Apple cider brined chicken

I had a chicken in the freezer and was looking for something interesting to do with it. I know that it's not exactly the season to be cooking with apple cider, but trust me here. This apple cider brined chicken is great any time of the year.

The brine ensures a moist end product, and the cider adds just a touch of spice and sweetness. The recipe called for removing the skin partway through cooking time, but that sounded like a lot of mess and hassle, so I left the skin on. The sugar in the cider made for very crisp and browned skin, so I'm glad I didn't remove it.

I think this would also be great on the grill, I would suggest cooking it over indirect heat to prevent burning.

Soba noodles with chicken and vegetables

I pulled this recipe out of one of my cookbooks because I thought it looked like an interesting way to serve chicken. I had every intention of (mostly) following the recipe, but my plans changed. That day, my mom brought me a large container of snow pea shoots and some oyster mushrooms. At that point, it didn’t make any sense for me to go out and buy the vegetables specified in the recipe, so I used the pea shoots and oyster mushrooms instead.

The vegetables are cooked with chicken and tossed with soba noodles. A soy and sake based sauce completes the dish. I don’t cook with soba noodles that often, but I should; they cook quickly and have a great texture.

Although I strayed from the recipe, I think the original combination of broccoli, button mushrooms and red peppers would also be great in this dish.

Half hour chicken gumbo

For all you purists out there, I will acknowledge that this chicken gumbo is not exactly traditional. However, it’s quite delicious considering it only takes half an hour to make!

This recipe starts with a quick roux of oil and flour. Once the roux has started to darken, red peppers, garlic, onions and oregano are added. The next step is to add some water, sliced sausage, frozen okra and cooked shredded chicken. The roux thickens the liquid and adds complexity to the stew.

As always, I made a few changes to the original recipe. I used chicken stock instead of water, and added about a tablespoon of tomato paste and a few dashes of hot sauce. These extra steps don’t take any more time, but added a lot of flavor.

Like I said before, you may not find this version of gumbo in New Orleans, but don’t let that deter you. I typically serve this with rice, but you could also bake some cornbread to go alongside.

Chipotle chicken tenders with blue cheese sauce

I like buffalo chicken, but I haven’t been all that motivated to make it at home. I don’t often buy chicken wings, and I never deep fry. When I spotted this recipe in Bobby Flay’s Grilling For Life, I wondered if it was possible to get the buffalo chicken flavor without all the fat. I actually think I like this version better than the original, and it comes together very quickly.

Since it was raining in California on the day I made these, I cooked the chicken on the stove rather than on the grill. The hot sauce can be customized to your heat preference, and the three types of chiles add a great depth of flavor. A little bit of honey cuts the acidity and the sauce is thickened by Dijon mustard and some butter. The original recipe called for the blue cheese sauce to be made with greek yogurt. I had both greek yogurt and sour cream in the house, so I did half of each. You could definitely use one or the other though.

The traditional accompaniments to buffalo wings are carrot and celery sticks. Since this isn’t quite your traditional version, I also went with a slightly different side: roasted carrot sticks.

Chipotle chicken tenders with blue cheese sauce

Serves 3-4

Chicken ingredients:

1 and 1/2 lbs chicken tenders

3/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1-2 tablespoons chipotle puree (depends on how spicy you want the sauce)

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon ancho chile powder

1 and 1/2 teaspoons New Mexico chile powder

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 and 1/2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
salt and pepper to taste

Blue cheese sauce ingredients:

1/2 cup low or non fat greek yogurt

1/2 cup low fat sour cream

1/3 cup crumbled blue cheese

salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons finely chopped chives

For the blue cheese sauce:

Combine all of the ingredients. Cover and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, or up to one day. Garnish with more chives if desired.

For the chicken:

Bring the vinegar, 1 tablespoon oil, chipotle puree, honey and both chile powders to a simmer in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Once it reaches a simmer, remove the mixture from the heat and whisk in the mustard and butter. Set aside.

Heat a large saucepan on high, add the remaining tablespoon of oil. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, add the chicken to the pan. Saute until the chicken is browned and cooked through, about three minutes per side. Toss the chicken with the chipotle sauce and serve with the blue cheese sauce.

Chicken with prosciutto and sage

If you asked me to name my favorite cookbook, I’d be hard pressed to come up with just one. I have so many, and they all serve their purpose – how do you compare a bread baking book to a book about thai food? However, there is one book that gets used more than any other, and that’s the Everyday Food cookbook. I refer to it so often that the binding is broken and the pages are falling out. It’s just good, simple food that can be prepared in a reasonable amount of time. There are no specialty ingredients required, and most of the dishes are relatively healthy. I’ve made dozens of recipes from this book and they’ve all been great.

My latest success was chicken with sage and prosciutto. Chicken cutlets are topped with a sage leaf and wrapped in a slice of prosciutto. The cutlets are dredged in seasoned flour and sautéed until golden brown. The chicken is finished with a simple pan sauce of white wine, chicken stock, butter and sage. I went with the suggested side dish of spinach with golden raisins.

This was quite good, and on the table in less than 30 minutes. It doesn’t get much better than this when it comes to quick and easy weeknight cooking.

Sunday night chicken dinner

As I've mentioned before, on weeknights I don't have a lot of time and energy for cooking, so I do a lot of prep work on the weekends and try to choose weekday meals that aren't too difficult. I tend to cook more complicated and time consuming dishes on Sundays. Today it was a brined roast chicken from the Bouchon cookbook, with a couple of vegetable sides.

I don't use my Bouchon cookbook much, so I decided it was time to put it to use. The roasted chicken recipe is something that you definitely need to plan out ahead of time. The brine is flavored with garlic, rosemary, parsley, peppercorns, bay leaves, honey, lemon and thyme, and is best made a day in advance. The chicken needs to brine for 6 hours prior to cooking. The chicken roasts at 475 degrees, which gives the skin a beautiful mahogany sheen. The nice thing about brining is that it provides extra insurance that you'll end up with a moist bird even if you overcook it a little. In my case, it came out perfectly cooked.


Was it worth the extra effort to brine the chicken? I think so, I'll be doing it again in the future.

I chose two new vegetable recipes to accompany the chicken. First up is sherry vinegar and molasses glazed carrots, from the latest issue of Bon Appetit. If I was making this for a special occasion I would pay the extra money for baby carrots; this was a casual dinner so I went with larger carrots cut into sticks. The carrots are simmered in a mixture of butter, sherry vinegar, molasses and water, and then glazed with more molasses and vinegar and finished with salt, pepper and parsley. The molasses and vinegar added a nice complexity to what would otherwise be a pretty standard glazed carrot recipe. I also added a little fleur de sel at the end for some crunch.

Next up was spinach with garlic confit from the Bouchon cookbook. Garlic confit is made by slowly simmering whole cloves of garlic in canola oil. The dish combines butter, minced shallots, fresh spinach, garlic confit, salt and pepper. It's actually quite simple and quick if you make the garlic confit in advance.

Overall, the meal was a great success. I love it when I try new recipes and everything comes out the way it's supposed to.

On an unrelated note, my friend Mary Rose sent me this great link to Cooks Illustrated's grocery shopping guide. I love that Cooks Illustrated tests out all these ingredients, I don't love that I can't find a lot of the top rated brands in California!

Mediterranean chicken and vegetable kebabs

Grilling season is winding to a close, and I'm trying to make the most of the next few weeks. Tonight we grilled these mediterranean chicken and vegetable kebabs. The recipe is quite simple - chicken breast, fennel and zucchini are marinated in a combination of lemon juice, fresh oregano and olive oil. I added some lemon basil from my garden to the marinade. The chicken and vegetables are threaded onto skewers and grilled. Make sure to cut the fennel into thin wedges, otherwise it won't cook at the same rate as the chicken and zucchini.

Moroccan chicken legs

My grocery store often runs specials on chicken legs, so I'm always on the lookout for recipes that use them. This recipe for moroccan braised chicken legs with saffron onions and date relish is from Sunday Suppers at Lucques. The weather has really started to heat up, so this will probably be my last braised dish for awhile. The chicken legs are marinated in a spice blend overnight and braised with tomatoes, onion and fennel for about two hours. The chicken legs on their own are delicious, but what really makes the dish are the saffron onions and date relish. The onions are caramelized in butter with a little crushed saffron to add color and flavor. I've always loved dates, but I tend to eat them on their own, or in baked goods. This simple relish is a combination of sliced dates, olive oil, cilantro, parsley and lemon juice. The herbs and lemon juice really enchanced the flavor of the dates. I served this dish with fregola sarda that I tossed with a little bit of butter and herbs.

Spanish tapas

My parents just celebrated their 33rd wedding anniversary. In honor of their anniversary and their upcoming trip to Spain, I made them a meal of tapas. All of the recipes came from The New Spanish Table cookbook, and everything was delicious!

Tangerine olives

Marinated carrots

Goat cheese stuffed piquillo peppers

Moorish chicken kabobs

Confetti shrimp

Rice pudding ice cream with coffee caramel sauce

Tomatoes stuffed with chicken and corn

When reading Martha Stewart Living, this recipe caught my eye. I went to buy the ingredients, only to find that the store was out of poblano peppers! After a quick survey of the produce department, I decided that large beefsteak tomatoes would work as a substitute.

The recipe is a little time consuming, but I made the tomatillo puree a day in advance. Also, when chicken goes on sale, I often buy a couple pounds, and then roast it, shred the meat and put it in the freezer. It defrosts really well and saves time on recipes like this that call for cooked, shredded chicken. When I got home from work, all I had to do was heat all the ingredients through, stuff the tomatoes and bake.

This is a very light and flavorful dish. The lime juice gives it a bright flavor, and I would definitely not substitute frozen corn for fresh. I served this with green rice.

Moroccan braised chicken legs with olives and preserved lemon

This recipe is from All About Braising by Molly Stevens. I know, summer isn't exactly the best time of year to braise. I mean, who wants to have their stove going for hours on end when it's already hot outside? But I've wanted this cookbook for a long time, and I just found it for cheap, so I'm braising in the summertime. We'll see how long I keep this up, the weather is still pretty moderate here. Anyways, this dish is chicken legs that are braised for about an hour with onions, garlic and a spice blend of ground ginger, paprika, toasted cumin, red pepper flakes and saffron. Towards the end of the braise, green olives and preserved lemon are added. This was my first time cooking with preserved lemons. The cookbook has a recipe to make your own, but that takes three weeks. So I bought a jar of whole preserved lemons at the grocery store. For this recipe, one preserved lemon is rinsed thoroughly, and the flesh is removed and discarded. The peel is cut into small strips and added to the chicken mixture. I have to admit, my husband and I thought the preserved lemons smelled a little like a lemon cleaning product, but they tasted fine in the end. The chicken is finished with chopped parsley and cilantro.

Parmesan stuffed chicken breasts

This is a great recipe for a busy weeknight when you don't feel like doing a lot of prep work. A mixture of breadcrumbs, lemon zest, parsley, parmesan, salt and pepper is pressed under the skin of bone-in chicken breasts. The chicken is roasted in the oven at 450 for about 30 minutes. It's simple, but delicious. I made my own breadcrumbs out of focaccia and used parmigiano reggiano cheese.

Cashew chicken

This recipe is great for a weeknight when you want a quick and healthy dinner without a lot of effort. The main ingredients in this recipe are chicken, garlic, green onions, cashews and hoisin sauce. I added sliced shiitake mushrooms and carrots to make it a more complete meal. This was on the table in about 15 minutes, and I served it with steamed basmati rice. You could add other vegetables if you like - broccoli or bell peppers would be nice.

Phyllo chicken potpie

When I saw this recipe for chicken potpie topped with phyllo dough, it seemed like an interesting alternative to the original classic. We preferred the phyllo topping over the typical fat laden crust. Best of all, this dish comes together in no time. I only used about a tablespoon of olive oil in the whole dish, further reducing the fat content. I chose to omit the celery and mushrooms because I didn't have them on hand.

Braised chicken breasts

I took an advanced knife skills class at the California Culinary Academy over the weekend. Making this dish gave me an opportunity to use some of my new knife skills, including deboning chicken breasts and chopping vegetables to a uniform size. This is my version of Coq au Vin.

Braised Chicken Breasts
Serves 2

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 sprigs of parsley
3 sprigs of thyme
1 bay leaf
2 slices of bacon, cut into pieces
1 medium shallot, minced
2/3 cup of carrot, small dice
1 and 1/2 cups of cremini mushrooms, medium dice
4 cloves of roasted garlic
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 cup of chicken stock
1 cup of red wine
salt and pepper

Make a bouquet garni out of the parsley, thyme and bay leaf by placing the herbs in a square of cheesecloth and tying the cheesecloth into a bundle with kitchen twine. Heat a dutch oven or other pot with a lid over medium heat. Add the bacon, cook until browned. Remove the bacon and drain it on paper towels, set aside. Drain all but 2 teaspoons of bacon fat from the pan. Season the chicken breasts with salt and pepper. Brown each side of the chicken in the pan. Place the chicken breasts on a plate and set aside. Add shallot, carrots, mushrooms and roasted garlic to the pot. Cook until shallots are translucent and carrots are tender. Stir in the tomato paste and flour, cook for about 1 minute. Add the wine, chicken stock and bouquet garni to the pot. Bring to a boil, turn the heat down to a simmer and cover the pot. Simmer for about 15 minutes or until chicken breasts are cooked through. Remove and discard herb bundle, stir in bacon. Season the sauce with salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with fresh parsley if desired.

Pepper fettuccine with chicken and bacon

I made pepper fettuccine with my new pasta roller - I used a regular egg dough recipe and added in cracked pepper. Other types of pasta can be substituted in this recipe - try dried fettuccine, linguine, or a tubular pasta like penne or rigatoni.

Pepper fettuccine with chicken and bacon
Serves 2

6 oz pasta (I used pepper fettuccine, but feel free to substitute another fresh or dried pasta)
1 and 1/2 cups cooked shredded chicken (I used dark meat, white meat will work too)
4 slices of thick cut bacon, coarsely chopped
1/2 cup diced red bell pepper
1/4 cup parmigiano reggiano cheese
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon chicken stock
1 tablespoon fresh chopped parsley
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the pasta in salted boiling water according to package directions. Heat a medium sized pan over high heat. Add bacon and turn heat down to medium. Cook the bacon until it's slightly crispy. Drain off all but 1-2 teaspoons of the bacon fat from the pan. Add the red bell pepper to the pan, saute for 1-2 minutes. Add the chicken and a pinch of salt and pepper, cook until the bell peppers are tender and chicken is heated through. Add the lemon juice and chicken stock, cook for a 3 minutes. Take the chicken mixture off the heat, stir in parmigiano reggiano cheese and cooked pasta. Season to taste with salt and pepper and garnish with chopped parsley.

Giada's family dinners - fresh fettucine with roasted chicken and broccoli rabe (beet greens for me)

This week I'm featuring food from Giada's Family Dinners

This was very good, and also very versatile. I had beet greens on hand, so I used those in lieu of the broccoli rabe. I think that most varieties of greens would work in this recipe. I found that I didn't need to use as much chicken broth as the recipe called for. The lemon zest adds a lot of flavor.

Fresh fettucine with roasted chicken and beet greens

Leftover turkey? Apparently not.

When I planned our menu for this week, I assumed we'd have leftover turkey from Sunday that I could use in my white chili. Five adults + one miniature schnauzer + a 10 lb turkey = no leftovers!

Luckily I had some chicken that I cooked last week and froze. Here are the ingredients for my white chili:

Clockwise from top, white beans, roasted poblano pepper, ground coriander diced yellow onion, roasted hungarian pepper, cumin, chicken and minced garlic. Turkey stock, salt and pepper not shown.

I found the hungarian pepper at the farmer's market. You can really use whatever peppers you prefer - bell pepper or canned diced chiles work great. To roast the peppers, cut them in half and remove the seeds and veins. Stick them under the broiler for about 10-15 minutes or until the skins are blackened. Place the warm peppers into a plastic resealable bag - the steam will help the skins come off. After about 15 minutes, remove the peppers from the bag - the skins should peel right off. Roasted peppers freeze well - if you don't have the time to go through this process, you can buy jarred or frozen roasted bell peppers at Trader Joes.

To make the chili, saute the diced onion in a small amount of olive oil until translucent. Add the rest of the ingredients and enough chicken (or turkey) stock to cover. Add salt and pepper to taste. Simmer until heated through. Garnish with any of the following - avocado, shredded cheese, sour cream, tortilla chips. If you don't have leftover chicken on hand, use turkey. Or brown some ground chicken or turkey in a skillet and proceed with the recipe. One can of beans and about a cup of meat made enough chili for two generous portions. You can scale the recipe accordingly.