Poultry | vmac+cheese

Summer in Provence

Posted on June 3, 2010 by vmacandcheese

Believe it or not, our upcoming trip to Paris was one of the most difficult getaways we’ve ever planned, simply because there was so much in France we wanted to see! When we first began laying out a general itinerary, Joe and I both hoped we’d be able to split half of our time in Paris, and half of it in Provence.

[I also slyly mentioned that we would still need to return to visit the Loire Valley, Bordeaux, the Basque region near Biarritz, and that, under no circumstances, could we leave this planet having never tasted oysters from Belon. Joe's response: We can't spend every vacation for the next 4 years in France! Me: Whyyyyyy?)]

The only problem? For this trip, we only had 9 full days in La Belle France. If we did the bi-regional trip, stays would be somewhat short in both places, which sounded less fun. If there’s one thing we both hate on a vacation, it’s feeling rushed, and like we got no sense of what a place is all about. I’m lucky that like me, Joe prefers to kind of park it in one place and hang out when he travels, spending as much time as possible getting to know it and just being.

So with heavy hearts, we had to forgo Provence this time. Having never been to France, we both figured Paris would be a great place to start (and spend nearly a week and a half!). Still, I think we were bummed that we wouldn’t be playing boules and sipping on pastis in Aix, or stuffing our faces with bouillabaisse in Marseille.

Another time, another trip. But make no mistake — not having the south of France on our itinerary has certainly NOT kept me from dreaming about it! (Recipe after the jump) (more…)

Filed under: Food, French, Main Courses, Poultry, Recipes, Travels | Tagged: braised chicken, chicken recipe, France, Provence, travel, weeknight meal | Leave a Comment »

Love the salt. Hate the steam.

Posted on October 24, 2009 by vmacandcheese

A quick lesson of the day for you, and a little backstory to give it some context.

I like to roast whole chickens at home. Why?

a) It’s really easy.

b) I can throw it in the oven right when I get home from work, putz around on the Internet and watch back episodes of The Girls Next Door before Joe gets home from the gym, and by the time he is back, showered, and ready to eat, the meat is done-zo.

c) It’s versatile! You can eat the plain roasted chicken, or put it in a soup, or re-purpose it for a sandwich, or even mix it with other fixings to make a chicken salad (a delicious pesto chicken salad comes to mind).

d) You get the bonus of the carcass to make stock. It’s really a win-win situation.

Now for the past year or so, whenever I’ve done anything with a roasted bird, I tried to just salt and pepper it really well, throw it in the oven, and let it be. No herbs or lemons stuffed in the cavity (or “the butt” as Joe likes to say). Nothing lining the bottom of the pan the bird cooks in. I read in both the Bouchon cookbook and in an old issue of Cook’s Illustrated that this only creates steam, and steam is the enemy to crisp skin.

To get super crisp chicken skin — and I mean papery, crackly, seems to shatter when you stick the thermometer through it skin — you need to salt the heck out of the skin, and remove any element in the oven that creates steam. End of story.

I like to wash and dry the entire bird, then pat it really dry with a paper towel. Again, what does residual rinse water, plus a scorching hot oven equal? STEAM.

Then, salt the heck out of that sucker. Don’t be shy. Get it all over the breast and the top part of the legs, then do this number on it: (more…)

Filed under: Food, Kitchen Basics, Poultry | 3 Comments »

An awesome recipe to kick off fall…

Posted on October 14, 2009 by vmacandcheese

Like the Mexican Pie I made a few weeks ago, I prepared this chicken dish on Sunday not just for dinner that night, but also for the leftovers I could bring to work with me throughout this week.

What I thought would be a straightforward and tasty chicken dish turned into something pretty special. I don’t know how that happened, and can only theorize that when good ingredients get a little love, a lot of goodness will end up on your plate.

Before you get too excited, I have to admit right here: I was a really bad blogger and didn’t take ANY photos of this recipe. I planned on it being one of those times where it was just me and the food in the kitchen. And I honestly didn’t know I would like this concoction as much as I did.

What I loved about this recipe was how well it bridged the last bits of the San Francisco Indian summer with the first whispers of fall — or in the case of yesterday, the first torrential DOWNPOUR of fall (thank you, Japanese typhoon).

To start, affordable (and flavorful) chicken thighs and legs were browned, then simmered in a yum-tastic sauce made from fresh early girl tomatoes, red wine, herbs, peppers and olives. With the bone-in meat taking an hour long soak in the liquid, the dish gets a healthy dose of collagen (which gelatinzes later), so the sauce has a rich mouthfeel. It’s all very Provençal — if you can’t tell that I totally have France on my mind these days, you need to get with it.

In that vein, I decided to name the recipe Poulet Provençal. I recommend you make it ASAP. But don’t make the same mistake I did — be sure to have a loaf of country bread on hand to soak up this sauce. It’s pretty incredible. I had to make do with drinking the sauce out of the bowl. Such a fat kid.

Poulet Provençal (more…)

Filed under: Food, French, Main Courses, Poultry, Recipes | 1 Comment »

October again.

Posted on September 25, 2009 by vmacandcheese

When I was in high school, I took Spanish all four years. I got to be pretty good at it — a mixture of my fascination with foreign languages, and being immersed in it every day for at least an hour. Of course, after not using it during college, I can no longer speak or listen to conversaciones en Español with much ease. It’s true what they say: when it comes to language, you gotta use it or you lose it.

Joe took German, and he doesn’t seem to remember a word of it. All I know is, he says he can’t stand the movie Back to the Future, because they watched it incessantly during his German classes in high school (the English version, no less). I have no idea how he managed to do so well on his AP German exam, because if I show him a German word in a book, or hear something on TV, it’s like he’s trying to translate Ancient Greek.

But when it comes to Oktoberfest, Joe always remembers.

At work this morning, he sent me a note on Gchat asking about dinner. My only stipulation was no salad for a main meal. “Latkes!” he suggested, “With sausage and applesauce and sour cream.” Totally, random, right?

“I’m not making latkes,” I told him — too many bad memories of being forced to make perfect looking potatoes rösti in culinary school, “but why the sudden hankering for German food?”

“I was just thinking that since it’s Oktoberfest we should do something.”

That was all that needed to be said. I had just the ticket.

I give you chicken schnitzel, with apple sauce, sauerkraut, and sour cream; Yukon gold potatoes fried in duck fat, schmaltz and brown butter; a simple green side salad; and of course, BEER.

It sounds like a lot of work, but this feast was actually pretty easy to put together. I purchased the sauerkraut, apple sauce, and (obviously) sour cream pre-made. I like Claussen’s sauerkraut — it’s super crisp and doesn’t taste flabby or like it’s soaked in too many preservatives. The duck fat was something I bought months ago, and kept frozen in the freezer. Whenever we make potatoes, I use a little bit.

If you can believe it, bone-in chicken breasts had just been put on sale at the market by my office for $1.99 per pound, so what I thought would be the costliest part of the meal ended up being very affordable.

And instead of using store bought breadcrumbs (ugh — have you ever looked at the ingredient list for dry bread crumbs? Since when did breadcrumbs need 50 ingredients?), I bought some locally made little melba-style toasts, which were all-natural and had no partially hydrogenated oils or random additions of corn syrup. A quick whirl in the Vita-mix and I had the perfect style of breadcrumbs for my schnitzel.

What can I say? This was so, so yummy. I have the complete recipe — with lots of pictures — right after the jump.

Oktoberfest runs through October 4 (which is next week — hey, where’d September go?!?!). If I were you, I’d make a German themed dinner while you can. All you need to be able to say is köstlich.

Chicken Schnitzel (more…)

Filed under: Food, Indulgences, Main Courses, Poultry, Recipes | Leave a Comment »

The best part about Sunday afternoon

Posted on March 24, 2009 by vmacandcheese

Last summer, I think I mentioned that Joe started going to a hardcore new gym that employs a method of fitness called Cross Fit. The classes combine calisthenics, free weights and cardiovascular training into an hour long, puke-til-you-drop, can’t-walk-right-the-next-day workout. So obviously, even though Joe has seen amazing results, I could never join this gym. For me, a workout is a mile long run and a set of push ups quickly followed by a cheese plate for a snack.

But in any case, because of his intense three-day a week exercise regimen, we’ve been eating a lot more salad for dinner and a lot less pasta (Sad for me. Now I’m reduced to hoping that Joe will have after work events, so I can cook myself pasta while he’s gone. He’ll probably come home someday soon and find me sitting in our dark coat closet, slurping up a half pound of spaghetti.). Because Joe’s always wanting a big salad with some kind of protein in it, I have to mix it up, or else I’ll get really bored with our nightly rabbit food fest. So in the last month or two, I started purchasing an organic chicken each week, roasting it, and using the meat throughout our meals. I can shred the meat, and mix it with pesto for pesto chicken salad. Or, I can cut the breasts straight from the bone, and slice them width wise into “steak” pieces. Sometimes, we go more French and I’ll serve the whole leg atop greens, with a bit of goat cheese and oil and vinegar.

For me though, the best part about buying the whole bird is the carcass. Because with that, a few aromatics, and a handful of spices, I can constantly have chicken stock on hand. Each Sunday for the last few weeks, I’ve thrown all the ingredients into my soup pot, and let them simmer away while we laze about at home. The smell of freshly made chicken stock is unbelievable–there’s truly nothing like it. I wish Febreeze made an air spray out of it.

Anyway, I put together a photo tutorial of basic chicken stock making from a batch I made this last weekend. For all you novices, the process is really easy. Trust me, after you make it once, you can never buy the boxed stuff again (Don’t even get me started on the canned variety. It smells like catfood.).

chicken-stock-005