Tomato Kumato

November 18, 2009

I’m Sick

Filed under: Chicken, Soup — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 7:43 pm

I’m a lousy sick person… probably because I’m never sick, and I don’t really know what to do with myself when I actually am. I whine and moan and complain to anyone who will listen, going to bed early and taking naps and giving myself all sorts of other leniancies I don’t usually allow (I’m very strict with myself, usually), because I have a runny nose or a hacking cough or itchy, watery eyes (of which I currently have all three. Whine whine whine.)

It’s not for lack of wanting to write that I’ve been absent the past few days: first I arrived back in Paris from Spain, then I had to move into my cousin’s and unpack (a task I loathe almost as much as packing–why do I travel so much, again?) Luckily, with the aid of the Artist and the Musician, I managed to move across three arrondissements in a shopping caddy, but that’s another story for another time.

I started a blog post a few days ago… really, I did. I had good intentions. But then I didn’t have pictures and I didn’t have groceries and I went to visit some friends for the weekend, came back, and started going to full-time Monday to Friday 9-5:30 school. I don’t think I’ve been in school this much since boarding school, and even then I managed to take a nap between my last class and “sports,” which were always either yoga, figure skating, or sports excuse from when I dislocated my shoulder… skating.

I’m losing my train of thought, but I’m going to allow it, because I’m sick. And distract you with this picture.

This is my home now. (Literally… this is the view from my window.)

And this is my soup. It’s nothing fancy or dressed up, nothing that you would serve to anyone else aside from yourself and perhaps any other sick friends who may happen to saunter by. It’s not my favorite soup, but it’s mine: the soup I make for myself when I’m sick, because while it’s easy to promise to make someone soup if ever they should feel a bit ill, it’s not the sort of promise that a lot of people follow through on. And with my new crazy schedule (full-time? seriously? me?), I don’t have time for anything more fancy or even for a run up to the 20th for spicy soup–my favorite 7 euro pho from Belleville, dyed bright red with Sriracha, the instant cure for what ails ya’.

I allowed myself a shortcut (because I’m so lenient): in France, store-bought broth does not exist. Can’t get it. Anywhere. I loathe bouillon, but there is a time and a place for everything, and a quick chicken soup on a weeknight is just the thing. You don’t need much if you use enough vegetables, and if you have the store-bought stock, feel free to sub it in. I will allow it.

Chicken Soup for the Sick and Whiny and Lazy

2 tsp. olive oil
2 onions, chopped
1 rib celery, diced
3 carrots, cut into half-moons
3 half chicken breasts
salt and pepper
1 tbsp. powdered chicken bouillon
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 quart water
1 tsp. dried thyme
2 tsp. dried parsley

Heat the olive oil over a low flame in a stock pot. Add the onion and sweat, adding a pinch of salt and stirring occasionally, 10 minutes. Add the celery and carrots and turn up the heat to medium. Stir occasionally and cook 5-10 minutes, until the carrots begin to color.

Move the vegetables to the side to expose the bottom of the pot, and add the chicken breasts. Season with salt and pepper. Turn the heat up to high and cook until the chicken is browned on one side, about 5 minutes. Turn over and sprinkle the minced garlic over the cooked side of the chicken. Brown the other side as well.

Sprinkle the bouillon over the chicken and add the water. Bring the entire thing to a simmer, then reduce the heat to low, add the herbs, and cover and cook until the chicken is cooked through, about 15-20 minutes. Remove the chicken from the pot and shred. Add it back and serve to whiny sick people.

July 4, 2009

Poulet Rôti

Filed under: Chicken — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 12:39 pm

When I was growing up, I was fascinated by everything that went on in the kitchen.

I hovered at my mother’s elbow, trying to get a better look. I asked every two seconds for a “job,” something she would gladly give–as long as it wasn’t something she wanted to do. Cooking with my mother wasn’t about learning: she called us her sous-chefs, but really, she just wanted us out of the way, mixing together ketchup and horseradish to make cocktail sauce or adding oil and eggs to ready-to-bake boxed cornbread mix.

I always assumed I would be like that: after all, I relish every step of the cooking process… why should I share? When I found out I would be cooking for the group in Paziols, I often imagined it as just that: me in my usual place in front of the stove, except stirring sauce for 17 people instead of two. How nice it is to be wrong sometimes.

I never thought I would find more happiness in the kitchen as I do when I’m cooking, but I’ve learned that it’s even better to watch someone else, someone who’s just finding their footing, start to put things together.

Some of the kids here couldn’t be less interested in cooking, and that’s fine. Sure, they’ll all have their turn rotating into the fold anyway, putting on a toque du chef and washing salad greens and chopping tomatoes. They’ll all make confiture à l’ancienne, jam made the old-fashioned way and ladled into glass jars to take home as a souvenir. They’ll all copy the recipes into their notebooks and have them years later in French, which some of them may have forgotten how to understand.

But some of the kids–one girl in particular, this year–are enchanted by cooking. The younger girls turn at my elbows the way I did with my mother, and I search for tasks to give them that aren’t too hard or too dangerous, but one of the older girls has become my sous-chef–my real sous-chef–and it was she who ended up blending together the beurre composé that made up the flavoring for the roasted chicken last night.

She has found a happy place in the kitchen, a place where she is totally at ease. I ask her to do something, in French, of course, and she completes each task–from zesting lemons and chopping potatoes to seasoning salad dressing to taste without me standing over her shoulder–with the same enthusiasm.

She’s nothing like me, moving a mile a minute, running around the kitchen to stop things from boiling over and ensuring that no one is touching my knives. She has such a complete sense of relaxation in the kitchen that I’ve found nowhere except swimming, holding my breath as long as I can and letting the world turn around me while I exist below the surface. She has found perfect zen behind the stove: I envy her it, but I don’t begrudge her one second. I love to watch as she learns, as she watches me and copies what I do, something that is essential when learning to cook in another language. I’m sure that some day she will, like me, find her place behind a stove of her own.

Poulet Rôti

4 yellow chickens
20 potatoes
2 Tbsp. butter
1 tsp. herbes de provence
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1 lemon, zested and cut in eighths
6 cloves garlic

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Wash the chickens and pat them dry. Wash the potatoes and cut into cubes with the skin on. Divide them evenly between two roasting pans. Season with salt.

In a bowl, combine the butter, herbes de provence, pepper, lemon zest and some salt. Add one of the cloves of garlic, minced. Rub the herbed butter over the chickens, including on the breast underneath the skin. Stuff the lemon eighths into the cavity of the chicken, and place them in the roasting pans on top of the potatoes. Add the other cloves of garlic, unpeeled, to the baking pans amongst the potatoes.

Season the outside of the chicken generously with salt.

Roast at 450 degrees for an hour and a half, tossing the potatoes occasionally in the fat that the chicken will render. Serve with spicy French mustard and crusty French bread, and be sure to thank your sous-chef profusely.

June 8, 2009

Goat Cheese-Stuffed Chicken with Arugula Pesto

Filed under: Chicken, cheese — Tags: , , — emiglia @ 1:10 pm

I grew up as the oldest of four siblings, all of whom had drastically different personalities. I’ve recently learned that not all families shout to be heard over one another, but constant noise was normalcy for me growing up: at the dinner table, we talked fast, filling voids with “um… ummm” so that no one would cut us off, taking the words out of our mouths and forcing us to relinquish our chance at being heard. I’ve been told (in both English and French) that I speak too quickly to be understood: this comes from being brought up in a house like mine.

I loved having so many siblings so close to my age, but another thing that comes from being raised in a crowded household like mine is the fact that you’re never alone. To some, this is a dream come true: many people cannot stand being alone and need some sort of noise–whether from the television or everpresent headphones–at all times in order to feel comfortable and safe.

I have always relished being alone: it’s only now, when all of my friends have left for the summer and I spend days on end alone with the characters I create that I start to crave a bit of company.

Luckily, Alex comes home every night for dinner, and so I at least have someone to share my evening meal with. This past weekend, however, he was gone at a conference for Ubuntu up north, and I was left to fend for myself for dinner. Like many of you out there, I took advantage of this time to make something that Alex usually doesn’t eat: chicken. Armed with a pack of two boneless, skinless chicken breasts, I made the balsamic chicken I posted a few days ago and this goat cheese stuffed chicken, served on a bed of arugula pesto, with cherry tomatoes. I plated everything up nicely–I’m allowed to spoil myself–and took my pictures. I brought everything in to eat at the table, and the second I put my knife to plate…

*SPLAT*

My dinner fell on the floor.

Luckily, I had just deep-cleaned the entire apartment (and no one was around to see me), so I picked it all up and ate it anyway. And I’m glad I did–it was incredible.

I guess sometimes it’s good to have dinner on your own, after all.

Goat Cheese Stuffed Chicken with Arugula Pesto

For the pesto:
Note: This recipe makes more pesto than you will need, but it’s great on pasta, which is how I finished mine over the course of the weekend.
2 cups, packed, baby arugula
1/4 cup nuts (I used a mix of walnuts, blanched almonds and pine nuts)
1 oz. goat’s cheese
1 clove garlic
1 T olive oil plus more if needed
juice of 1/2 lemon
salt and pepper

Place all ingredients except oil into the bowl of a food processor and pulse until combined. Stream in oil until the correct consistency is achieved. Store leftover pesto in a bowl in the fridge with a layer of olive oil poured over the top to prevent oxidation.

For the chicken:

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast
1 oz. goat’s cheese
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp. dried basil
1 tsp. olive oil
salt and pepper

Using a sharp chef’s knife, cut a slit into the side of the chicken breast. Combine the cheese, basil and pepper and stuff into the side of the chicken.

Heat a skillet over medium-high heat and add the olive oil. Cook the chicken breast for 1-2 minutes per side to form a crust. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cover, turning the chicken occasionally, and cook until cooked through, an additional 2-3 minutes.

Serve with the pesto and halved cherry tomatoes.

June 5, 2009

Summertime

Filed under: Chicken, Salad — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 7:15 am

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’m going to have to mention this once more: I’m a nomad.

Constantly moving through the years, from the time I was very small and the moves were with my family, one apartment after the other, one move a year until moving was normalcy and staying still was not. Moving to California and back, that unsettling feeling that was “coming home” after a year, an important year where I felt as though I’d grown up, and then being forced back into a shell I’d outgrown.

Bigger moves followed, a reaction to that feeling that I now know as the definition of that oft-quoted adage, “you can never go home:” summer camp, France, boarding school. University in Canada, then Cannes, then here, to Paris, with lots of semi-homes in between. When “going home” became sleeping on the couch in my family’s final apartment (I sometimes find it funny that my parents finally decided to start moving just as I started), putting myself to sleep by listening to old Daria episodes play on Noggin at night.

This wasn’t “home,” and neither was my dorm at boarding school or my apartment in Toronto. Home was, home has always been, not a place but a time: summer on Long Island.

My birthday, June 7th,  always fell right around the time that private schools were letting out for summer, and some years, if it fell just right, that first morning of waking up in my room, the only room that had ever felt like mine, my room on Long Island where the sun shone in through the windows and made everything–the flowered wallpaper, the red-checked quilt, the familiar powder blue carpet–seem bright and right, if the planets were in alignment, that first morning of summer would fall on my birthday.

In the winter, I slept with my windows shut and curtains closed, my mother’s rule, but in the summer, I had control over the shades that covered the three glass-paned windows of my room, and they were forever raised. I could see the tree, our tree, the climbing tree that had been my home for summers in elementary school, directly outside my window. Sometimes, a squirrel would mistake the mosquito screens outside my window for a climbing apparatus, and I would be shocked awake by the pitter patter of claws scurrying up the screen.

Summertime was home for me, where days blended and blurred together, where time was all relative to the sun: every day was a beach day, lunch of sandwiches and iced tea on the boardwalk, afternoons spent floating in the ocean, permanently attached to my boogie board. Pruny fingers shucked corn on the patio, and dinner was nearly always local fish: clams and mussels in my mother’s paella, simple grilled swordfish or “pink” fish–salmon, sole with lemon and butter and bread to soak up the sauce.

Every once in awhile, there was a change in routine, when the day was too long to even imagine eating at home, when all our friends from the beach didn’t want to separate after a long day of playing and running. We would shower at the beach, a strange feeling of walking back up the boardwalk with clean, damp hair, wrapped in a towel, back to the lockers where we would change and head out to the cars that had been baking in the sun all day. We piled in–it didn’t matter who was riding with whom, because we were all going to the same place: Baby Moon.

Baby Moon is an Italian restaurant, the Italian-American comfort kind, filled with good food and huge portions and noise. It’s a Long Island institution, a restaurant that has remained through years of opening and closing, the only restaurant I can remember from my childhood that still exists, its sign proudly advertising its location along the Montauk Highway.

Baby Moon is famous for pizza, for massive dishes of pasta you could never finish on your own. In the winter, when we came out for the weekend, I would sometimes try to tackle a dish of spaghetti and meatballs or my favorite rigatoni Bolognese, but in the summer, after a day in the salt and the sand and the sun, all I wanted were light, clean, simple tastes of summer, and so I always ordered the same thing: grilled balsamic chicken served over salad with tomatoes and red peppers.

It came with a side of spaghetti with marinara sauce, which I always passed on to someone else: with a group that big, there’s always someone else to take the stuff you don’t want. Instead, I concentrated on my own plate, something so simple and so delicious. The simplicity made it, I knew it even then, before I knew how to talk about food or even what the differences in cooking styles were. I just knew that “grilled chicken” meant this charred, smoky flavor that I associated with summer, that the tomatoes were perfect and ripe and red, that the lemon and balsamic dressing was just tart enough for me to crave more.

I didn’t go home last summer: I went to Barcelona instead. I love European cities in the summer: there’s an almost repulsive smell of baking pavement and garbage and people that should turn me off, but it doesn’t… I crave it. But not nearly as much as I crave summer back home, summers of corn on the cob and Baby Moon, summers that make me ache, summers that, a part of me knows, are gone forever.

I’m still in Paris, and God only knows what this summer will bring. My birthday will be spent here in Paris, even though I thought I would be somewhere else by now, somewhere baking hot. My plans are up in the air, something that makes me uncomfortable and nervous for no reason. But I do know, for sure, that on August 10th, I will be headed home. Until then, I’ll content myself with making my own balsamic chicken salad, eating it in front of my own opened window, French doors leading out to our pseudo-balcony, and pretending, when the sun and breeze wake me in the morning, that I’m home again.

Balsamic Chicken with Arugula Salad

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast
1/4 cup plus 1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar, separated
2 tsp. olive oil, separated
a few handfuls of baby arugula
1 endive, chopped
two tomatoes, sliced
jarred red peppers
1 quarter lemon
salt and pepper

Place the chicken breast in the 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar in a shallow dish. Allow to marinate for 15 minutes, turning halfway through.

Rinse and prep the salad ingredients, salting the lettuce (this is the secret that makes restaurant salads taste so good). Heat a grill, grill pan, or frying pan over high heat. Brush the chicken breast with one teaspoon of the oil.

If grilling, grill the chicken breast until grilled through and charred. If using a grill pan or frying pan, cook the chicken breast over high heat, flipping after two minutes, so that both sides are charred and browned. Reduce the heat to low and cover, cooking until cooked through, about another minute or two. When the thickest part of the chicken breast feels slightly firm to the touch (like a well-done steak), it’s done.

Place the salad greens, tomatoes and peppers in a bowl. Dress with the remaining oil and vinegar, the lemon, and salt and pepper to taste.

April 26, 2009

Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: Iron Chef

Filed under: 24, Appetizers, Chicken, Pie, Side Dishes — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 11:29 am

And now for something completely different.

As many of you who read this blog regularly probably know, I am a recent university graduate. I graduated a semester early, which means that most of my friends here in Paris are still in college. There is a stereotype when it comes to college parties: kegs, togas, etc, but that’s not what we typically do for fun around here.

We have Iron Chef competitions.

The contestants are always me and my friend Matt. Katrina is our organizer, but she is a self-proclaimed cook of two things: tortillas and a German dish that I can’t pronounce, much less spell, and so she and Alex are always two of our judges.

We have to find a third for each competition, and this time around, it was Alex’s friend Brigitte, who, along with Alex, helped document the occasion with photos.

Before I continue, I need to make a quick note about the photos. Because I was cooking, I couldn’t very well be taking pictures at the same time, so Alex and Brigitte took care of that. You all remember what it was like when you first started dealing with macros and varying light sources, so please be forgiving of blur and color imbalances. I’ll try to make up for it with my eloquent prose. Or something like that.

The way Iron Chef works is quite simple: each of us puts in a little bit of money, and Katrina goes to the store to get materials: the secret ingredient, as well as a collection of other things we can use. There is always some form of meat (for this round, we each got a whole fryer) as well as a variety of fresh produce, pantry items and dairy products. I always allow the use of my oil, spices, flour and sugar. In addition, Matt and I each select two ingredients in advance that we will have for ourselves and will not share with one another: Matt chose cream and rice noodles, and I had canned peaches and crème fraîche.
And this week’s ingredient was…

Marrons entiers! Whole cooked chestnuts.

From the moment the ingredient is revealed, we each have fifteen minutes to plan out our meals: three courses including an appetizer, a main and a dessert. After the fifteen minutes of planning time, we have an hour and a half to cook under the watchful eye of the judges, who will later judge in five categories: food, costume, kitchen skills, use of the ingredient and x-factor.

Matt washes his hands: points for kitchen skills!

Katrina is camera shy.

Matt and I have very different cooking styles as well as different ways of approaching the contest. I always plan everything out from the very beginning. For this round, I knew that we would each have a whole chicken to work with, so I planned on roasting it and then came up with a chestnut stuffing to go with it. I also knew that I wanted to make a pie, so I was able to make the crust in the beginning and refrigerate it while I worked on other things.


Matt is much more free-form with the way he develops his menu. “I don’t know what I’m doing til it’s done, basically. Every time I do it, it’s like… the secret ingredient is something I don’t know or haven’t worked with before. I write down what I want to do in the beginning, but as I go, it changes.”

Our final menus were:

Emiglia

Potato-Chestnut Soup with Caramelized Onion-Chestnut Garnish and Goat Cheese Croutons

Roasted Chicken with Chestnut Stuffing

Raspberry-Pear Tart with Chestnut Purée


Matt

Goat Cheese and Chestnut Crostini with Dried Cranberries

Chicken Stir Fry with Rice Noodles

Chestnut Rice Pudding

A big part of the competition is the costumes… your costume amounts to one-fifth of your total score. Mostly, our costumes become characters. This time around, Matt was the son of the devil, and I was a hippie. We tried to stay in character while the judges (mostly Katrina) asked us questions as we cooked, much like Alton Brown does in the American version of the television show.

Because you only have a certain amount of time to work, preparation is everything. In my tiny kitchen, this is even more of a challenge. Something like a pie, which I made, is difficult to get right because we only have one oven to share between two people. It’s easier to control the cooking of something like a stir-fry, which Matt chose to make.

While Matt and I cooked, Katrina, Brigitte and Alex watched and drank (it’s dinner theater at home!) Alex and Brigitte also took pictures. I realized that Alex must have been watching me take my food pictures closer than I thought. He, like me, snapped about twenty pictures of each item.

He especially liked to take close-up shots of the chestnuts,

close-ups of Matt expertly butchering the whole chicken,

and close-ups of me chopping things. Basically a lot of close-ups.

I wonder where he gets it?

Half-way through the competition, Matt offers the crowd the leftover topping for his crostini. This gets him a lot of x-factor points.

The pressure is on… time’s nearly up!
When the hour and a half is up, we serve our food to everyone.

After which, the judges have to judge. Katrina liked the soup I made and the rice pudding that Matt made. She also liked the stuffing that came with the chicken. I got points for staying in character while cooking. Verdict: Emiglia

Brigitte liked the soup too (in fact, the soup just got points all around.) She really liked Matt’s presentation of his appetizer: he put lit matches into whole chestnuts when he brought out the dish. Verdict: Matt

Alex liked pretty much everything he ate: he was happy that we both used the goat’s cheese (put cheese on anything and Alex is happy). He liked Matt’s character (the devil’s son). In the end, though, he wasn’t crazy about the stir-fry (some of the rice noodles were uncooked) or the chestnut purée that went on top of the pie that I made. It took him awhile, but he finally made his decision after deciding that he preferred Matt’s crostini topping raw rather than cooked. Verdict: Emiglia

It’s interesting the way that a contest like this changes my approach to cooking. Usually, especially when baking, I make sure to carefully measure everything before starting and to double check my recipes. I realized during this contest that it’s not always necessary: I was able to make pie crust from scratch au feeling just because I’ve made it before and I know what it should look like.

I end up cooking mostly with instinct: I know that chestnuts, chicken and sage go well together, so I build off of that knowledge. I also know that cream and cheese make things better, which is how so much cream made it into my soup (it was delicious, but definitely not the sort of thing I would make for a regular weeknight dinner).

Sometimes, it doesn’t work out: my chestnut purée wasn’t the perfect match with the pie. It may have gone better with something chocolate. A lot of things turn out surprisingly well, and we learn how to use a new ingredient, which is always fun. Because of the free-form way that we cooked, I can’t really offer you any recipes: everything we made was fairly simple. Instead, I can give you basic ingredient lists for the things that were made.

Potato-Chestnut Soup with Caramelized Onion-Chestnut Garnish and Goat Cheese Croutons- onions, potato, salt, pepper, chestnuts, crème fraîche, goat’s cheese (soup), caramelized onions, butter, salt, pepper, chestnuts (garnish)

Roasted Chicken with Chestnut Stuffing- chicken, butter, salt, pepper, herbes de provence (chicken), bread, crème fraîche, milk, sage, salt, pepper, chestnuts, onion

Raspberry-Pear Tart with Chestnut Purée- butter, salt, crème fraîche, flour (crust), raspberries, canned pears, sugar, mascarpone cheese (tart), chestnuts, mascarpone, sugar, crème fraîche (purée)

Goat Cheese and Chestnut Crostini with Dried Cranberries- goat’s cheese, chestnuts, tarragon, salt, pepper, bread, Craisins

Chicken Stir Fry with Rice Noodles- chicken, tarragon, cream, Worcestershire sauce, honey, onions, garlic, mushrooms, leeks, rice noodles

Chestnut Rice Pudding- cooked rice, cream, mascarpone, cinnamon, chestnuts, sugar

At any rate, Iron Chef is a really fun way to get friends together and enjoy a meal. I love being a contestant: this is the second time I’ve been one, and it’s a really fun way to challenge yourself. I know that next time, I’d love to be on the other side, taking the pictures!

March 12, 2009

Please Change Battery Pack

Filed under: Chicken — Tags: — emiglia @ 9:08 am

How annoying is this?

I had put together a very good looking meal. Lots of colors: roasted chicken, crispy and golden, pumpkin pasta with bright orange sauce and green beans with caramelized onions. I reach for my camera just as Alex is about to dig in… and all I get is this message.

“Please Change Battery Pack.”

*Sigh.*

But I need to tell you about the chicken recipe I made last night. I guess I’ll have to trust my words to get the message across, because this chicken is amazing. The chicken itself is flavorful and delicious. I used apple juice instead of orange juice, and added some sage to echo the flavors in the pumpkin sauce. The sweetness of the juice and the herby thyme really permeated the chicken meat itself. However, the reason that I’m loving this recipe is really the pear-onion compote that is born from the sauce. I want to make a big pan of that compote and just smother it on everything. Grilled cheese comes to mind. So does a spoon… but that might kill me. Oh well, it would be a pretty good way to go.

I’m not going to leave you in the lurch as far as food porn is concerned, however. As promised, I do have photos from our orange food party.

But before I get to that, I have two announcements.

1. I have built a recipe database, which you can access from a link in the sidebar (or right here). I have listed every recipe that has ever been featured on my blog, and while I always give credit where credit is due, for simplicity’s sake, I have just listed the name of the recipe in the database. I’ll be updating weekly, so feel free to stop by and check out some of the recipes that have been featured here over the past few years.
2. Tomato Kumato has a Facebook group! To join, please click here.

And, without further ado… orange food.

December 1, 2008

Thanksgiving

Filed under: Chicken, Pie, Side Dishes, cheese — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — emiglia @ 4:08 pm

I know, I know… my Thanksgiving post is late. But to be fair, my Thanksgiving was late: I had it on Friday.

It was tons of fun… and unlike last year, it went off without a hitch. (Wait… scratch that. I had to have my one disaster of the evening. I burned the candied walnuts, but my guests assured me that the baked brie did not suffer.)

Here was my menu:

Apéro

Baked Brie with Candied Walnuts and Caramelized Onions
Pâté, Boursin and Cornichons with Spicy Mustard and Fresh Baguette

Meal

Roasted Chickens (from the butcher… best decision I ever made)
Pioneer Woman’s Sweet Potato Casserole
Mashed Potatoes (mashed with milk, butter, crème fraîche, fromage frais salt and pepper, spread into a baking dish, topped with more butter and baked at the last minute to heat)
Cranberry Sauce
Double Corn Cornbread Muffins (I tossed in about a half teaspoon of salt… baking without salt just doesn’t seem right to me)
Pumpkin Tarte Tatin

Dessert

Pumpkin Pie (I used this recipe for the crust and replaced the spices with two teaspoons of Quatre Épices, a French spice blend that includes cinnamon, cloves, black pepper and nutmeg)
Tarte Tatin

This year’s Thanksgiving had a much better turnout, possibly due to the fact that there was no métro strike this year. The two winners were undoubtedly the baked brie and the pumpkin tarte tatin: I probably shouldn’t post some of the reactions on here because this is a family friendly blog, but suffice to say I think that people were happy.

This was the second year that the pumpkin tarte tatin was on the menu, and I made a few changes, increasing the amount of goat cheese and baking it like a typical tarte as opposed to upside down, which made the top even more delicious and caramelized.

The baked brie was a new addition, but it was a welcome one. After trying four different stores and coming up empty-handed on my search for phyllo pastry, I simply used a frozen pâte feuilleté, or quiche dough, which worked fine. I decided to use apricot jam, and, as I mentioned before, there were no candied walnuts, but the presence of caramelized onions more than made up for it in the opinion of my diners.

What did I like best? The fact that nothing had to be done last minute. I worked from noon until 8: I had a very specific schedule that involved at least an hour of planning, knowing when the oven would be free, when I would be able to pay attention to caramelized onions, and when I would have enough burners. It was a very well-made schedule, and I’m a tiny bit embarrassed about how proud I was of it.

But as soon as my guests arrived, I was free to sit with them and chat with nothing more to do than remove the dishes from the oven and put them on the table.

I think I’m getting the hang of this.

Ok… my minions helped.

September 11, 2008

New Chicken Parmesan

Filed under: Chicken, Pasta, cheese — Tags: , , , , — emiglia @ 2:04 pm

Chicken parmesan was one of my favorite dishes growing up, so when I saw this recipe for “new” chicken parmesan, I had to try it. However, I had one glitch: it was an oven dish, and all I had was a hot plate.

I did some quick thinking and came up with this variation. I’ve never tried the real thing, but mine was awfully tasty…

New Chicken Parmesan (adapted from Bon Appétit)

2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
5 ripe tomatoes
Large pinch of dried crushed red pepper

2 skinless boneless chicken breast halves (about 6 ounces each)
3/4 cups finely grated Parmesan cheese, divided

salt and pepper

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. When hot, add the garlic and stir just until fragrant. Add the tomatoes, red pepper, and salt and pepper. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes have released their juices and the sauce has thickened somewhat.

Meanwhile, season the chicken in salt and pepper. When the sauce has cooked, remove it from the pan, add a bit more olive oil if necessary, and heat the pan over high heat. Sear the chicken on both sides. Add the sauce back to the pan and reduce the heat to medium. Cover and cook ten minutes, until the chicken is nearly cooked through. Top with parmesan cheese and re-cover. Cook until the cheese is melted, about five more minutes

August 22, 2008

Lemon-Spinach Chicken

Filed under: Chicken — Tags: , , , , — emiglia @ 6:34 pm

Sometimes, the easy classics are good to serve up for something quick and comforting. I dug this out of my archives of unposted photos and decided to share it with you today, because I lost the little blue thing that reads my memory card somewhere in the abyss that is the Volkswagon Transporter, and I’m way too lazy to go out and find it at this time of night. I swear, I really did go to Barcelona. And I really did eat things there. You just don’t know about it yet.

In the meantime, have fun with this quick and simple recipe for a chicken piccata-inspired dish that I made at the beginning of the summer. The ingredients are things that I pretty much always have around or can pick up on short notice, and the techniques are fairly basic: this recipe was one of three or four in my repertoire when I first started out cooking for myself.

The key is cooking the chicken in the wine: it’s a bit like poaching, and the juiciness that the extra bit of liquid imparts on the chicken means that even the most inexperienced of cooks won’t be plagued with the whole dry-as-a-bone boneless, skinless chicken breast fiasco that makes everyone understand why this particular cut of poultry is regarded as the dreaded “diet food.” Believe me, this flavorful sauce, while suspiciously low in calories (really, it’s just some wine and a bit of olive oil, and the rest is “free”) is super high in flavor.

Alternatively, you could do it with bone-in chicken pieces (I’m a fan of thighs: cheap and flavorful). Slightly less diet-y, but twice the fun! If you decide to go this route, I would recommend browning the chicken on the stovetop but finishing it (including the sauce) in the oven at 350 degrees Farenheit for even cooking.

Lemon-Spinach Chicken

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup white flour
1 lemon
½-1 cup white wine
salt and pepper


8 oz. spaghetti
1 cup thawed frozen spinach

Heat a skillet to medium-high heat. Bring a pot of salted water to a boil. Rinse and pat dry the chicken. Dredge first in flour, then in egg, allowing the excess to drip off, and then again in flour. Salt and pepper the chicken breasts.

Heat the olive oil in the skillet until hot but not smoking. Lay the chicken breasts in the pan and allow to sear, two minutes on each side. For optimal browning, do not move the chicken while it is browning.

Turn the heat down to medium low and add the wine to the pan. Allow to cook, making sure that there is always liquid in the bottom of the pan so that the chicken does not burn. Turn once.

Meanwhile, cook the spaghetti in the boiling water until al dente, about six minutes. Drain, reserving about a cup of cooking liquid, and add the spinach to the pasta.

Squeeze the juice of half a lemon over the chicken, and then remove to a separate plate. Add more wine to the pan if necessary, and scrape up all of the bits on the bottom. Whisk together and add to the spaghetti. Add the juice of the other half of the lemon.

Serve the chicken over the spaghetti, with cheese on the side if desired.

June 21, 2008

Lager Lemon Chicken

Filed under: Chicken — Tags: , , , — emiglia @ 3:21 am

As of late, it may seem to you all that I haven’t been cooking.

Sure, I’ve been posting, but any recipes are from back in Paris, and since I left Paris over a month ago, it appears, from this blog, that I have not been cooking at all since I left. Well, I gotta tell ya, it’s simply not true… and taken completely out of context.

While I did take a short (OK, month-long) break from cooking, for the past two weeks I’ve had my very own hot plate to cook for my very own Canadian again. I’ve just been moving through my photo archives instead of posting the more recent stuff.

But that all ends here, my friends. Today, I have to show you what I made for dinner last night, because it’ll knock your socks off. (My best friend growing up got very upset with his uncle when he told him this and then the socks did not actually fly from his feet. It was very, very sweet. And also kind of sad.)

So, without further ado, I bring you Lager and Lemon Grilled Chicken. I found the recipe through Gretchen at Canela and Comino, but originally it’s from Cooking Light (bonus points!)

It’s supposed to be grilled chicken, but since all I have is a stovetop, I seared the chicken on both sides in a little bit of olive oil, and then I poured the rest of the marinade in so that the chicken could poach in it. Once the marinade had reduced by about half, I served the chicken, along with the marinade as a sauce, over zucchini.

The only other changes I made were to halve the garlic cloves and throw them in the marinade instead of mincing them, and to also throw in two of these green not-too-hot peppers that I bought in bulk at my Spanish grocery store thinking they were spicy jalapenos only to learn that they were… well… not.

You must go try this chicken now. It is so amazingly flavorful, ridiculously easy and actually good for you! All is well with the world!

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