Bawdy chicken: Spicy Grilled Chicken Paillards

Cumin and paprika add plenty of flavor to Spicy Grilled Chicken Paillards, but not much heat, as do orange juice, lemon juice, honey, cinnamon and red pepper flakes to the sauce. Recipes below.

MARION HAS ACCUSED ME IN THE PAST of being a culinary Francophile. And I’m the first to admit she’s right. Casting about for some grilling ideas for this week’s post, I came across a chicken recipe that called for chicken breasts sliced or lightly pounded into flattened pieces. If they’d used the modern term for this thin cut of meat, cutlet, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second glance. But no, they used the older French term, paillard [pronounced pah-YAHR], apparently named for a late 19th century Parisian restaurateur. Okay, I was interested. Continue reading “Bawdy chicken: Spicy Grilled Chicken Paillards” →

Spicy Chicken Salad: A little hot, but very cool

Hot giardiniera gives this summery Spicy Chicken Salad a little heat and big flavor. It’s great on sandwiches or on its own. Recipe below.

When the warm weather hits and the great outdoors beckons, we tend to get lazy in the kitchen. We still want good food, but we want it to be fast and easy to make and satisfyingly filling but not too heavy. Like chicken salad. To me, some leftover chicken and a little mayo is one of the great blank canvases of summer, ready to take on all kinds of flavors and personalities. Continue reading “Spicy Chicken Salad: A little hot, but very cool” →

Shrimp Scampi—easy on the butter, please

Shrimp, garlic, white wine and parsley get together with just enough butter for a rich, indulgent flavor in easy-to-make Shrimp Scampi with Fettuccine. Recipe below.

Coming from the ocean as they do, it’s fairly safe to assume that shrimp can swim. And if you look at most recipes for shrimp scampi, they apparently love to swim in butter. I make this classic dish so infrequently that I always forget this about it. Guess I’m so focused on the shrimp, garlic and parsley—for me, these are the ingredients that define the dish.

But when the hankering for shrimp scampi hit last weekend and I started looking at recipes, there it was. One recipe called for five tablespoons of butter, along with 1/4 cup of olive oil—more than half a cup of fat for a pound of shrimp. This was typical. And another recipe called for 3/4 cup of butter [12 tablespoons! 1-1/2 sticks!] for a pound and a half of shrimp.

Don’t get me wrong. I love cooking with butter. It imparts a rich flavor to foods and a luxurious, silky texture to sauces that only it can deliver. But while I usually agree with Mae West that “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful,” sometimes it’s just, well, too much.

So I decided to see how much I could ease up on the butter [and fat in general] and still have have my shrimp scampi taste satisfyingly rich. I ended up with a mix of two tablespoons each of butter and olive oil. Still not a skinny minnie recipe, but since it makes four servings, that’s a tablespoon of fat per serving, minus whatever stays in the pan and serving bowl. Not bad. And please don’t try to convince me or yourself that you can achieve the same taste with butter-flavored Pam cooking spray. You’ll just make me sad. Continue reading “Shrimp Scampi—easy on the butter, please” →

Pasta Frittata: Eggs elevated

Peppers, Parmesan and leftover pasta come together beautifully to give eggs a rustic sophistication, as Pasta Frittata. Recipe below.

I don’t know about where you are, but here in Chicago, gas has already blown past four dollars a gallon. And milk is getting close to that price. So when I saw that Ginny over at Just Get Floury had posted a challenge to make a dish that serves at least two people for five dollars or less, it sounded like an idea whose time had come.

Ginny calls her event the Dollar Dish Duel, and while she just challenges her readers to “make a dish for $5 that must feed at least two people,” I took it to mean more than a simple side dish [who can’t steam some green beans for under five bucks, for instance]. To me, the challenge was to make something substantial that either stood alone as a meal or became a meal with the addition of a small salad or the aforementioned green beans or, as I chose at the last minute, some fresh strawberries.

Ginny says in her rules that you can use three staples from your pantry—salt, pepper and oil were her examples—without counting them in your budget [there’s still time to enter, by the way—the deadline is May 5]. I further interpreted the rules to mean that if I only used a portion of something and the rest were saved for a later use, I could count the cost of only the portion I used against my five-buck limit.

With this wiggle room, even meat could work within the guidelines. And after all, I’ll often buy a package of chicken breasts or ground beef planning to get two meals from it. But as much as I love meat, I decided it would be more interesting to make a meal without it for this event.

Most important, though, it had to be good. I wasn’t interested in simply proving I could whip up a meal for cheap. The meal had to be something I would happily serve, if not to company, then as a family dinner. Something we would happily eat. And something I would happily make again.

Soups and scrambles and stir fry all immediately came to mind, but nothing really got me excited. Soups and I are taking a little break right now; I just feel the need to see other courses. Scrambles sounded too breakfasty. And stir fry main courses without meat almost always involve tofu. Yawn.

Then I thought of an elevated form of scrambled eggs: Italian frittatas. Specifically, a frittata Marion has made a number of times, using leftover pasta. She hadn’t made it in so long that we’d forgotten where she first saw a recipe—or even what to call it. The classic frittata is kind of an Italian omelet and doesn’t include pasta.

A little noodling around on Google, though, turned up boatloads of frittata recipes using pasta—and leftover pasta, at that. Some were baked, some were started on the stovetop and then broiled to finish [the classic frittata technique]. Some used cheese, some didn’t. Some even insisted on using pasta mixed with red sauce, which sounded more like a desperate measure than a recipe to me. But virtually all of them involved mixing the beaten eggs with the boiled pasta before any of it went into the pan. I followed Marion’s approach instead, sautéing the cooked pasta in the skillet before adding the eggs. It gives the frittata a satisfying crunchy quality we really enjoy. Continue reading “Pasta Frittata: Eggs elevated” →

Ethnic Paris: Spicy shrimp from the Indian Ocean

Easy, flavorful Shrimp Rougail (Rougail de Crevette), originally from tiny islands in the Indian Ocean, is one of many exotic taste treats found throughout Paris—and in The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. Cumin, fresh ginger and a fiery little Thai pepper make it a lively main course.

LAST WEEK I WROTE ABOUT CRÊPES, calling them the ultimate French comfort food. And they are indeed quintessentially French, as are old men in berets, accordion players on the Paris Metro and six-week vacations. Continue reading “Ethnic Paris: Spicy shrimp from the Indian Ocean” →

So easy, so impressive: Let’s get this pâté started

This easy make-ahead pâté makes for an elegant first course or party appetizer. Recipe below.

[su_dropcap style=”flat”]I[/su_dropcap]’ve been thinking about duck fat lately. It all started with reading about fries cooked in duck fat, maybe in Bon Appétit, but more likely in a breathless restaurant review in New York magazine. Next, one of Marion’s colleagues proclaimed that her favorite snack was duck fat french fries and a martini. Wow. I’m pretty sure if you look up sophisticated decadence in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of this very snack.

Then a week or so ago, Christina over at A Thinking Stomach did an excellent post that was not so much a recipe as a jazz melody line on cooking fresh vegetables that invited endless improvisation. Basically, you take some vegetables [she includes many intriguing things growing in her winter garden right now, such as fava beans, sugar snap peas and tatsoi], an aromatic or two, flavor enhancers [bacon, parsley, lemon juice…] and some fat. Read the whole post, because it’s much more eloquent and informative than this feral description. But the reason I mention it here is that one of the fats Christina suggested was duck fat.

Suddenly duck fat was popping up all over my radar screen, and I was wondering where it would land first. The answer came last Saturday afternoon at Hot Doug’s, Chicago’s wildly popular [as in line up around the corner for half an hour or more] “sausage superstore & encased meat emporium.” Doug is Doug Sohn, a graduate of Kendall College’s culinary school. Before opening possibly the best hot dog stand on the planet, he “worked in restaurants, did some catering and corporate dining gigs, and edited for a cookbook publisher,” according to a NEWCITY CHICAGO profile.

Hot Doug’s motto is proudly emblazoned on the wall as well as on T-shirts worn by the staff and also offered for sale: There are no two finer words in the English language than “encased meats,” my friend. And Doug takes encased meats to exciting new places. In addition to a dazzling array of perfectly prepared hot dogs, brats and sausages both Polish and Italian, he offers up a changing menu of exotic gourmet fare, including his “Game of the Week” sausages. This past Saturday, it was the Three-Chili Wild Boar Sausage with Chipotle Dijonnaise and Raschera Cheese, but every kind of game from alligator to pheasant to rattlesnake has been featured. And yes, he also does veggie dogs.

One of Doug’s offerings [and apparently yet another claim to fame], is his Duck Fat Fries, available only on Fridays and Saturdays. Now, if you’re a fries fan like me, you’re probably wondering how much better can they get? I mean, they’re fried potatoes, for crying out loud, nature’s perfect food. The answer is, to quote all three of us sharing a generous basket at Hot Doug’s, “Oh. My. God.”

Unfortunately, we don’t deep fry things at Blue Kitchen. We sauté, sear and pan roast like there’s no tomorrow, but no deep frying. We just can’t get our heads around that much hot grease at one time for one dish. So no fries were going to happen here.

But I’ve also been thinking about pâté lately. Let me start by saying I don’t like liver per se—the mere thought of liver and onions makes me shudder. But oddly enough, a good pâté in a little bistro is one of the great food pleasures, as far as I’m concerned. Flipping through my recipe binders recently, I came across a pâté recipe I’d been meaning to try. It sounded good—easy to make too. So easy, in fact, that I of course had to tinker with it. I turned to the classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking for some ideas. The recipes I found there were at the opposite end of the easy spectrum—not difficult, but involved. Still, I found a couple of ingredients and little tricks that made their way into my recipe. And I of course added a little twist of my own. Continue reading “So easy, so impressive: Let’s get this pâté started” →

Strawberries: Tasting summer in winter

Fresh strawberries bring a needed taste of summer to a long winter, with a spicy, versatile salsa and a simply stellar dessert. Recipes below.

An update: In writing this post, I started to talk about food and carbon footprints, then decided to just celebrate strawberries in winter. Reader T.W. Barritt gave me a gentle nudge to reconsider the issue. So I’ve added an update at the end of the post. Probably opening a real can of worms here, but what can you do?

One morning recently I stopped at the grocery store on the way to work to pick up a couple of things for lunch. On my way through the produce section, I was stopped dead in my tracks by the scent of strawberries. It was the smell of summer. And with the winter we’ve been having in Chicago this year—it has snowed 35 days so far, some kind of record—summer is what I dearly needed to smell. And to taste.

Granted, you can often find at least a few strawberries in the store, even in winter. Often, though, they’re blond and bland. Or else they cost the Earth—this time of year, five bucks a pound is not out of the question. But this was a big, generous display of one-pound, clear plastic boxes, stacked high and smelling like a hot August day. And every bit as beautiful as the red, ripe berries themselves was a sign saying $1.99.

I took my time at the display, carefully picking a box that had the reddest, most beautiful berries without the telltale smooshed ones in the bottom that said this batch was past just ripe. At the checkout, the cashier suddenly picked up the box of strawberries and held it near her face, eyes closed, inhaling deeply, a startlingly intimate act with someone else’s purchase. But such was the power of the smell of those luscious berries on a winter morning.

The scent continued to exert its power, filling my office as I tried to concentrate on my work. By lunch, I had scarfed down half a dozen of these fat, juicy beauties, and over lunch, I hunted online for recipes to make the most of the rest of the strawberries, assuming they made it home.

What I found made the most of them indeed—a light, sophisticated dessert with exactly four ingredients. If you’re not ready for dessert yet, scroll on down to a versatile spicy fruit salsa that goes with salmon, chicken, chops and more. Continue reading “Strawberries: Tasting summer in winter” →

Almost sushi: Herb-crusted Hawaiian yellowtail

Coriander-crusted Hawaiian yellowtail fillet, barely sautéed and served with wasabi mashed potatoes and a mixed green salad. Recipes below.

A quick note: The two fish recipes in this post call for a specific type of fish. They can also be made with others—I’ll mention some possible substitutes with the recipes. The wasabi mashed potato recipe doesn’t call for fish at all.

I was recently invited by Kona Blue Water Farms to sample some of their sushi-grade Kona Kampachi. This is their name for their own sustainably farmed Hawaiian yellowtail or Almaco Jack, a crisper textured cousin to the Japanese hamachi popular in sashimi and sushi.

Doing a little research, I discovered these 5- to 6-pounders aren’t just your typical farm-raised fish; as CNNMoney.com’s Business 2.0 puts it, “Hawaii startup Kona Blue is pioneering deepwater aquaculture to farm ocean fish and take the pressure off wild species.” The Seattle Post provides further details, explaining that they do this by growing the fish “in large, space-age cages submerged in 200 feet of ocean and by controlling what the fish eat. The fish are given no antibiotics or medications, just a pellet feed containing fish meal, fish oil and wheat. The fish meal and oil come from sustainable wild fisheries and the wheat comes from an organic source.” Healthwise, Kona Kamachi is rich in Omega-3 fish oils, and independent testing showed “no detectable” levels of PCBs or mercury.

Taking pressure off wild species is a particularly timely topic. Just the other day, The New York Times ran an editorial entitled “Until All the Fish Are Gone” about “the disastrous environmental, economic and human consequences of often illegal industrial fishing.”

Next, I took a look at who’s selling and cooking Kona Kampachi. The answer was restaurants and seafood stores in nearly 30 states across the country. Here in Chicago, respected restaurants Blackbird, Meritage Café & Wine Bar and Rick Bayless’ Topolobampo are among the dozens who serve it. And leading purveyors like Dirk’s Fish & Gourmet Shop and Burhop’s Seafood carry it for home cooks.

All of the above was enough for me. Yes, I wanted to try it. In the interest of full disclosure, Kona Blue generously sent me a, well, generous sample for free. I warned them I wasn’t afraid to bite the hand that fed me—if the fish was less than wonderful, I would say so. They didn’t seem worried. And as it turns out, they had no reason to be.

A big box arrived at my office Friday. When we got home, I immediately tore it open. Inside, I found two fresh fillets, each a little more than 1-1/4 pounds, carefully wrapped and nestled in multiple ice packs. When I say fresh, I’m talking the kind of fresh we don’t take for granted in the Midwest, even in a big city like Chicago. The smell was absolutely clean, with just the wonderful briny hint of the ocean that only the freshest saltwater seafood can deliver.

Also in the interest of full disclosure, the first thing we did was slice the little tapered end off one of the fillets and devour it immediately. This was supposedly sushi-grade fish—that demanded testing, didn’t it? Marion sliced it into thin little pieces, and we had some lazy man’s sashimi. Just the fish and a little soy sauce. And soon we were skipping the soy sauce. It was that fresh, that good, satisfyingly meaty.

Now then, what to do with the rest of the fish? At a party, I had discussed our impending bounty—okay, maybe I bragged a little—with our friend Karen. I said that since it was sushi-grade, one thing I wanted to try was based on a tuna recipe long ago read but never tried, in which the fish was barely cooked on one side only and served cooked side up. Karen had just seen Ming Tsai do something similar with Japanese hamachi on his TV show Simply Ming. Since my half-remembered tuna recipe was long gone, this sounded like a great place to start.

The Ming recipe is simplicity itself. Fish fillets seasoned only with salt and pepper and then coated with a crust of coarsely ground coriander seeds and seared for a mere 30 seconds per side. I’d already rejected various recipes with soy sauce or orange juice or countless other ingredients that sounded delicious but might mask the flavor of the fish itself. But this sounded like it would let the fish shine through, with the citrusy brightness of the coriander as just a flavor note.

Ming serves his version of this dish sliced over a shaved fennel salad. I was just here for the fish. So I served my fillets whole, along with a simple salad and wasabi mashed potatoes. You’ll find the recipe below, along with one for the potatoes. You’ll also find more of a description than a recipe for the even simpler preparation I served the next night. Continue reading “Almost sushi: Herb-crusted Hawaiian yellowtail” →

Lentil Soup: Quick, versatile, healthy and good

Lentils and kale come together quickly in a hearty, healthy soup. Recipe below.

We’re big on beans at Blue Kitchen. Tuscan beans, chili, Cajun red beans and rice, Brazilian rice and beans—beans are versatile, delicious and packed with protein, fiber and a lot more stuff that’s really good for you. And for many recipes, canned beans are just fine, making them quick and convenient.

But when recipes call for dried beans, everything slows waaaay down. They need to soak, often overnight. And they need to cook, often for hours.

That’s where lentils shine. These tiny dried legumes pack the same nutritious punch beans do [according to Magic Foods: Simple Changes You Can Make to Supercharge Your Energy, Lose Weight and Live Longer, eating lentils twice a week can even reduce the risk of breast cancer in women], and they can go from dried to cooked and tender in as little as 20 minutes, without presoaking [at least the brown lentils common in the U.S. do—smaller, firmer French green lentils take a bit longer, 30 to 45 minutes or so].

They can go long too. Cooking a soup that takes 45 minutes? An hour? Longer? Even quicker cooking brown lentils will hold their shape and not cook to mush. [The red and yellow lentils commonly used in Middle Eastern or Indian cooking are skinless and intended to cook into more of a purée.]

They have a great taste, more delicate than beans, and a pleasant mouthfeel. Because they’re packed with fiber—16 grams in a cup of cooked lentils, much of it soluble fiber—they satisfy hunger for a good long time. And because they’re rich in protein [18 grams in that same cooked cup], they’re often used as a meat substitute. It’s little wonder that these little wonders are a staple in the Middle East and India. They’re also popular in parts of Europe and gaining in popularity here in the U.S.

Lentils are wonderfully versatile. They can be used in soups, stews, salads and the fabulously spicy Indian dish, dal. A quick check of epicurious.com turned up 47 results for lentil soups alone. Right here at Blue Kitchen, you’ll find a recipe for Curried Lentil Soup with Chicken.

This lentil soup balances the delicate taste of lentils with the mildly cabbagey bite of kale, another good-for-you powerhouse. A cruciferous vegetable, kale delivers vitamins A and C, folic acid, calcium and iron. It also contains cancer-fighting antioxidants.

And perhaps best of all in this fresh-produce-starved season, kale is actually best during the winter months; it greatly prefers cooler climes for growing.

Oh, and this hearty, delicious soup also contains some smoked sausage for even more stick-to-your-ribs goodness. We’re also big on meat at Blue Kitchen. Continue reading “Lentil Soup: Quick, versatile, healthy and good” →

The bayou meets Brazil: Cajun shrimp and rice

Brazilian rice teams up with spicy Cajun shrimp for a satisfying dinner on a cold night. Recipes below.

Wintry weather can put me into a stew-soup-chili-hearty-heavy-food rut. And while I do love all these foods [and jones for them in warm weather], when I saw a lively sautéed shrimp first course in the January issue of Food & Wine, it sounded like just the break I needed—something I could morph into a satisfying main course. Light, but big-flavored with a lively kick of lemon. And when I turned up the heat a bit with cayenne pepper, it got even more interesting.

Because it was intended as a first course, the recipe didn’t say what to serve with it. My first thought was pasta. After all, with the garlic, lemon juice and parsley, this Cajun-inspired dish that was meant to transport you to the Louisiana bayou was coming dangerously close to Italian for me. But then I remembered the wonderful Brazilian rice that was part of the Brazilian rice and beans Patricia over at Technicolor Kitchen had posted here at Blue Kitchen a while back. That sounded perfect.

And it is. The rice is a nice, deceptively simple balance for the spicy shrimp. With the sautéed onion, it brings much more to the party than rice alone, and its snowy whiteness is the perfect visual foil for the colorful shrimp dish.

Best of all, this whole meal comes together fairly quickly and easily. Add a salad and you’ve got a dinner that blends cultures beautifully and delivers more flavor and appeal than something this simple should be able to get away with. Continue reading “The bayou meets Brazil: Cajun shrimp and rice” →