Kale & Napa Cabbage with Smoked Chicken (& bbq sauce)

& I'm back...again. I can't promise I will not abandon this blog again. It seems to be a trend, but I like to look back on it as a personal record of our food habits & experiments.

I'm on summer vacation after completing my first three months of employment as a high school English teacher. It was an intense undertaking, but through it, I felt a self-actualization & fulfillment that I haven't felt in any other job or would imagine finding in any other job. I can honestly say that it is my calling.

Am I good at it? Not yet, but I want so badly to be good at it & I've proven that I have the work ethic, so I think it's a good fit. One day I will be a good teacher.

But school's out, y'all, & for some unknown reason, I was not rehired. So, I've done nothing school related for the last few weeks. It feels strange to get back into the routine I used to know so well.

When I began teaching, Mark took over all the domestic duties. I really would not have made it without him. He got up at 6:30 every morning (even though he doesn't have to be at work until around 9) & made me oatmeal. Not just any oatmeal, this oatmeal. He packed me salads every day for lunch & made us crock pot meals for dinner. Sure, we ate a lot of take-out here and there, but we were supporting local business, hehe.

Anyway, now I'm back to the meal planning & dish washing & it's a strange feeling indeed. Sometimes, maybe, I think I'm called to do this work. Then I look at my baseboards & know I wasn't meant to be a housewife.

Enough of the commentary, on to the food.

This is something I envisioned based on what I order at Calypso Cafe, another local place we've hit up quite frequently for take out in the last couple of months. I always get their chicken (either in sandwich form or as "skinless half white with 2 sides") with their delicious bbq sauce. My two sides are always the callaloo (greens stewed with tomatoes) and the bean & corn salad. When I get it, I inevitably end up mixing my greens with the bbq sauce.

So, when my favorite co-op emailed saying that they had my favorite type of kale (lacinato, otherwise known as dinosaur), I thought of an idea to put it to good use. I'd try to recreate that light, sweet bbq sauce & cook the greens in that.

But no, I couldn't recreate the sauce to my liking. However, there was an easy solution at hand: I'd purchase the sauce in pints from Calypso. It was really worth it & it was as cheap as making it at home. $4 for a pint is not bad at all. I'm going to continue my experiments to reproduce it at home, but until I find a recipe I'm satisfied with, I'll stick to buying theirs.

So here is how I made this dish:

I heated some oil in a pan, added a diced yellow onion.
I let it brown. I added some garlic & cooked it for a minute. Then I added 2 cups of our homemade chicken stock & the chopped kale & chopped napa cabbage. I put a lid on it & let it cook down.

In a separate skillet, I cooked 3 pieces of thick, hardwood smoked bacon from Trader Joe's (The bacon was good in the greens, but I won't find myself buying this stuff again. I prefer the leaner, center cut stuff for all other applications). When the bacon was done, I transferred it to a paper towel-lined plate. I poured the remaining bacon grease in with the greens, of course. After the bacon was cool enough to handle, I chopped it into small pieces and added that to the pot o' greens. I let the greens cook for about an hour or so on low heat, checking to make sure they had enough liquid. If not, I added more chicken broth. I also added a couple of glugs of Valentina's, one of our favorite hot sauces. I didn't add too much more beyond salt and pepper, if my memory serves me correctly.

Meanwhile, Mark coated the chicken with salt, pepper, and olive oil & put it on the grill. He's fashioned a DIY smoker out of a disposable cake pan & lid. Basically, you just fill the pan with whatever type of wood chips you like & poke holes in the top. Then you just place it on the grill.

The faux smoker yields excellent results. It ups the flavor of everything we cook on the grill, even hot dogs. & Mark comes in smelling all smokey & delicious, which makes me want to be near him all that much more.

When both the chicken & the greens were cooked to my liking, I scooped out some of the greens in a bowl, layered the chicken on top, and drizzled on some of the bbq sauce.

I'd decided not to cook the greens in the sauce as they seemed to be flavorful enough on their own & I dropped one of my purchased pints of sauce. Oh, the dangers of playing refrigerator Tetris.

This meal was very nice & echoed the Calypso experience fairly well.

I love a big pot of greens!

Tonight we're using the leftover bbq sauce on some tortilla pizzas. Info on that later.

Golden Chicken, Corn, & Orzo Soup

This soup was positively delicious, but the recipe was flawed...or maybe I only like to eat one kind of chicken soup. I added a bevy of spices in addition to the ones called for which made it sort of a Southwestern affair. I used homemade chicken broth which might not have been as flavorful as it needed to be. I was recently talking shop with a cousin and she said she "fortifies" her broth with a stick of butter. I did no such thing and therefore my broth might not have been altogether tasty.

A word about broths: I pride myself on the fact that I never ever buy the canned stuff (Well, I don't buy chicken broth. Beef broth is another story, but I don't use it that often and I have something in the works to that end anyway). I've become a fan of buying whole chickens and dispatching them myself. Err, I have Mark do that usually, but I think I could totally handle it these days. He'd feel useless if I stripped him of his "meat tech" title, though, so I let him have at it. Meat & handling meat turns Mark into a different person. His face just glows. I know how sick and sad this all sounds, but it is so very true. I felt I'd discovered something truly grand when I first put a big piece of meat in front of him. All was good in the world.

Anyway, back to the broth talk. When we cut up our whole chickens, all the "refuse" goes into a gallon-sized zip top bag. The backbone & marrow are supposedly really flavorful. I keep it in the freezer until I have a lazy Sunday or Tuesday (the life of a substitute teacher can be very glamorous, indeed). When I'm ready to make the broth, I pour the contents of the bag into my 5-quart dutch oven & add a quartered onion, a carrot or two, celery (if I happen to have it), several cloves of garlic, peppercorns, dried oregano, cumin & coriander seeds.

We also have a bag of veggie scraps: fennel fronds, onion skin (if it's organic. LRK says it's culinary gold), stems from greens, etc. If you invest in organic produce, you really should be saving your scraps. They make a delicious broth. You use the same method to produce a veggie broth.

If this idea interests you, here's a more thorough explanation by one of my favorite local food bloggers.

I have used her exact method before & perhaps I need to return to it. I got lazy when I made this particular batch of broth, so I didn't saute the veggies or anything. You could also roast them, which is more hands off, but produces flavorful results. Oh, and the addition of Madiera is nice. I don't keep it around, so I'll add white wine or vermouth. Marsala wine is also good.

Okay, so soup. We were talking about soup originally. This soup was really nice. We found ourselves adding lots of lemon juice at the table. This brightened it and made it super fabulous. Again, it was probably my faulty broth, but we found ourselves adding lots of salt. The lemon juice had a similar effect with less guilt.

Here's the recipe & I'll try to update our changes.

Golden Chicken, Corn & Orzo Soup

Adapted from Fine Cooking

olive oil celery onions thyme chicken broth chicken flat-leaf parsley lemons kosher salt black peppercorns

2 Tbs. olive oil (I used 2 T. of butter, because you know I can't help myself)
2 large ribs celery, finely diced

2 smallish carrots, cut into coins
1 medium onion, finely diced
1 pinch saffron threads (I didn’t have saffron, so I used paprika. They’re the same color, so they must have the same flavor, right?)
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
2 qt. homemade or low-salt chicken broth
2 cups finely diced or shredded cooked chicken (such as leftover roast chicken) (We used 2 chicken breasts that were trimmed & smoked on our grill by the meat tech. He'll have to share his tips with you, because, man, it was really good. He gets more flavor out of those paltry things that taste so much like sawdust sometimes. He put together a super cheap, diy smoker situation for our little gas grill. However, grill season is over, so perhaps it must wait.)
1/2 cup orzo (I think that cheese torts would be good too)
1 cup frozen corn
1/4 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
3 Tbs. fresh lemon juice; more to taste
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Tip: You might wonder why the orzo is cooked separately. There are two reasons. If you boiled the orzo directly in the soup, the starch from the pasta would cloud the soup broth, and the orzo would also suck up too much of the soup broth as it cooked. Boiling the pasta separately solves both of these problems. (This is what FC has to say & I kinda agree, but I don't think boiling the pasta in the soup would be so bad either. I tend to like thicker soups. I guess that makes them stews or something, but whatev. However, I do think keeping the pasta separate would be a good thing if you weren't going to eat all this soup right away. We had several servings of leftovers and our pasta never got too soggy, but I worry that if this soup hangs around for more than 2 days, you'd probably want to keep the pasta separate.)

Bring a medium saucepan of well-salted water to a boil over high heat. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the celery, onion, saffron, and thyme. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables start to soften, 5 to 6 minutes. Add the broth and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to a simmer, add the chicken and cook until the vegetables are tender, about 15 minutes. While the soup simmers, cook the orzo in the boiling salted water until tender, 8 to 10 minutes. Drain.

Add the drained orzo, corn, and parsley to the soup and cook just until the corn is heated through, about 2 minutes. Stir in the lemon juice and season to taste with salt, pepper, and more lemon juice, if needed.

nutrition information (per serving):
Size: based on six servings; Calories (kcal): 250; Fat (g): 10; Fat Calories (kcal): 90; Saturated Fat (g): 2; Protein (g): 22; Monounsaturated Fat (g): 6; Carbohydrates (g): 19; Polyunsaturated Fat (g): 2; Sodium (mg): 440; Cholesterol (mg): 40; Fiber (g): 2;

So, I ended up adding Worcestershire sauce, chili powder, oregano, shoot, I don't know what all. After my first initial tastes, it was just so limp. & I started craving Patsy's chicken soup. Patsy's chicken soup recipe will have to make an appearance here at some point. It's spoiled me for all other chicken soups. Patsy is the mom of one of my oldest & best friends, Amanda. She & Amanda are the reasons I love food as much as I do (you know I didn't gain an appreciation for anything but restaurant leftovers living at Peggy French's house).

Anyway, her chicken soup recipe is a lot less fussy & much tastier, so next time, my friends. We'll pick up this chicken soup convo when I have a decent recipe to offer.

Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic

Well, according to this blog it has been almost a year since I last cared about food. That’s simply not true. So much has gone down (pun intended) that I should have documented here. I started a butter business, for example. That was really fun…while it lasted. My dreams were shattered by the U.S. Department of Ag, but who hasn’t had that happened to them, right?

Here's the evidence:

I still have some hope for my little butter idea, but it’s not for right now.

As I look through my photo uploads, I’m overwhelmed with the amount of dishes I need to write about. Food is really one of the most compelling aspects of my life. I wish it could work out that somehow it would parlay itself into a career. Teaching English just isn’t working out, if you haven’t heard. I blame the economy.

Enough with the heavy stuff, dear reader: what I mean to say is that there will now be talk of food here at this domain.

First up, Ina’s Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic.

I’d written this dish into the meal plan as a special treat for having Randy & Sam over for dinner mid-week (the weekends fill up so fast!). However, I got a call for a job interview the next day & decided it was just too much to pull off on a weeknight when I needed to prepare my talking points for 7^th grade reading strategies that night.

Two nights later, on Friday, when I was waiting to hear back from the interview, I decided I needed lots of projects to keep me busy that day so I wasn’t just waiting by the phone. Prepping for this dinner was one of them, but it surprisingly didn’t require too much work.

As a result I ended up making a cake from scratch that day & you’ll hear all about that soon enough.

Mark had already cut the chicken into 8ths with our snazzy new poultry sheers. All I had to do was prep the sides. And it turned out like this:

Ina's Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

nocoupons

• 3 whole heads garlic, about 40 cloves
• 2 (3 1/2-pound) chickens, cut into eighths
• Kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons good olive oil
• 3 tablespoons Cognac, divided (Ina + Hennessy = a visual I love)
  
• 1 1/2 cups dry white wine
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves (I used a pinch of dried)
  
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons heavy cream

Directions

Separate the cloves of garlic and drop them into a pot of boiling water for 60 seconds. Drain the garlic and peel. Set aside. (I did this way earlier in the day)

Dry the chicken with paper towels. Season liberally with salt and pepper on both sides. Heat the butter and oil in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. In batches, saute the chicken in the fat, skin side down first, until nicely browned, about 3 to 5 minutes on each side. Turn with tongs or a spatula; you don't want to pierce the skin with a fork. If the fat is burning, turn the heat down to medium. When a batch is done, transfer it to a plate and continue to saute all the chicken in batches.

Remove the last chicken to the plate and add all of the garlic to the pot. Lower the heat and saute for 5 to 10 minutes, turning often, until evenly browned. Add 2 tablespoons of the Cognac and the wine, return to a boil, and scrape the brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Return the chicken to the pot with the juices and sprinkle with the thyme leaves. Cover and simmer over the lowest heat for about 30 minutes, until all the chicken is done.

Remove the chicken to a platter and cover with aluminum foil to keep warm. In a small bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup of the sauce and the flour and then whisk it back into the sauce in the pot. Raise the heat, add the remaining tablespoon of Cognac and the cream, and boil for 3 minutes. Add salt and pepper, to taste; it should be very flavorful because chicken tends to be bland. Pour the sauce and the garlic over the chicken and serve hot.

We amended our recipe because we only had a 5 lb. chicken. We multiplied everything by 2/3rds & approximated the amounts accordingly.

All I've got to say is "Hennessy Gravy!" (It doesn't really taste like alcohol, but it sure is nice)

Since you're cooking the garlic, it becomes sweet and very mild.

The mashed potatoes were simple and accommodating: just potatoes with 2% milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

The asparagus was tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, & roasted in a 425 degree oven for 15 minutes. Then I added some parm/romano and let it cook in the oven on low (200 degrees) until everything else was done. It might have gotten a little over cooked, but it was still good (I should have turned the oven down sooner).

So that's it: food that incites a religious experience.

Makeup Mega Post

Bet you thought you'd gotten rid of us for good, but alas




we creep right back in again.

This summer's brought a lot of changes in our lives. I have no job! What did I do all day? Go crazy, discover Facebook, become a Facebook addict, read a lot of great fiction, sun my legs a little in a cheap lawn chair, oh, and buy a new house!


My new workshop:

My favorite room in the house. Life with a dishwasher is just spectacular, y'all. As adventurous cooks, I estimate we did about 2 hours of dishes a week (at least!) at the old place. A dinner party took nearly a week to recover from, but not anymore. We've been having potlucks every two weeks for the last 2 months and it literally takes two loads in the dishwasher and that's all! We don't have to prerinse really either. We got a good machine on our side now. We let people eat off of real plates, drink out of real glasses! But they're forced to use plastic cutlery. Somehow we run out of silverware before dinner actually gets served, got to work on that. I plan to buy some sets with the birthday/housewarming money my generous mother-in-law has been sending me. I told Mark we should pop out some kids and we'd really be in the money! Oh Deej, you're the best.

So anyway, I'm going to highlight some of the tastiest of our exploits with brief discussion and links to recipes:

This is the pulled pork we made in April frozen and reheated in May with fresh corn and southern style green beans boiled to death with new potatoes. The pork froze really well. It tasted as good as it did the day we made it.

Neely's Grilled Corn Salad


This was really good. We grilled the corn on our grill pan indoors as we didn't want to light up the grill for just corn. The salad actually kept pretty well for a couple of days, but that's coming from me. I tend to like wilty salads because I'm gross like that.

We had the salad with some lovely burgers. Mark had his covered in our favorite cheddar.

You know, to this day, I've never had a cheeseburger and I don't really want to either.

We got the beef from our coop. It's a little pricey, but it really tastes a lot better...perhaps because I don't feel as guilty eating it knowing it was raised by honest local farmers in humane conditions. The coop now sells all kinds of meat, from filet mignon to chicken bologna, they got it. As soon as I'm gainfully employed again we're going to get some really nice steaks. Oh, that list (Things to Purchase When Gainfully Employed Again) is getting longer by the day. I mourn for our Saturdays at Whole Foods. I can't even let myself go in there anymore. However, there's something to be said for living frugally. We should have been living like this all along.

We joined a CSA this year, which has been nice if not a little bit overwhelming at times. Every Monday I take my basket to pick up our veggies. I soon realized this little basket wasn't going to cut it all by its lonesome, but it works hard for us and has many uses as you can see:


I've been trying to think of creative ways to use up all this beautiful produce and clean out my freezer. This little dish attempted to do both.
Giada's Roasted Cod with Lima Beans



I used frozen Limas and cod (not such a good idea as it turns out). The fish was a very unnerving texture and the extras I added to the Lima beans overpowered everything, namely the mint. I have no idea why I put that leaf of lettuce in there. I mean, I like it wilty sometimes, but this didn't work.

We ate it with a glorious salad alongside.

The recipe came from my friend Amanda's mom Patsy. It was just an assortment of veggies cut really small: zucchini, peppers, cukes, tomatoes, etc. The dressing was a simple vinaigrette. I topped mine with a copious amount of avocado (love of my life these days).

Whew this post is long! Almost finished though.

Being in the CSA has introduced me to some new and interesting ingredients, namely garlic scapes. I'd heard of garlic scape pesto and considered using my share to make that, but then I found this little number.
White Bean and Garlic Scape Spread

It was a little intense, so I topped it with some of the chopped veggies leftover from Patsy's salad. It was very yummy. In fact, I wish I had more of those garlic scapes. They have a lovely grassiness about them.

It was on this very night that my camera broke. I've been in mourning ever since and as a result, I've abandoned this blog. That night I served a beautiful roasted chicken which was so good I've made it a couple of times since. I've mastered the big bird, guys. Well, now that I have one of those probe thermometers that you stick in and it beeps whenever the chicken is done.

My camera didn't break entirely. The display screen is messed up which means we can still take pictures, but we just don't know what of. Hence

what was a perfectly acceptable kitten love fest looks more like photos of an illicit affair: caught red handed.

I'm hoping to get a new camera soon (when we get our gov't check--thanks Mr. Obama).
Until then, I'm determined to post crappy pictures because the food we've been making lately has just been too good not to document.

That's My Potpie, Kitty

I know that's the first line of the Smitten Kitchen post that inspired this endeavor, but I must repeat it because we really did have a newly-adopted beggar kitty pursuing our potpies.


A few more obligatory shots because I'm shameless and you know you want it:




reaching out to win over our friends:


adapting to her new home:


getting acquainted to her new roommate:


that's too much, i know. more can be found on my new blog devoted to miscellany and self-indulgent narrative.

let's shift gears to the real topic at hand, my friends. Mark's bread obsession has led him to pie crust...and pie crust he can do. i know, i'm a little baffled. this man's outdone me already.

we got our inspiration here, and it turned out like this:


The only thing I did differently than Deb & Ina (good company to keep if you ask me) was I boiled the chicken breasts in my cast iron dutch oven with some herbs, peppercorns, bay leaf, onion, carrot, celery, and the greens from the top of a bunch of carrots (they needed a use) which resulted in some lovely homemade chicken broth.

This was last Sunday's work and I was a powerhouse that day. I elected to spend the entire day in the kitchen. That cast iron dutch oven paid for itself that day. I also used it to make veggie broth. For a month or so I've been saving onion skin (as long as it's organic), mushroom stems, chard spines, things that would otherwise be composted in a ziplock in the freezer. I dumped the contents into the pot, added fresh onion, carrot, and celery along with the other items mentioned in the previous paragraph and simmered it for about an hour and a half. I strained it and then added salt. It was very tasty.

I froze two quarts and used the rest to make a curry ginger carrot bisque recipe I found on Tastespotting.



It was just okay...needed texture. Next time I'll add black beans.

So, to recap, last Sunday, I made:
chicken stock
pot pie filling
veggie stock
carrot soup

oh yeah, and I also made maybe my best batch ever of chili powder. Take that last week's bloody chicken debacle.