A Pause To Admire Nature's Beauty

This beautiful anole took a stroll across our patio railing.  Check out his beautiful scarlet throat.

Succulent Roast Chicken

This is a simple recipe for roast chicken.

1 3-5 pound brined chicken
10 or more garlic cloves, peeled
1 lime, cut in half
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Spice rub of your choice

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Cover a shallow sheet pan with aluminum foil (for easy cleanup later).  Spray both sides of a baking rack with oil (also for easy cleanup later), using your Misto sprayer or a Pam-type cooking spray.  Set the baking rack on top of the foil-lined sheet pan. 

Stuff the chicken cavity with the peeled garlic cloves and the lime halves. 

Drizzle the chicken with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and plenty of your choice of spice rub.

Rub the oil/salt/pepper/spice rub mixture all over the chicken and under the skin.  Truss the chicken.   While this isn't absolutely necessary, it will give you a prettier, more evenly roasted chicken.  I'm no expert on trussing techniques.  Basically you want to pull the wings in tight to the body of the bird and tie the tips of the drums together.  You can do a Google search for "trussing a chicken" and find some good instructional YouTube videos that can demonstrate far better than I can.

Place the trussed or un-trussed chicken on the baking rack and put it in the preheated oven.  Roast for 30 minutes at 450 degrees, then lower oven temperature to 350 degrees and roast in 30-minute increments until done, checking the temperature of the chicken every 30 minutes with an instant read thermometer.  The USDA recommends an internal temperature of 165 degrees for poultry.  One of the great things about brining your poultry before roasting is that in addition to making it more flavorful it also allows it to retain tenderness and juiciness so you can easily roast it to a safe temperature without drying it out.

Morgan's Cream of Cauliflower Soup

This soup received an enthusiastic seal of approval from my stepdaughter Morgan.  I used homemade smoked chicken stock (made with the carcass of a chicken my hubby smoked) and Penzey's toasted, granulated onion powder, which gave the soup a smoky, toasty flavor and a golden brown color.  Store-bought chicken stock and onion powder would make a really good soup too.  Just use the best ingredients you have available.

This recipe makes enough soup for a starter course for 4 people.

Morgan's Cream of Cauliflower Soup

1 head of cauliflower
salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons flour
2 cups chicken stock
2 teaspoons onion powder
1/2 cup half-and-half
big splash of sherry (optional)

Cut the cauliflower into quarters.  Trim and remove the leaves and core (don't forget to toss them into a freezer bag for making veggie broth).  Roughly dice the cauliflower quarters into chunks.  Boil the cauliflower chunks in lightly salted water in a saucepot until very tender, about 10-15 minutes.  Drain.

Meanwhile, as the cauliflower is boiling, melt butter in a large, heavy saucepan.  Add the flour and cook and whisk for several minutes to cook the flour.  Whisk in the chicken stock, several grinds of black pepper, and onion powder.  Stir in the cauliflower.  Simmer 5 minutes to marry the flavors. 

Carefully puree the soup using an immersion (stick) blender.  Alternatively, you can cool the soup for a while and puree it in a blender, then return it to the saucepan.

Add half-and-half and sherry and simmer another 5 minutes, then serve.

Chicken with Asiago, Prosciutto, and Sage

This recipe is slightly adapted from this recipe from the blog Dinners for a Year and Beyond.

Chicken with Asiago, Prosciutto, and Sage


serves 4-6


2 pounds of chicken breast tenders, pounded to 1/4-inch thickness
flour
salt and pepper
4 tablespoons butter, divided
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 pound asiago cheese (shredded or sliced into thin strips)
1/2 pound thin prosciutto slices
2/3 cup dry white wine
2 teaspoons minced fresh sage
squeeze of fresh lemon juice
whole sage leaves (for garnish)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

First sprinkle chicken all over very lightly with salt and set aside for a few minutes while you measure and prepare the other ingredients.

Sprinkle salted chicken with pepper and dredge in flour, shaking off excess.

Melt 2 tablespoons butter with the olive oil in large saute pan over medium-high heat.  Add chicken breasts and saute until brown, 3 to 4 minutes per side.  Lay the chicken pieces in a rimmed baking sheet and set the saute pan aside; you'll be using the pan with any remaining drippings for the sauce.

Sprinkle or place most of the cheese over the chicken pieces, then drape prosciutto slices over each chicken piece, and finally top with the remainder of the cheese.  Bake until the cheese melts and the prosciutto gets slightly crisp, about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile add wine, minced sage, and remaining 2 tablespoons butter to skillet.  Boil until sauce is reduced by half, scraping up brown bits.  Add a squeeze of lemon juice.

Transfer chicken pieces to serving platter.  Top each with a sage leaf, drizzle pan sauce over, and serve.

Chicken Stir-Fry

Most of us home cooks don't have the mega BTU output stovetops needed for truly authentic wok cooking.  But with a little thoughtful ingredient prep we can create a pretty darn good replica.  Currently I'm using a big cast-iron skillet on an electric stove, so this is totally a do-what-you-can-with-what-you-have kind of recipe.

When prepping ingredients, remember to cut them to a size that's convenient for eating with chopsticks (the only proper way to eat stir-fry) and prep them so that they cook in only a couple of minutes.

In this recipe I use velveted chicken, which is perfect for cooking quickly over medium-high heat.  I salt the squash, then rinse and pat dry.  This gives the squash some flavor, and more importantly removes a lot of moisture so that the squash can cook quickly into lovely individual golden bites and not turn into a mushy, gloppy, tasteless mess.  I blanch the broccoli in salted water, and drain.  That preserves the beautiful green color and perfectly prepares the broccoli for quick stir-frying.

Have fun experimenting with stir-fry ingredients.  Prep veggies according to their textures.  When you're prepping soft, high-moisture veggies (squash, zucchini squash, tomatoes), salt for at least 30 minutes, rinse, and pat them dry.  When you're prepping firmer, tougher veggies (broccoli, green beans, asparagus), blanch in boiling salted water and drain.  Quick-cooking ingredients like mushrooms, sprouts, green onions, and herbs don't need any special prep treatment; just add them to the skillet or wok toward the end of the cooking process.  The objective is for every ingredient to be flavorful, cook quickly, and not leave a puddle of water in the skillet or wok.

Chicken Stir-Fry Recipe

1 1/2 pounds of velveted chicken pieces
1/4 cup peanut oil
1 yellow summer squash, cut in bite-size chunks
1 broccoli crown, cut in small florets
kosher salt
4 green onions, thinly sliced
1 cup bean sprouts
1/4 cup soy sauce
chopped basil and cilantro to taste

Prepare The Squash:
Place in a colander over a bowl and sprinkle all over with kosher salt. Let sit at least 30 minutes to allow the salt to draw the moisture out of the squash. Then rinse well, drain, and pat dry on paper towels.

Prepare The Broccoli:
Boil salted water in a medium-size saucepan. Drop the broccoli in, bring water back to a boil, and cook for 1 minute. Drain the broccoli from the water and cool in an ice bath or under cool running water to stop the cooking process.

Heat the peanut oil in a cast-iron skillet or wok over medium-high heat.  Don't be afraid of heat here.  You want everything to brown a little to develop the flavor and you're using enough oil and stirring constantly so nothing sticks.  Add chicken and stir-fry for 2 to 3 minutes, until it starts to brown.  Add squash and stir-fry for 2 to 3 minutes, until it starts to brown.  Add broccoli and stir-fry 1 minute.  Add green onion, bean sprouts, and soy sauce and stir-fry 1 minute.  Turn off heat, add basil and cilantro, stir well, and serve. 

Don't forget the chopsticks!

Velveting Chicken

I recently discovered the technique of velveting chicken.  It's sort of a parcooking method for chicken so that you can then stir-fry it in your favorite recipe without it overcooking and becoming dry.  The results are surprisingly good and the technique is pretty simple, always a combination I like. 

Whenever you prepare chicken, I recommend brining the chicken first to make it juicy, tender, and tasty.  That holds true for chicken for stir-fry.  It's not essential to brine, but the results are worth the small investment of effort and time.  If you brine and velvet chicken for your next stir-fry, it'll be the difference between, "This chicken is good," and "Wow, how did you make this?!"

Velveting Chicken

1 1/2 pounds of boneless skinless chicken breast, fat and any other "icky" stuff trimmed away, cut into small bites or small strips for stir-frying (brined if desired), rinsed and patted dry
2 egg whites
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 cups peanut oil

In a bowl large enough to easily hold the chicken, mix the egg white and cornstarch together.  Add the chicken to the egg white/cornstarch mixture and coat well.   The easiest way to coat well is to use the tools God gave you (your hands).  Cover the bowl and place in the fridge for 30 minutes.  Remove from the fridge, empty the chicken into a colander, and allow the excess egg/cornstarch mixture to drain off very well. 

Heat the oil in a wok or Dutch oven to 275 degrees.  Use a candy/frying thermometer to monitor the temperature, and heat the oil slowly as the oil gets to 275 pretty quickly and it's much more time consuming to wait for the oil to cool back down than it is to slowly bring it to temp in the first place.

When oil reaches 275 degrees, drop the chicken pieces in and stir gently to keep them separate and prevent them from sticking to the bottom of the pan.  They just need to cook around 30 seconds until they turn very white.  The color change will be really obvious and they'll also float up a bit.  Remove with a spider and drain in a colander or on paper towels to remove the excess oil.

**You're now ready to cook the chicken in your favorite stir-fry recipe.  Please note that after velveting the chicken will not be fully cooked and will not yet be at a safe temperature for consumption.**

One last note:  Using 2 cups of peanut oil for a 30-second cooking process might seem wasteful; however, the oil will still be absolutely pristine after velveting the chicken, so after it cools it can be poured into a jar to save for another use. 

Eye of Round Roast

1 1/2 pound eye of round roast
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 head of garlic
1/4 cup capers
6 Thai bird chilis
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 Tablespoons olive oil
3 slices of bacon, cut in half
1/2 cup beef broth
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup armagnac or cognac

I went to one of our favorite Asian markets yesterday, Carrollton Plaza Supermarket, intending to purchase a beef tenderloin.  Normally they have entire beef tenderloins at ridiculously low prices. They didn't have any beef loin; however, they had some eye of round roasts.  I didn't really know anything about preparing eye of round.  It looks pretty, but unfortunately that's probably because it's very lean and has no marbling.  I just bought a small portion, about a pound and a half, so that we could experiment without too much investment.

After doing a fair amount of Google research I found recommendations that ran the gamut from fast high temp cooking with no liquid to slow low temp braising.  Here's the technique I decided on.  I butterflied the loin, then used a multi-blade meat tenderizer (http://www.amazon.com/Norpro-7032-Professional-Meat-Tenderizer/dp/B00004UE7Y/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1310694673&sr=8-4) to perforate the meat all over.  I sprinkled the meat on both sides with the salt and let it rest at room temp for at least an hour.

Preheat your oven to 250 degrees.

While the meat was resting with the salt, I coated a cast iron skillet with the olive oil and cooked the bacon slices over low heat to render their fat.

Also while the meat was resting I peeled and diced the garlic, roughly chopped the capers, removed the stems from the peppers, cut them in half, removed the seeds, and very thinly sliced them, ground the black pepper and mixed all that together.

Now rinse the salt off the roast and pat dry.  Put the prepared mixture down the middle.  Either roll up or fold each side in, whichever works better with the cut, shape, and thickness of your eye of round roast.  Then use butcher's twine to truss up your pretty little roast package nice and neat.  Remove the bacon slices from the skillet and reserve them.

Increase the heat to medium high.  Brown the roast all over.  Add the beef broth, soy sauce, and armagnac to the skillet, bring to a low boil, and cook for 2-3 minutes.

Lay the bacon slices over the roast, put the skillet in the oven, and cook at 250 degrees for one hour.  Turn the oven off and leave the roast for one hour without opening the oven.  Remove roast from oven, cut away the trussing, slice, and serve.