Kosher-Style Pork Cracklins

Cook's Illustrated now has a feature on their website where paid members can watch videos. I love them! I watched a 60 second video on how to cook this meal. It's easier to understand what to do when it's shown to you rather than only written. In addition to the main video, there were others to help, too! Showing tips on browning chicken, cutting bone-in chicken breasts and what size knife to use. Fantastic!

The tricky part of this recipe is finding pickled hot cherry peppers. I found pickled sweet cherry peppers, but not hot. I also couldn't find bone-in chicken breast from the SuperHEB which has sold it before. The recipe did say I could use bone-in chicken thighs instead of breasts, so I took that option. It also said banana peppers instead of cherry peppers, but I had left the article at home with the name of the alternative. Sheri suggested using the sweet peppers, but instead of sweet Italian sausage, using hot. Since I had already bought the sweet sausage, I figured I'd go with that for now.

This was a very yummy dish! I was mildly disappointed in the chicken, but only because the pieces were thighs. I think chicken breasts would have been much better. If you want a non-spicy dish, this was the way to make it! However next time, I would use hot Italian sausage if I couldn't find hot cherry peppers. We doubled the cornstarch as the sauce was extremely thin. In my opinion, "4-6 servings" is a bit of a stretch. I'd say it's 4. I bought some orzo pasta as one of the suggested sides, but then forgot to make it.

This dish did take awhile to make, but it was very nice having a 25 minute break while the chicken cooked in the oven. I took the opportunity to call my grandmother. She asked what I was cooking, so I told her. She quickly replied, "I'll be right over!" Too bad she lives so far away.

Ah! I just remembered the most important lesson learned. At one point, Jay was reading the instructions aloud to me while I was at the stove. "Add sugar, vinegar and broth." "Broth??? What broth???" It turns out I had missed four ingredients listed at the top of a second column. YIKES! It turned out to be just fine. I hadn't planned on using parsley anyway. I had the cornstarch, chicken broth and fresh thyme on hand. Phew!

• Italian-Style Chicken with Sausage, Peppers and Onions (Cook's Illustrated, May & June 2007, p. 10)

This turned out really well and is fairly quick to make. I was suprised to be eating whole leaves of sage and liking it! This was my first time working with portabella mushrooms, and I struggled with it. They were difficult to scrape clean, the mushrooms easily fell apart, and slicing wasn't all that easy, either. Plus it looked disgusting (worse than chicken!) while I was working with it.

I used only a half pound of spaghetti (recipe calls for 3/4 lb) and also cut the other ingredients accordingly. I'd say the original recipe is 6 servings, not 4. I used whole wheat spaghetti, which goes very nicely with this recipe. One of the steps has you adding 6 Tbs of butter(!!!!) I halved it, and I still feel I could have had less. Probably 3 Tbs is all you need if making the full recipe. I like that the majority of the ingredients I probably already have at home.

Lessons learned:
• Start the water for the pasta before prepping everything.
• Remember the cheese! (I added it on after the photo.)
• Placing a measuring cup in the colander is a great reminder to reserve the pasta water.
• Cooking sage leaves in butter makes them crunchy. Weird!

• Spaghetti with Portabellas, Sage & Walnuts (Fine Cooking, March 2007, p.26A)