Greek lemon chicken and potatoes

Chicken with the skin on has been a serious adversary in my oven. Some combination of the size of the oven, my roasting pan, what vegetables I try to roast along with the chicken, and the heat has made it really hard to get good skin with a little crisp and nice browning.  I finally found a recipe that works. This has the right amount of crowding in my roasting pan (not much) and roasting potatoes (and only potatoes) seems to have provided the right conditions to get pretty, tasty chicken.

Thank you, Chef John at Food Wishes (with video)!

Ingredients (3 servings)

• 3 legs and 3 thighs (about 2.25 pounds total)
• 2 large baking potatoes, sliced into eighths (about 2 pounds)
• 1/2 T kosher salt
• 1/2 t black pepper
• 1/2 t dried rosemary
• 2 t dried oregano
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 cup chicken broth to add to the roasting pan + a splash more to de-glaze

You’ll need

• large mixing bowl
• large roasting pan

Preparation (cooking time 45 minutes to 1 hour)

1. Pre-heat oven to 425.
2. (Peel and) section the potatoes. (Peeled potatoes are prettier but I like potato skins.)
3. Remove the excess skin flap from the thighs and put the chicken in a large bowl.
4. Add the salt, pepper, rosemary, oregano, and minced garlic to the chicken.
5. Add the lemon juice and olive oil.
6. Add the potatoes to the bowl.
7. Toss the chicken and potatoes until the marinade is well-mixed.  You can leave it in the fridge for a few hours or just cook immediately.
8. Lightly oil the roasting pan.
9. Add everything to the roasting pan, chicken skin-side up, and space it all out.
10. Add most of the cup of chicken broth to the pan. (This is to keep things from burning to the roasting pan.)
11. Roast for 20 minutes, and toss.
12. Roast for 25 to 40 minutes more (and check).
13. Take out any chicken that is nicely browned and set in a serving dish.
14. Finish the potatoes (and pale chicken) under the broiler for 3 or 4 minutes. (Keep your nose on the job so you don’t burn it!)
15. De-glaze the pan with a little more broth or water and spoon the liquid over the dish.

Serve with a simple arugula salad or something like that.

Eggplant and potato curry

Long time no see, blog of new recipes!  After becoming deathly bored of everything I normally eat (much of which is a variant of the few things you can find here, much of which I eat 4 or 5 days in a row because it’s infinitely more practical), and only a few days away from finishing a draft of my thesis, it’s time to learn something new.  I want to expand my range on vegetable-laden meals, for health and variety.  Where’s easily the world’s awesomest repository of vegetarian meals that are actually meals? The Indian subcontinent.  Now, to begin aimlessly experimenting until I learn how to do enough wrong that it’s time to get taught by someone who knows something.

For a first pass, last week’s dinner was this chana masala from Smitten Kitchen.  I’m not writing it up as it came out fine and I did nothing different.

On today’s agenda is eggplant and potato curry.  I suppose I could call it Baingan-Aaloo Ki Subji from the recipe that I’m more or less following, but that would be insulting to India.  This recipe came out fine to my ignorant taste buds—a good start on this adventure.  (This post is likely to be revised over time.)

Calorie Estimate: around 2400?

Ingredients

• 2 onions, diced however you like
• 6 japanese eggplant (or whatever equivalent by total size), cubed 1/3″-ish
• 2 large potatoes, diced 1/4″-ish
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• oil to coat the bottom of the pot (I use my dutch oven)
• 1.5 T ground cumin
• 1 T coriander
• 1.5 T ground red pepper
• 1 t turmeric powder
• 1T garam masala
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• plenty of salt to taste
• juice of 1 lemon

Preparation

I had success chopping as I go, just keeping an eye on the heat and adding a few ounces of water as necessary to keep things under control.  It’s gonna stew at the end for 30 minutes, so it’s not essential that all veggies of a type get in at the same time.

1. Warm oil in a deep pot.  Soften onions.
2. Add in the spices.  Stir to coat well.  Cook the spices with the onions for a few minutes.  It will start smelling wonderful at this point.
3. Add in the  can of tomatoes, diced potatoes, and the eggplant.  If you notice, this is a huge recipe, so add in handfuls and stir every couple handfuls.  This is easier if you’re adding as you chop.  Also, if it’s getting too dry, add a little water.  The veggies will give up theirs soon, so not too much, but it helps if you’re about to burn the spices, which would be a disaster.As you’re adding the vegetables, keep in mind the single most useful piece of advice I ever got from a cooking show, Avec Eric with Eric Ripert:  “don’t salt the dish, salt the vegetables.” You know about how much salt a cooking onion needs, a potato, etc., but do you know how to salt 5 quarts of stewing vegetables all at once?(As an aside, there are probably only two cooking shows I actually recommend as being spot-on with the mix of useful to you right now, beautiful, aspirational, culturally interesting, and entertaining too: Avec Eric and Molto Mario with Mario Batali.)
4. Stir everything often until the spicing is really thoroughly mixed in with the veggies and everything is starting to cook.  Once it’s all getting together, turn down the heat to low and simmer covered for 30 minutes or so.
5. Turn off the heat, uncover, and let some of the water escape and get reabsorbed.  It should be moist but not soupy.
6. Stir in the lemon juice for some brightness and tartness.
7. Eat!

Because of the potatoes, you can maybe  do without  bread or rice, but that’s up to you!  I’ve got a small spinach naan in my toaster over right now!  Also, a little cool, tart yogurt on the side, mixed on the spoon, is nice.

Butternut Squash Soup

Calorie Count: 2400 with cream, 2000 without

Ingredients

• 2 T olive oil
• 2 leeks (or a large onion), diced
• 2 carrots, diced
• 2 celery stalks, diced
• 1 butternut squash (2-3 pounds), peeled, seeded and coursely diced
• 2 waxy potatoes, peeled and diced
• 2 or 3 apples, peeled and diced
• 2 T of ginger, peeled and minced
• a few garlic cloves, chopped
• a pinch or two of red pepper flakes
• 6-8 cups vegetable broth
• 1 C cream
• salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

1. Over medium heat, sweat the onions, carrots, and celery for a few minutes with a hefty pinch of salt.
2. Add in everything else, stir and cook for 5 minutes.
3. Add in the broth with a healthy blast of black pepper.  Bring to a boil, and then simmer 20 to 60 minutes depending on how lazy your dice was, until everything is cooked.
4. Add cream. Blend everything thoroughly with an immersion blender.
5. Serve warm with a blast of citrus juice to brighten.

Sardines and Potatoes

I’ve been trying to incorporate more sardines into my diet for awhile now.  If you get reasonably good ones, they are very tasty,very healthy, environmentally sound (low on the food chain, plentiful), and rather affordable.  Just when I’d grown weary of using them as salad protein, Edward Schneider to the rescue.

Make whatever potatoes you like: home fries, hash brown, mashed, steamed, roasted.  Doesn’t matter.  I went with some home fries this time.

Calorie Estimate: 800

Ingredients

Homefries

• 1 T butter
• 1/2 onion diced
• 1/2 lbs. potato, 1/4″ slices
• 2 anaheim peppers, seeds removed, 1/4″ crosscut strips
• salt and pepper to taste

Fish and finish

• can of sardines packed in olive oil or (butter if you can find it)
• splash olive oil (from the sardines if tasty, otherwise drain and use new)
• squeeze of lemon juice

Preparation

1. Boil a little water.  Take it off the heat and put the unopened can of sardines in to warm them.
2. To a skillet over medium heat, soften the onions in butter for 2 or 3 minutes.
3. Add the potatoes, salt and pepper.  Toss the potatoes so that they get pretty good contact with the skillet.  Cook 7-10 minutes, tossing occasionally.
4. Add the peppers.  If the pan is dry, splash a little water in and toss.  Cover and cook 8-10 more minutes.
5. Adjust salt, plate the potatoes.
6. Take the sardines out of the can.  If there oil is tasty and not too fishy, dump the sardines and oil over the potatoes.  Otherwise, drain the sardines first and then splash dish with a little olive oil to freshen.
7. Squeeze a little lemon juice over the top and dig in!

Excellent dinner: leek and potato soup with roasted vegetables and lamb sausage

Here’s a reminder for myself for the great dinner I had tonight.  Leek and potato soup (the alternate version), roasted root vegetables, and a lamb sausage from Uli’s.  Roasted vegetables and the sausage are easy.  The winner was the soup, which was awesome, light, complex, and very flavorful.  It turns out a vegetable soup with roasted sweet and yellow potatoes is a delicious combo.  Everything compliments, and the dish is quite healthy while feeling very rich.  I’ve got a couple more days of this left, and I’m looking forward to them!

Roasted Root Vegetables

I’m posting this just so I have it here as a reminder to roast vegetables more often.  There is no technique, just yummieness.  I find it remarkable how much I enjoy roasted root veggies actually.  This is in contrast to roasted lighter vegetables, like peppers, zucchini, and eggplant, that almost always disappoint me.

Possible Ingredients

• yellow/white/red potatoes (waxy like Yukon Gold), sweet potatoes (400 calories per pound)
• onion, wedges (1oo calories per large onion)
• parsnips
• carrot
• celeriac ?
• butternut squash

Preparation

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Chop vegetables into 1 inch ish sized pieces and spread them uniformly on a lightly oiled baking sheet that ideally has a small lip to catch any oil that might run.
3. Liberally drizzle olive oil over the vegetables.  Salt and pepper generously.
4. Bake for about an hour.
5. Enjoy!

Vichyssoise

Merry Christmas!  I got to try out my new stick blender today.  “Food Network” brand, feels pretty wimpy, but it definitely got the job done.  This potato and leek soup came out smooth and tasty. A classic vichyssoise has only leeks and potatoes, no fennel or bacon.  But why not add fennel and bacon? The stick blender makes it easy to puree the soup, which is very necessary for texture.  This would not be the same as a chunky homestyle soup.  I served it warm for dinner with a half-ounce of blue cheese melted in, but the classic presentation is cold as an appetiser.  I’ll have to try that tomorrow with some of the leftovers.

Calorie Estimate: 1400

Ingredients

• 1 lb leeks, sliced 1/4 inch rounds, white and green
• 1 lb yukon gold potatoes (or other waxy potato), coarse dice
• 1 fennel bulb, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, mashed
• 1 T butter
• 1 oz bacon/prosciutto/pancetta, diced
• 4-6 cups water (optional, and not necessary: chicken stock)
• salt (a few t)
• pepper (about 1-2 t)
• parsley or chervil (1-2 t dried, 2 T + garnish fresh)
• 1 cup heavy cream (could use less, could use half-and-half)
• optional, but awesome: 1/2 oz blue cheese per bowl

Alternate Version (1000 Calories)

• minus cream (I have my reasons!)
• plus parsnip
• 6 oz of bacon

Preparation

1. Over medium high heat, start to brown the butter and render the pork.
2. Add the leeks, garlic, and fennel, and sweat but don’t brown for a few minutes.
3. Add the potatoes and the water (enough to just cover completely) and bring to a boil, then turn to a simmer.  At a teaspoon or so of salt at this point and some black pepper.  Cook for about 30 minutes until the potatoes are cooked.
4. Take the soup off the heat and let it cool for a minute or two.  Add the cream and parsley.  Take the stick blender and blend until somewhat smooth.
5. At this point, adjust the seasoning.  I needed quite a bit of salt and some more pepper to make it pop, but that’s just me.  As you add seasoning, blend it a bit more, and keep tasting until it’s right.
6. If you’re serving it warm, an awesome tip I picked up from a comment in Mark Bittman’s blog Bitten is to place a small piece of blue cheese at the bottom the bowl.  It’ll rapidly melt, so stir it into the soup before you eat.  This adds a really nice touch of complexity that would otherwise be missing and really made the soup feel special.

Vegetable Samosa Filling

Buy some puff pastry, wrap this as a filling, deep fry or bake with an egg wash, and you’ve got samosas.  One can imagine making the wrapping from scratch, but that proved to be beyond me, despite trying.  I’ll say nothing about the shame of using prepackaged “curry powder”.

Calorie Estimate: 650

Ingredients

• 1 baking potato, peeled and 1/2 cm dice
• 1 onion, 1/2 cm dice
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1.75 C frozen peas and carrot mix
• 1 T olive/vegetable oil
• 2 T off-the-shelf curry powder
• 1/2 C vegetable broth
• salt to taste (1/4-1/3 t kosher)
• adjust with cumin (1-2 t) and coriander (1/2-1 t)
• 1/2 t ground hot pepper of your choosing

Preparation

1. Prep the vegetables.  In a nonstick pan/pot with a lid, cook the onions and garlic over medium-high heat until they brown a little and soften.
2. Add in the peas, carrots, and potatoes.  Pour in the broth, add the curry powder, and simmer covered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Depending on your curry expertise (or lack thereof), you’ll need to adjust the seasoning during the cooking.  After about 15 minutes, my old Trader Joes curry mix needed some help, so I added salt, cumin, coriander, and ground hot pepper to perk it up.

Pot roast

Went to Cascioppo for some smoked salmon and saw some of the most beautiful roasts I’ve ever seen in my life: grass-fed, nice marbling, bright red, dry.  All of a sudden, pot roast seemed like a great idea.  The nice roast also cooked to a perfect texture quicker than expected (only 3 hours, whereas supermarket beef will usually take longer).

Here’s a simple and effective one pot dish (well, almost, gravy is easier to make in a second saucepan).  I make this on the stove top, only because I don’t have an over-ready enameled cast iron dutch oven, and I probably won’t have one until after I move from Seattle because who wants to transport a 20-pound pot?

Calorie estimate: 4000

Ingredients

• 1/2 T olive oil
• 2.5 – 3 lb roast
• 1-2 cups red wine (Cabernet, Merlot, more tannic Pinot Noir, Syrah)
• 2 cups beef broth
• 1 very large onion, cut into wedges
• 1 fennel bulb, cut into wedges
• 1 carrot, sliced into rounds
• 1 stalk celery, sliced
• 1 large parsnip, peeled and coarsely cubed
• 1.25 lbs red potatoes, quartered
• salt and pepper
• cornstarch or flour
• dash of nutmeg
• pinch of fennel seeds
• maybe 1 T butter

Preparation

1. Salt and pepper the roast.  One the stove top, in your gorgeous enameled dutch oven (or your roommate’s large non-stick soup pot), brown the roast on all sides over high heat in a splash of oil.  4-5 minutes per surface, including the sides.  For the sides, you may have to hold it there with tongs.
2. While browning, prep the vegetables.
3. After the browning, bring the heat down to low and add the wine and beef broth.  You want enough liquid to go up the side of the roast a little less than half way.
4. Add in the onion, fennel, carrots, and celery.  Cover and simmer for 1.5 hours.  Put the aromatics in now to infuse the meat and the broth, but the parsnips and potatoes should wait so they still have texture when everything is done.
5. Flip the roast.  You’ll probably notice there’s a lot more liquid now from the vegetables.  Add in the parsnips and potatoes, trying to get them into the liquid.  If you’ve got too much liquid (the roast is covered completely), leave the lid cracked.  Simmer gently for another 30 minutes to 1 hour.  Check to make sure the roast isn’t getting overcooked–there is such a thing as too tender.
6. When the meat and potatoes are just about done, drain off most of the excess liquid with a ladle and place it in a sauce pot.  Turn the heat off on the roast, cover lightly with vegetables, put the lid on, and let it rest.  A little of the liquid should remain in the pot so that the meat doesn’t start to dry out.
7. Boil down the liquid in the sauce pot until you have less than 2 cups left.  Adjust the seasoning if required.  A nice touch is a dash (1/4 t ish) of nutmeg and maybe a little more fennel flavor from some fennel seeds,  The subtle touch of nutmeg goes well with the fennel and parsnips.
8. If the roast is fatty, try to skim off the excess from the reduction.  If it is lean, as mine was, add up to 1 T of butter to give the sauce a little more body.
9. Thicken the gravy with corn starch (follow the directions on the corn starch box).  1 T of cornstarch left the gravy a little thin, but I like to err on the side of too thin instead of too starchy and slimy feeling.
10. Plate a bit of the roast with the veggies, pour the gravy on and enjoy.

Perhaps Escoffier might smile, at least a little, at this humble amateur.

Beef, potato, and spinach stew

Due to a lack of planning, I accidentally bought the ingredients for half of 2 recipes today (this and this). Now, to improvise!  Let’s throw together what I did buy, merge the meat and the starches by way of tangy canned jalapeno and canned tomatoes, and spice in the general ballpark of a curry.  This was a winner, and looked so nice in the pot that I had to take a picture.

Calories: 2600

Ingredients

• 1 T olive oil
• large onion, diced
• 10 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 lb stew beef
• 2 baking potatoes (1.75 lbs), 1/2 inch dice
• 1 lb spinach
• 1 cup long grain rice
• 1 can diced chilis
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 4 cups beef broth
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 T black pepper
• 1/2 T hot mirchi ground pepper (or 1 T cayenne)
• 1/2 t allspice
• 1 t celery salt
• 1 T cumin
• 1 t coriander
• 1/2 t nutmeg
• salt to taste

Preparation

1. Make a soup.  By that I mean, look at any other soup recipe on this website and do that.