Oui, Chef

Porcini Risotto with Chicken and Rosemary

For me, risotto ranks right up there with frittatas as a perfect dish with which to use up a fridge full of leftovers.  As long as you have some carnaroli or arborio rice in your pantry, a wedge of parmesan in the fridge, and a good quality chicken or vegetable stock on hand, a hearty and delicious risotto is just a few minutes away.

A few days ago, Muppet and I found a lonely leek, some leftover roasted chicken and some peas that needed to be used up in our fridge.  To these goodies we decided to add some lovely dried (and rehydrated) porcini mushrooms that my wife and I bought in the village of Asolo, Italy when we travelled there last year on a fabulous culinary bike tour with Chef Jody Adams, and our friends at ItaliaOutdoors.  I'm kicking myself that I didn't buy more while we were there, because these shrooms are big, meaty and loaded with flavor, a world apart from the crumbled scraps of mushrooms that often pass for dried wild ones here.

Bacon and Egg Farro Risotto

What is that old saying about dogs and tricks?

Oh yeah...."you can't teach an old dog new tricks, and if by some lucky chance you do, you better be prepared to see him do the same stupid trick over and over and over, until he just about drives you to the nut house".

You see, I AM an old dog, and ever since discovering a new egg poaching trick (first learned here), I'm staying up nights thinking of all the different ways I can use the lovely things.  This dish, the second in as many weeks to highlight the eggs is, I'm afraid, just the start of my old dog doing a stupid new trick routine, ad-nauseum.  

My apologies in advance.

Pistachio and Dried-Cherry Biscotti

 
I found this recipe in the latest Bon Appetit magazine, and knew immediately that I wanted to make it. First, because I've NEVER made biscotti before (I can hear my late Italian grandmother rolling over in her grave at this news), and second, because while I haven't yet dined at Locanda Verde, I'm a huge fan of it's Chef-Proprietor Andrew Carmellini, and have heard great things about the restaurant's pastry chef, Karen Demasco.  When I saw Karen's name associated with these biscotti, I knew they'd be great.

Spicy Pork with Asparagus

 

I knew immediatly upon seeing this recipe in a recent Bon Appetit, that I wanted to make this as soon as our first of the season asparagus arrived.  My wife and I had a VERY RARE night alone during Spring vacation week, so I whipped this dish up for just the two of us, and let me tell you, it was terrific!

Sausage and Chicken Jambalaya

 

This was a dish we pulled together a few weeks ago to feed a large gang heading North with us for one of our last ski weekends of the season.  It was a great prep ahead dish that Boris helped me with the day before we traveled.  He's my go-to guy for prep that requires lots of knife work, as he is always looking to hone his skills in this area.  By dicing and chopping all of our chicken, veggies and pork products in advance, all that was required after our full day of skiing was a quick saute of our prepped meats and veggies, the addition of some stock, rice and spices, and then popping the whole lovely concoction into the oven to bake.

Sautéed Chicken Thighs with Orange-Soy Sauce

 

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

I hope your holidays were filled with delicious food, and lots of love and laughter.  After weeks of elaborate, and some might say rather decadent holiday feasts, we're back today with a perfect, easy weeknight meal that is not just healthy, but is loaded with great flavors.

If you use a quick cooking rice, this entire dish can be on the table in under 1/2 hour, if you cook brown rice as we do, it'll take you about 40 minutes.  BTW - If you are someone who has always struggled with brown rice, finding it a rather unappealing gelatinous mass in the bottom of your pan when finished cooking, try this method the next time you make it.  It is foolproof and yields delicious results.  

Cook the rice as though you would pasta.  Pour however much rice you want into a large pot of boiling water, give it a quick stir and let it gently boil for 30 minutes.  At the 30 minute mark, pour the rice into a strainer and count to ten.  When you're done counting, pour the rice back into the now empty pan, cover with a tight fitting lid and set it aside for 10 minutes (untouched) to finish cooking in its residual steam-heat.  After 10 minutes, fluff it with a fork, season with salt and pepper and add any ingredients you wish to toss in, in the picture above you'll see we've added some sauteed pistachios and fresh thyme.

Arthas, our resident saucier joined me in the kitchen a few nights back to work his magic with the orange-soy sauce, and could be found over the ensuing days pouring the left-over sauce on just about anything that wasn't moving....it's that good.  The sauce is made quickly as the chicken cooks on the stove-top, simply steam some veggies at the last minute, and you've got a well balance meal that the whole family will love.

Cheers - Steve

 

Recipe:

Sautéed Chicken Thighs with Orange-Soy Sauce

adapted from a recipe by Dawn Yanagihara-Mitchell - Fine Cooking Magazine

(Print Friendly Recipe)

 

Ingredients:

• 8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, trimmed of excess fat
• Kosher salt and freshly ground white pepper
• 2 tablespoon canola oil
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 2 Tbs. mirin
• 1/2 tsp. finely grated orange zest
• 2 Tbs. fresh orange juice
• 1-1/4 tsp. cornstarch
• 2 tsp. toasted sesame seeds

 

Method:

1. Season the chicken thighs on both sides with kosher salt and freshly ground white pepper.  Pre-heat the canola oil in a large skillet or sauté pan over a medium flame.  When the oil is hot but not smoking, add the chicken, skin side down into the pan.  Work in batches if you need to, you don't want to overcrowd the pan here.  If the chicken pieces are too close together, the chicken will stew rather than sauté and the skin won't crisp the way you want.  
2. Cook until the skin is a beautiful golden brown, then flip and lower the heat slightly.  Continue to cook the chicken until an instant read thermometer inserted in a thick part of the biggest thigh registers 165°F, about 15-20 minutes total depending on the size of the thighs (the chicken's, not yours!). Remove the chicken to a platter or cutting board and tent with foil to keep warm.
3. While the chicken is cooking, combine the soy sauce, sugar, mirin, and orange zest in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.  

In a small bowl, stir the orange juice and cornstarch; add this mixture to the saucepan. Return to a simmer and cook, stirring constantly, until thickened and glossy, about 1 minute.  Remove from the heat, cover and keep warm until ready to use.
4. To serve, transfer the chicken to individual plates, spoon some sauce over and around each thigh (again, the chicken's, not yours!), and sprinkle with roasted sesame seeds.  Serve with rice and your favorite Asian inspired veggie side.  

 Serves 4

Fig and Radicchio Risotto

 

This was one of the fabulous dishes we learned to cook on our recent trip to Italy with Chef Jody Adams, and the gang from ItaliaOutdoors.  This risotto is packed with flavor, but is relatively "light" as risottos go, there is NO cream, and not a lot of butter and cheese to speak of.  I know...I know, it's hard for you to believe that I can like it so much given that it isn't just swimming in fat, to be honest, as someone that's used to lots of cream, butter or cheese in my risotto, I was a little shocked myself.  

What makes this dish so exciting is the classic juxtaposition of sweet (from the figs) and bitter (from the radicchio), toss in a little saltiness from the cheese, and the earthy richness of the rice and red wine, and you have a dish in perfect balance, without unnecessary fat and calories.  As you all know, I'm not exactly afraid of fat, but if I don't NEED it in a dish, I don't WANT it in a dish.  

Italian Pot Roast

My wife and I sat down the other night with a few cookbooks to suss out some new "ski house friendly" recipes to add to our normal seasonal rotation.  These are dishes that are either easily and quickly prepared at the end of a long ski day, can be made without much fuss by tossing a bunch of stuff in a slow-cooker before hitting the slopes in the morning, or can be made at home in advance and easily transported to the mountain.

This "Italian Pot Roast" immediately caught our eye, and was SO GOOD, that it easily earned a spot in this ski season's meal plan.  We found the recipe in a great cookbook called The Gourmet Slow Cooker: Simple and Sophisticated Meals from Around the World by Lynn Alley, in fact, it is the dish that graces the cover of the book.  Lynn shows the pot roast served over polenta, which was my intention too, but when I went to the pantry to reach for some, I found much to my horror, that we were out!  Luckily, I had some wheatberries there, and some leftover soffritto in the fridge that combined to make a tasty bed over which to serve this delicious roast.

Garden Green Risotto with Shrimp and Guanciale

This is a dish that was inspired by an asparagus risotto recipe I saw in a cookbook a while ago, and I thought it would be an interesting launching point for a light and fresh summer risotto I'd been itching to create.

Concerned that the overwhelming "greenness" of the dish might throw the kids for a loop, I decided to add select items that I knew they loved as a sort of peace offering (read bribe), and you know what?  It worked.  There are peas for Muppet, shrimp for Peyton, and for the boys, the porcine perfection that is guanciale.  

Guanciale, for those of you that haven't had the pleasure, is cured pig jowl (cheek), and is a culinary marvel well worth the effort to acquire for its delicate texture and complex taste, this stuff is very special indeed.  Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm fairly well convinced that the boys would eat a bowl of bat guano as long as it were laced with enough chewy / crunch bits of guanciale.....'nuff said. If you can't find any (the pig cheek, not the guano), thickly cut pancetta would make a reasonable substitution.

Jamie Oliver's Chicken Korma

I've said it before, and I'll say it again....I'm a big fan of Jaime Oliver.  I like his food philosophy, I like his recipes, I like his no-nonsense approach to getting things done in the kitchen, I like the message he's bringing to the world, and the campaign he's built to not only get families eating healthier food, but to get better food into the schools for our kids. 

People ask me all the time, "if you could be any chef on the planet who would it be?".  As you might guess, the normal superstar suspects all come to mind..... let's see there's Robuchon, Keller, Ducasse, Vongerichten, Boulud, Ripert, Blumenthal, and Adria, just to name a few.  But to be honest, if I could click my heals together today and change myself into any chef currently working, I'd want to be Oliver.   I mean, it would be very cool to be any of the aforementioned chefs, working at the very peak of gastronomy, but I don't think there is any chef working so hard to bring better food and cooking skills to average families and kids than Oliver, and how cool and important is that!