Steamed White Fish

 Some friends came over for dinner one evening and we co-cooked. He taught me a technique that I have since tried on my own - and I love it. It's a simple one pot dish using your choice of hrbs/spices and a firm non-oily white fish. I used red snapper for this version.

In the original dish we used Asian spicing - fenugreek seed, coriander, cumin, and turmeric. For this version, I used a fennel bulb, garlic, ginger, and aleppo pepper. So this is more about technique than recipe. I used the same technique both times.

Ingredients

1 inch of ginger, peeled and grated

3 cloves of garlic, made into a paste (using a garlic press would be fine)

3 medium shallots, minced very finely

1 fennel bulb diced finely - pieces should be the same size as the shallot

2 T olive oil

1 1/2 lbs plum tomatoes, cored, halced and sliced into strips

1 1/2 lbs white fish, boned and skinned

1 handful of fresh tarragon (divided use)

Salt and pepper, to taste

Mix together the ginger, garlic, aleppo pepper and a little salt. Rub half of this mixture onto the fish and leave for about 15 minutes.

In a 10" skillet, heat the olive oil, and when hot add the remaining ginger/garlic paste and stir for a minute or so. Add the shallot/fennel and soften for about 5 minutes. Do not allow to brown.

Add the tomatoes  and most of the tarragon to the pan, cover and allow to soften for 10 minutes over low heat. Layer the fish on top of the aromatics. Cover again, and steam on low heat for 8-10 minutes - depending on the size of the fish. 

Serve over rice with tarragon leaves as a garnish, making sure that you scoop up some of the juice from the pan and drizzle over the fish.

Chicken Sheet Pan Dinner

We have been doing a lot of virtual wine tastings of late. Each of them takes about an hour, so our standard format is to have some nibbles while the virtual tasting is underway, and leave something unattended in the oven during the tasting itself. Because the duration of the tasting can vary - they are usually an hour, but they have been known to overrun, we want to make sure that the main dish can tolerate a bit longer in the oven than would be ideal.

Also, we don't want a mountain of dishes. It's bad enough having 4 wineglasses per person. Often the tasting will have at least one white or rose wine, and some reds. So, the dish must be versatile enough for that too. Enter chicken legs (thighs and drumsticks). 

Ingredients

3T Olive oil

4 Medium yellow onions (about 3lbs) chopped (not finely diced)

3 Leeks, washed and sliced thinly

2 Fennel bulbs diced to the same size as the onions

8 large carrots (about 3lbs) sliced in medallions of about 1/2 inch thick (15mm)

4 Garlic cloves, thinly sliced.

4 Chicken drumsticks

4 Chicken thighs 

1/2t Baking powder

1T Kosher salt

2 Preserved lemons, finely diced

1 T smoked paprika

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method

The vegetables and the chicken will all (eventually) be cooked in the same pan. But the vegtables will take considerably longer, especially once the chicken is on top.

Heat the oven to 350F and make sure that you have a rack on the middle shelf.

In a roasting pan (yeah, I know this is entitled a sheet pan dinner, but the vegetables are really too deep for that) heat the oil, and when shimmering add all of the vegetables. Stir the vegetables until well coated and saute gently until the oven is hot.

When the oven is hot put the vegetable pan into the oven, and then prepare the chicken. The vegetables will stay in the oven about 20 minutes before the chicken goes in.

Pat the chicken dry. Under its skin rub the preserved lemons (making sure that the lemon gets as far back in the joints as possible).

Rub the salt, paprika,  and pepper into the meaty side of the chicken parts. Mix the baking powder into the salt and rub into the skin side. This helps the skin crisp up. Lightly oil the chicken on the skin side.

Leave the chicken to air dry. With one hour to go, nestle the chicken skin side up on top of the vegetables. Return the dish to the oven and enjoy the tasting!

I typically head to the kitchen to take the temperature of the chicken at around 45 minutes into the tasting. If it has reached 170F or so, I simply turn the oven off. The vegetables will be cooked as well, and the dish just stays warm

Serve over rice - again because that's easy, especially if you have a rice cooker. But even if not, it is not much effort. We made saffron rice for this dish, and served on a platter.

OnePotChicken

A friend of ours had bariatric surgery recently. So he eats far less now than he used to. It's important that what he does eat is really tasty, healthy and nutritious. He doesn't want a lot of potatoes - he simply doesn't have the capacity for them any more. And no carbonation in anything - so no beer (or soda).
So the upshot was to make a one dish meal with chicken... But of course it needed to be amped up, so here goes. The ngredient list looks pretty intimidating, but I would imagine you would have most of the ingredients in the pantry. And yes we did "serve this to people" and Madame said we could!
And, full disclosure, I adapted this from a Serious Eats recipe - Thanks again Kenji

Ingredients

1T olive oil

9 chicken thighs (that's because 9 fit into my largest skillet!), bone in and skin on, seasoned with salt and pepper

8 oz bacon chopped into small pieces crosswise

1 large red onion (that's because we had a red onion - white or yellow would be fine too) diced

1 fennel bulb - diced in the same sized pieces as the oinion

1 head green cabbage shredded like you might for coleslaw

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

2T coarse grained mustard

2t habanero vodka (aka secret ingredient)

3 cups chicken stock

2T white sugar

3 bay leaves

12 thyme sprigs

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Preheat the oven to 350 and position a rack in the middle. I used the convection bake setting, so it doesn't matter quite so much where the rack is. I had these potatoes (for Madame and me) salt baking on the middle shelf.

Heat the oil over medium heat in a 12" saute pan. Make sure it is shimmering and that there are little whiffs of smoke. Place the thighs SKIN SIDE DOWN into the hot pan. Do not cover with a lid, but do use a splatter guard if you have one. Leave over medium heat undisturbed for 8-10 minutes. The skin should brown and start to crisp up.

Once the chicken has browned, flip it over and cook on the other side for 3-5 minutes - just to get some color.

Transfer the chicken to a warm plate and add the bacon to the pan. The bacon will need to cook for 3-5 minutes. It crisps and darkens a bit.

Pour off most of the fat in the pan and then add the onion and fennel and cook until soft and very slightly brown. Again about 3-5 minutes.

Add the cabbage (it will look like the pot is overflowing, but it does wilt down sum. Keeping the pan on medium heat cook the cabbage until some of it gets a slight char. You will need to keep tossing it in the pan because there is so much of it. 

Add the vinegar, mustard, secret ingredient and deglaze the pan.

Add the chicken stock, thyme, bay leaves, and sugar and bring to a simmer.

Nestle the chicken skin side up in the simmering stock. It is vital that the skin of the chicken be above the liquid. 

Put the pan into the preheated oven and "bake" for 35-45 minutes. My instant read thermometer registered a scary 200. But the chicken was fine. Skin nice and crispy. Certainly any pathogens had been obliterated. 

To serve, place the chicken onto a serving platter or bowl. Cover with the cabbage and remaining liquid. Garnish with fennel fronds, and serve.

A bit of work for a Tuesday - total elapsed time about 75 minutes. But a good chunk of the time was spent with the dish in the oven.

Now I have some left overs for lunches. Except, of course, I forgot to take any to work today.

Clams are so versatile

Saturday was a chapter of accidents - I missed a hair appointment, so had to go later. That messed up dinner plans. The French beat the English at Rugby, so I have to have a jeering barrage of French co-workers on Monday. So dinner went from being a nice leisurely affair to an, "How can I do something quick and delicious?" - and something warm because of the weather, fish/seafood based because Madame wanted it...
So the old standby of clams came to the rescue. A trip to my fantastic local fish monger (TJ's on Oak Lawn in Dallas), some minor arm twisting from Jon Alexis there (razor clams and littlenecks), some discussion about fennel and I was off to the races. Jon told me that the razor clams cook quicker than the littlenecks, and to put them in a bit after the littlenecks. I figured that 90 seconds would do the trick - and so it did. Fresh pasta (bought,  this time),  green beans, fennel, shallots tomatoes, white wine..... Oh my. And yes it did get the "We can serve this to people" accolade from Madame.

Ingredients - for the clams

1T vegetable oil

2 shallots, minced fine

1 fennel bulb halved and sliced very thinly (mandoline helps here)   

1 - 1 1/2 cup dry white wine (I used a South African Chenin Blanc called Secateur, procured from Veritas)

1 star anise

1/2 dried cayenne pepper, chopped into flakes (more or less to taste)

6 red cherry tomatoes - halved

6 yellow cherry tomatoes - halved

12 littleneck clams

4 razor clams

salt/pepper to taste

Method 

Heat the oil until just shimmering in a large saute pan(choose a pan that has straight sides and a well fitting lid if possible.) Add the shallots and fennel, cook gently until translucent. Add the white wine, dried cayenne, and star anise and simmer uncovered until some of the alcohol has boiled off. There will always be some left. Add the halved tomatoes, cover and simmer over low heat for about 15 minutes (until the fennel is tender). Remove the star anise.

Add the littleneck clams and cover. Cook for 90 seconds, then add the razor clams. Cook until all clams are open.

Serve with fresh linguine - cooked al dente, and green beans. Garnish with fennel fronds.

Ingredients - green beans

24 green beans cut into 2" pieces.

1T unsalted butter

1/4 cup water

salt/pepper to taste

Method

Heat the butter over medium heat until it stops foaming. Add the beans, toss to coat. Continue to cook until the butter just starts to turn brown. Stop the butter from burning by adding the water and immediately cover the pot and simmer for 3-5 minutes. Uncover and allow the steam to dissipate. Serve immediately.

Clams with Linguine

We were on vacation in England. Renting an apartment which meant that I didn't have all of my usual cooking toys, the ovens were calibrated in C, the knives were not as sharp as mine... But on a whim we had the landlord to dinner one evening. What to make???
We came up with this wonderful treatment for clams and linguine that was simple to make and very tasty. It even got the "we can serve this to people" accolade from madame.

Ingredients (Serves 4)

24 Small round tomatoes (bigger than cherry tomatoes, but not beefsteak size)
1 Fennel bulb (cut into 1/4" slices and then halved)
4 Small shallots (peeled and halved)
1 garlic clove sliced thinly
3T vegetable oil
3 lbs littleneck clams (purged in cold water for about 30 minutes)
1 bunch parsley chopped fine
A few drops hot sauce
Salt/pepper to taste
3/4 lb Linguine (preferably fresh)
Salt for the linguine cooking water

Method

Preheat oven to 400 with a rack in the center. Toss the tomatoes, fennel, shallot in the oil to coat and place in a sheet pan in the oven. After about 20 minutes, add the oiled garlic to the pan too.
Place a large pot of salted water on to boil ready for the linguine.
You need to time the linguine and clam cooking a bit carefully at this stage. The clams take about 4 minutes to open up, so arrange the timing so that the linguine will be just al dente when the clams are cooked. If fresh pasta is used, put the clams in first. If dried pasta, put the pasta in first and then do the clams with 4 minutes of pasta cooking time to go.
Put the clams into the vegetable pan in the oven, replace the pan and cook for 4 minutes (or so) until all the clams have opened up.
Drain the pasta, Place in a large warmed bowl, pour the clams and vegetables over the top, sprinkle with 2/3rds of the parsley and toss to combine. Check seasonings.  Sprinkle the rest of the parsley on top as a garnish.
Serve with a crisp white whine (Sauvignon Blanc family works well).
 

Simple chicken soup

I have been feeling under the weather - with a cough/cold/sore throat. Unimaginably grumpy - poor Madame. So I thought maybe some chicken soup might help. As you can imagine preprepared chicken soup doesn't do it for a variety of reasons. So I needed to make some. This is an unbelievably simple way of doing it - and surprisingly good given the amount of effort involved. As Madame would say, "the taste to effort ratio makes this worth doing". Not quite as high praise as "we can serve this to people", but still worthwhile. The vegetables and chicken aren't browned, so there is no flavor from caramelization. It's just chicken/aromatics/stock/water. It looks like a lot of ingredients, but the prep time is very short. As you will see from the method you just bung them all in the pot.
Ingredients
1 whole roasting chicken (this one was about 5lbs)
2 medium onions sliced pole to pole
6 medium carrots cut into 1 inch pieces
6 stalks celery roughly chopped
2 Fennel bulbs washed and quartered
3 Kaffir (Thai) lime leaves
3 inches lemon grass cut on the bias into 1/2 inch pieces
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups (or so) water
1 Chipotle pepper
3" piece of fresh ginger peeled and roughly chopped
Salt/pepper to taste
Method
Clean out the cavity of the chicken and remove the silly pop up timer (if present). Place the whole chicken into a large dutch oven. Sprinkle the flavoring ingredients (except the salt) into the pot, add the liquids. Bring to a simmer over a medium flame and then simmer for at least 90 minutes with the lid on. The chicken will make its own broth while it cooks. If you cook it for longer than 90 minutes (and it does get better with time), then discard the vegetables 1/2 an hour before the end of cooking and put in fresh vegetables. The old vegetables have given everything up so you will need fresh to get them to taste of something.