Kosher-Style Pork Cracklins

On Sunday, Amy, Shayla and I made a few chicken dishes. My favorite for taste was Chicken with Mustard Cream on Watercress from Epicurious. Since it was so quick and easy, I made it again for Jay. Instead of watercress, I just used spinach. I didn't quite pound the chicken thin enough and "medium" on my stove is not the same temperature as on Amy's stove. So even though I increased the heat, I still had to cook the chicken a little extra. It still turned out perfect. Jay liked the mustard sauce. He pointed to the wall in the dining room with his bike on it and said something like "What's that?" as he pretended to lick the plate.

Amy's flog entry for the dish

This was the first recipe I picked out when I bought my first fine cooking magazine, and I had been eager to try it out. I wanted to try it on my own first, but never ended up having the time. So I made it last night.

It specifies Lucques or Picholine green olives, but when I asked the olive expert on duty at Whole Foods at Gateway, the guy barely knew what I was talking about. Picholine was listed on their info sheet about olives, but wasn't labelled on the olive bar below. Also, they didn't have a very good selection of canned olives. All of them were green olives stuffed with something. So I asked said olive expert for advice, and he suggested using Beldi olives. Of course I could have figured it out on my own if I had noticed that those were the only non-stuffed green olives available. I bought a small amount, when I planned on cooking 1 chicken for me, but on Friday I just got nearly a big container full, just so I wouldn't run out. That was a good move, as we were able to eat a few while cooking and have enough for the recipe. I halved the recipe, so I should have only needed about 3/4 cup of olives, but the magazine also said about 1/4 pound (4 ounces), and when I hit 3/4 cup of olives it was only 2 ounces. So I filled it up to 3 ounces worth, which was still below 1 cup, and called it good enough.

I skipped adding any parsley since I am not a parsley fan.

I happily mashed up a garlic clove.

Then I thumbed through the magazine looking for information on toasting almonds. I thought I had read something in the magazine about it. Instead, I found a little tip on what they mean by pounding garlic to a paste with a pinch of salt. I had done it wrong. Oops. Oh well, it was good enough I figured.

I ended up following the instructions for How to blanche Almonds and then How to toast Almonds. said I probably didn't need to blanche them, but then I realized I wasn't sure just how I would get the skins off if I didn't. I will welcome any advice that is better than that given in the links above. "Slip the skins off" my ass!

About 30 minutes later, I had enough whole almonds blanched and skinned to make 1/8 of a cup. I "toasted" them, but as far as I could tell, they only browned where they touched the pan. The whole almond didn't turn a golden brown. Looking back, perhaps I should have been more scientific about it, and kept one almond as a control. However that would have added another 2-3 minutes. Boy was I glad to only be cooking for two!

Good enough, I hope... ? Cooking this meal took so long, Jay got a nice nap in. (and this was after he helped me chop the thyme!)

I woke Jay up to fire up the grill. Somehow he had managed to go back to sleep despite me pounding the chickens. The magazine didn't say what temperature the grill should be, only "a hot grill fire", so I figured 350 degrees was good enough.

In addition to grilling the chicken, Jay made yummy salads (spinach, grape tomatoes, sprouts, red pepper, etc) for the both of us.

This turned out to be soooooooooooooooooooooo good. The almonds were GREAT in the mix of things! I may have added a wee too many olives, and the relish seemed to have a wee bit too much olive oil, but it all just went onto the plate, so it didn't make the food taste more oily. It was perfect! In fact, By the last two pieces of chicken, I had pretty much reached my olive limit. I had no idea I even had an olive limit! It seemed like there was enough relish for three chicken breasts.

The recipe doesn't say it's a make ahead one, but I think the majority of the relish could have been made a day ahead, and then just added in the almonds and prepared the chicken to grill the day of the meal.

We had this with a spinach salad and a bottle of 2004 Indian Wells Chardonnay.

Grilled Chicken Breasts with Green-Olive Relish - Fine Cooking #79

This recipe has been on my "to cook" list for awhile. It's the first recipe that I've ever entered into TheRecipeManager. I got this recipe from the Pillsbury Bake-Off competition when Amy's cooking friend Anna won the grand prize!

Austinite Anna Ginsberg is $1 million richer this morning, as the winner of the 42nd Pillsbury Bake-Off. Her original recipe for Baked Chicken and Spinach Stuffing beat out 98 other finalists from all over the country for the grand prize announced today, which will be awarded as a $50,000 a year annuity for 20 years.

I've been paying attention to what during preparation really makes a difference in the end. For example, I'm not sure all the time devoted to blanching and toasting the almonds really paid off, and a lot of times I work too hard to cut things perfectly. The recipe said "breaking up waffle pieces slightly" which I took to mean try to cut up with my spatula. I gave up after a bit, and in the end, the pieces that weren't "broken up" were easier to get with my fork than those that were. So I guess I took that line a little too literally. I got confused on the total amount the chicken was supposed to be baked, but it turned out well putting the spinach in and cooking it an additional time. We just waited til the chicken hit the right temperature and then declared it ready.

I was really impressed that the sauce stayed on top of the chicken! I had expected it all to slide off. You could definitely tell there was maple syrup in it by the smell which was kind of funny, but it wasn't an overwhelming taste. I thought this was great! Even better than the chicken was the stuffing. Wow we could have eaten a lot more of that!! It was especially nice having the recipe made for two.

This was a weird sight, so I had to photograph it.

• Million Dollar Baked Chicken and Spinach Stuffing

Friday evening, Jay and I planned out our dinner for Saturday. I suggested that we grill something, so we looked through the Cook's Illustrated Summer 2006 issue on grilling. I was looking for something simple, and the grilled asparagus sounded easy and would also make a great side dish. I offered to make a roasted chicken. Amy taught a friend and I how to make chicken in three different ways. The absolute easiest recipe was for a whole roasted chicken, so this would be the first time I tried it on my own. What I loved about our selections the most was that all we needed was a whole chicken and asparagus. The other ingredients were ones we always have around.

The roasted chicken recipe was simple. Just butterfly it, stuff in some yummy herbs, and add salt and pepper before putting it in the oven. (Roast a 3 lb chicken at 475° for about 45 minutes.) I cut out half of the backbone and Jay thought it was the coolest sound ever. I let him cut the other half. I grabbed some rosemary out of the yard and found it a little trickier to slide in between the skin and the meat compared to sage. Oh well, I love rosemary so it was worth it!

The grilled asparagus recipe said that the spears would naturally snap at the point where the woody section begins. Asparagus naturally snaps in a lot of other places, too! So I only snapped off ends that were obviously woody parts. Jay grilled the asparagus while I talked to my in-laws (who follow this blog, too! *wave*).

I thought the best part of the whole experience was being in the kitchen and hearing sizzling noises from the oven and smelling the chicken. But the smell was even better when I walked outside and then back in again. Mmmmm!!

We sat down for dinner and ate all the asparagus and chicken. We loved every bit of it! We agreed this would make a great dinner when entertaining. It makes so much yummy food for such little work! Even the shopping was simple.

We had a bottle of Pelican Ranch Chardonnay that I bought with my sister Judy when we were wine tasting in Santa Cruz the weekend after Ironman Arizona. From their website: This wine is revered Los Carneros (The Ram in Spanish) sub district of the Napa Valley. It is extremely rich with a beautiful straw-color and generous fruit accompanied by notes of pear and apple. The creamy testure accompanied by vanilla and tasted oak accent a hint of butter from the complete malo-lactic fermentation.

• Roasted Chicken recipe from Amy
• Grilled Asparagus (Cook's Illustrated, Summer 2006, p.42)
• Pelican Ranch Chardonnay 2002 Los Carneros Napa Valley

Shopping for this meal was nearly a nightmare! It called for a dutch oven and I didn't have one. The magazine had an article rating dutch ovens, so I figured I'd go buy one and then buy ingredients for dinner. The Best Buy choice was a $40 one from Target, only the Super Target I went to didn't carry it (or any dutch oven). I walked over to Linens 'n Things only to find a poor selection, only sets of pots sold together. Sears had two or three dutch ovens, but none that had been rated at all. Maybe I needed to rethink dinner? I decided to try the Bed, Bath and Beyond which would be on my way to Whole Foods anyway. I found two models available for sale as a single piece, the All-Clad and the Calphalon One. The All-Clad model was so pretty on the inside and was a recommended model, but it was $235. The other was just $99 and recommended with reservations. The only reservation was in regards to cooking fries where it got two out of three stars, stew and rice got it 3 out of 3. I doubt I'll ever be making fries, and the Calphalon One model had handles that were easier to hold, so I bought that one. I was happy that I made a very informed decision and didn't feel like I had settled.

I only had to ask for help at Whole Foods once when I couldn't figure out which chile was the Anaheim. The one in the magazine was black and white, and even looking at the colored pictures on the display, it wasn't obvious. But I got them, along with the jalapeno and poblano chiles.

I decided to time how long it took to make the chili. Jay asked if the recipe had an estimated cooking time, and I said "No, that's why I like it." (It would be so awful to see it say 1 hour, but have it take 2 or 3!) Well, we titled this chili "Four Hour Chili". It took two hours to prepare and two hours to cook. Additional pain was from cutting all the chiles (next time I'll use gloves). Even ideas off the internet eased the burning only slightly. Plus pulling apart the hot chicken was the other kind of burning to my fingers. Poor fingers! When Jay found out how long it took me to make the chili, he said he'd feel guilty eating it. (and then he went into calculating the cost in terms of money, too... haha!)

The chili was good, and even lasted for two more meals. This worked out well, because I came down with a nasty cold that night and was sick the rest of the week. The house smelled like chili half the week... yum! It was good, but not GREAT. It seemed to lack something... not sure what. I'll surely be making this again and looking forward to easy leftovers.

Lessons learned:
Wear gloves when cutting so many chilis to avoid feeling like your fingers are on fire.
When the recipe says "cut into large pieces" and you see those pieces are heading for the food processor, save time: large means large.

This was also the first time I got to use my stove since September (Thank you Triathlete Kurt for hooking our gas stove back up!!) and the first time I got to use my food processor. Both performed flawlessly!

Kitty enjoyed the box before we reused it for shipping presents!

• The Best White Chili (Cook's Illustrated, February 2007, p.6)

Heaven.

• Braised Chicken Legs with Red Wine, Tomato, Anchovies and Rosemary (Fine Cooking, December 2006, p. 59)

This was the first holiday dinner I've ever cooked! It was really the only special Christmas-y thing we did all day, other than some gift opening and phone calling.

I bought the boneless turkey breast at Whole Foods. I just love buying meat at Whole Foods! They wrap it up so nice and will prepare it in whichever way your heart desires. The stuffing wasn't too hard to make other than getting the skins off the toasted hazelnuts. I got to use the food processor, which means less chopping for me! It was strange to wrap the breast in bacon and fry it. It smelled so good, I ended up frying an extra piece of bacon for me to eat while the turkey roasted in the oven.

I would definitely make this again for a special dinner for 2-4 people. The hazelnuts in the stuffing added so much to it. I wasn't too impressed with the Marsala glaze, but I think I'm just not too fond of Marsala wine.

As a side dish, we tried making some roasted butternut squash. Oh that was sooo good! Even though it added a lot of time to the meal preparation, the turkey was still warm when the squash was finally done. The squash was delicious!!! I think Jay liked it so much, not only did he cook the other half of the squash later, he bought another butternut squash for us to eat soon.

Two lessons learned:

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)

Amy's always saying that roasted chicken makes great leftovers. She's right! She posted a Rosemary Chicken Salad recipe earlier, so it seemed like a perfect lunch. The recipe is originally from Cooking Light, but I like her measurements so much better. The dijon and nuts in this recipe really make it a winner.

This is the best use for orange marmalade I've ever seen. Wow is recipe good. Even the chicken without the sauce was good on its own. This is definitely eligible for the quick and delicious section as it didn't take much time at all! I'd like to try making chicken kebabs, too. There are a number of grilled chicken thigh recipes in this issue, and I'm determined to try them all.

• Grilled Rosemary Chicken Thighs with Sweet & Sour Orange Dipping Sauce (Fine Cooking, August/September 2007, p.32)
• Steamed Asparagus
• Brown Rice

This recipe looked good, had familiar ingredients and it was in the quick & delicious section, so II planned on making this for dinner. While everyone at the table said it was good, I didn't think it really lived up to what it could have been. There were two problems that I can see that could be improved.

I had a hard time finding plain green olives at Whole Foods. So many people love olives stuffed or in exciting liquids rather than plain boring green olives. While I did find some at the olive bar, they had their pits in them and I didn't want to deal with figuring out how to get the pits out. I finally found a can of plain green olives and just bought those. When I opened the can, some of them had really dark black spots that just weren't very appealing. I skipped those olives or cut around them. This only required a half cup of olives, so it wasn't a large amount. I tried one of the olives, and it just didn't have a very strong or yummy flavor at all. I briefly considered using some garlic stuffed olives and taking out the garlic for this dish, but then decided against it. Looking back, I should have used those olives. I've only had one case where a not too exciting ingredient worked well in a dish, and that's because it was a tomato that absorbed a lot of flavorful juices. This is not something that's going to happen with an olive.

The other thing that I did was was not chop the onions fine enough. It just says "finely chopped", but when I compared my finished product with the magazine photo, my onion pieces seemed huge in comparision. In this case, I think smaller would have been better. Here's a nice little guide on chopping onions. Mine should have been more like the minced instead of looking more like chopped. I also think I used too much onion. "small onion" is just not a precise enough measurement for me. How small is small?

Also what is a chicken breast cutlet? I just bought chicken breasts by weight and then sliced them in half to get 8 thin pieces. It seemed to work for cooking, although the four chicken breasts sure varied in thickness to begin with.

Buying bulk pre-slivered almonds is surely the way to go!!! This worked out great.

I think this recipe has potential to be good, but I think in the future, I'd rather just make the Grilled chicken breasts with Green-Olive Relish. It has far more olives in it, and when you use the right ones, oh it's soooo tasty!! (Plus a chicken breast is a good meal size. Half a chicken breast means going back for seconds which somewhat interrupts dinner.)

• Sauteed Chicken with Sherry & Olive Pan Sauce & Toasted Almonds (Fine Cooking 92, p. 90a)
• Garden salad

The interesting part of this recipe is that you brine the chicken with an orange juice brine.

This recipe requires you to juice about 8 medium oranges. If you don't have the proper tools, this can be a pain and take way too long! Fortunately for me, Jay shopped for brandy and an orange juicer while the chicken was in the brine. So the second part of the recipe requiring juice was much easier! I will be ready next time.

Fine cooking does such a great job of teaching you about the various ingredients and how to select them and prep them. I love it because I need the help. This was my first time deboning chicken breasts. I did okay. Perhaps the proper knife would have helped? It is just perfect how right in the ingredients list, fine cooking points you to another part of the magazine to help you with how to prep or select items if the ideal isn't available.

A lesson learned upon re-reading the recipe for this post: When a recipe tells you to add something to taste, make sure you do a taste before adding any of it. The dish seemed just a touch too salty. Yes it was sitting in a brine for awhile, but I also added regular chicken broth when it called for low-salt. I also seasoned to taste with a bit more salt before even checking the sauce for how it tasted at that point!

The orange-brandy sauce is a reduction, and my history with reductions has been spotty. This time I bravely reduced and added things and stirred and estimated doneness and I think it turned out great! That was a ++ to my confidence level in making reductions.

Because this was a brine, the chicken was nice and juicy, even the smallest chicken breast wasn't overcooked while waiting on the biggest chicken breast to finish.

This also made fantastic leftovers.

• Pan-roasted Chicken Breasts with Orange-Brandy Sauce (Fine Cooking 97 Feb/March 2009, p. 45)