon in a large pan with the onions, butter and olive oil. Remove from pan, and put the chicken in to brown the pieces on all sides. Season with pepper, salt, nutmeg.

Add the cognac and flambé the chicken. Wait until the flame has been extinguished, and cool with wine and chicken stock until the chicken is almost immersed. Add the bacon and the onions, bay leaf and thyme. Let this simmer for about an hour on low heat, covered. The surface is only allowed to barely ripple. The chicken is ready when the meat drops from the carcass. Bind with the dissolved corn starch.

Fry the mushrooms in garlic with parsley in butter, and add to the coq au vin. Finish the coq au vin with sirop de Liège. Adjust the seasoning.

Serve with salad, baguette, fresh Belgian fries or croquettes and if possible baked apple.

Note: I skipped the flambéing part. In lieu of the much coveted small silver onions, I had to resort to using regular onion.

Chicken and chores: (2): Green olive chicken stew

A women's magazine's October issue had recipes by Sophie Dahl, apparently she wrote a cookbook called Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights; I took cues from here Green olive chicken stew, in fact a classic from Provence. It seems miss Dahl is borrowing a bit from here and there, just like I do in these pages. I cooked this in advance to speed up a Sunday meal on a weekend full of chores. I used two chicken legs.

Green olive chicken stew

Serves 4

1 chicken, in pieces
olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 fennel bulb, coarsely chopped
2,5 dl white wine
400 g tinned tomatoes
2,5 dl chicken stock
150 pitted green olives
fresh basil, chopped

Heat the oil, and brown the chicken pieces all over for about 15 minutes. Remove them from the pan.

Fry garlic and fennel in that same pan for a few minutes, add the wine, add the tomatoes, and let stew for 10 minutes over low heat. Add the chicken again, and let stew for 30 minutes more. Slowly add the chicken stock.

In the last few minutes, add the olives, and the basil.

Notes:
I used tarragon instead of basil, and zucchini instead of fennel. I added the olives a lot sooner, and on account of the tomatoes, I let this dish stew a whole lot longer until a lot of liquid evaporated and the sauce thickened. Hearty dish, great with potatoes.