An Old Fashioned Sunday

This city never ceases to surprise me. Whether its with a totally normal looking but absolutely schizo crazy lady on the subway ranting about mobsters and thugs, a delicious $7 brunch (complete with mimosa!), or a freak thunderstorm that sneaks up out of nowhere in the 15 minutes you’re browsing around Jill Stuart.

I’d been planning on roasting a chicken tonight all week and looking anxiously forward to the grand event. I spent the day wandering the Tompkins Square farmers market looking for anything that caught my fancy and walked away with some of the most delicious little jewels of strawberries for breakfast this week and some beautiful lavender earl grey tea. My next stop was Sur la Table, truly a paradise through which I could wander for hours, imagining and cooking in my head all of the wonderful things I could make with all of the wonderful supplies they have in store. I picked up a roasting rack, some kitchen twine, and an adorable little mesh tea ball for my new tea.

I was set to wander around SoHo for another hour or so when I ducked into Jill Stuart for a mere moment, and when I looked out the windows again, the sky had grown so dark I wondered if they had tinted windows. Unfortunately it was actually dark outside at 3 in the afternoon and a torrential downpour was about to be unleashed upon an unwitting public.
I made it home a little wet and a little see-through in my white dress, but all in all unscathed. I tucked into my latest read for a couple hours before getting up to start my chicken. The recipe was also one of Jamie Oliver’s – but based on a very simple French Roasted Chicken. For the second time, I’d seen the technique of making a flavored butter, be it herb butter or, in this case, lemon butter, and rubbing it underneath the skin of the chicken and all over. True, it negates the idea of making an easy and healthy dinner, but the flavors are incredible.

I have to admit, this chicken should have been a piece of cake, but the whole thing turned out to be more of a misadventure and a debacle. Only because my oven doesn’t get as hot as it reads by about 50 degrees so when I pulled my chicken out, it wasn’t completely done…it could have used another 20 minutes. But I’d already moved it to a plate and eagerly started on the sauce to go with it before I discovered this (by slicing through the breast down to the pink raw center. So…I had to microwave it for about 5 minutes, letting a lot of the juices out and making it pretty dry. Luckily, the gravy I made (and also projectile-spilled half of all over my cabinets due to a slippery oven mitt and zero counter space – we’re talking literally about 8 inches long and about 6 inches deep) helped and the flavors were still so deep into the chicken that it tasted delicious – it just wasn’t the most moist chicken I’ve ever made.

This particular chicken was a lemon, thyme, and garlic chicken – a traditional combination that never disappoints. Its really a simple recipe and for those of you who get squeamish at the mere thought of putting your hands under chicken skin and rubbing butter all around...get over it. The idea is to get the flavors right down into the bird and, boy, does it work! My bird was bursting with flavor, the skin was nice and brown and crispy, and the sauce I made from the drippings was fantastic. Almost as good as the bird itself were the vegetables I roasted with the chicken, cooked in the chicken drippings and the butter that had melted off the bird as it cooked.

And even better, with all of these freak summer thunderstorms, one never knows when it will be absolutely necessary to tuck into bed and get nice and cozy with a bowl of chicken soup…which is why I’m so looking forward to the chicken stock I have simmering away on the stove right now made with the leftover bones, meat, and carcass. So not only do you get an amazingly delicious perfectly old-fashioned Sunday dinner, but you get really home-style chicken stock out of the deal, too.

(P.S. Don't be afraid of how many steps there are - they are really a lot of one-steps split into two so that you don't make any of the mistakes I did. Its not that hard - I promise!)

Jamie Oliver’s Fantastic Roasted Chicken

For the Chicken:
1 whole roasting chicken (I used a young chicken – they’re more tender)
1 whole lemon
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 ½ tablespoons fresh thyme, leaves only and chopped, plus a nice bunch for later
½ a stick of butter (4 tablespoons)
salt and pepper

For the vegetables
3 Yukon Gold potatoes
4 carrots, cut into large chunks and then split
1 whole onion, quartered and separated
3 garlic cloves cut in half

For the sauce at the end
¼- 1/3 cup white wine, depending on how much drippings you have left
1/3 cup chicken broth
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon milk


1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees
2. Take out pack of giblets and chicken parts from chicken cavity and rinse the chicken inside and out. Pat dry and set aside.
3. Melt butter and set aside.
4. Zest lemon into melted butter, mix in thyme and garlic
5. Put the butter in the fridge for a little while until it is soft and mushy.
6. In the meantime, run your fingers under the skin of the chicken breast, between the skin and the meat, creating a space. Be careful not to tear the skin – you should be able to do this with little resistance and be gentle- its easier than it seems. If you do meet resistance just work it slowly and gently-it will give in to you.
7. Slash the thigh meat with a knife – it will let the heat penetrate better and cook more evenly.
8. When the butter has congealed, set some of it aside to cook with the vegetables – do not just take leftovers from that which you smear all over the chicken – you don’t want cross contamination. Take scoops of it and run it along the breast meat under the skin and all over the top and sides of the bird. Just get that butter everywhere and don’t be afraid to use most of it or all of it depending on the size of your bird. After it has been coated with the butter, sprinkle the chicken with salt and pepper. Cut the zested lemon in half and stick the two halves in the chicken cavity along with a bunch of thyme. Tie up the legs with kitchen string.
9. Put the bird in the oven.
10. Boil a pot of water and boil the potatoes for 5-10 minutes, until they just begin to soften and then drain them and set them aside.
11. After 20 minutes, take the bird out, and take out of the roasting pan – set aside on a plate. Pour potatoes, carrots, onions, and garlic into pan where Chicken has been roasting. Toss them in the butter that should have melted out of the chicken and if there doesn’t seem to be enough, add some of the reserved lemon butter.
12. Place the chicken back on top of the vegetables and roast for 40-60 minutes more depending on your oven. You will know the chicken is done when you cut between the leg and the breast and the juices run clear.
13. Meanwhile, mix flour and milk in small bowl to make a roux that will thicken the juices from the chicken into thin gravy.
14. Take out chicken and vegetables from pan, making sure to pour any juices from the chicken into the empty roasting pan.
15. Place the roasting pan over a burner on the stove and turn the heat up to medium.
16. Pour in wine and deglaze the pan, scraping up all those yummy brown bits. When wine has reduced and brown bits have all come off the bottom, pour in chicken stock. Bring to a boil.
17. Whisk in roux, a little bit at a time, stopping when you’ve poured in about half as this is probably enough. Whisk quickly, making sure no lumps form. Bring the heat down to medium-high, still whisking to allow it to reduce and brown.
18. Serve chicken and pour gravy over carved portions…eat with vegetables and enjoy!


To make a stock…
Take all the leftover meat and bones, a whole onion, cut into quarters, a stick of celery roughly chopped, a carrot roughly choppe, and salt and pepper and put into a stockpot. Pour in enough water (probably about 3-4 cups of water) to just come to the top or barely cover whatever you’ve got in the pot. Bring everything to a boil and then reduce heat to low. Simmer uncovered for anywhere from 6-8 hour, skimming off any foam that rises occasionally. Strain the liquid into whatever container you’d like to store it in and let it cool to room temperature before storing it in the fridge over night. This is important because if it goes from hot to cold too quickly, bacteria will grow and you’ll have an icky stock. Chill it over night and in the morning, scrape off any fat that has accumulated into a cute layer on the top. Freeze for up to 1 month or put it in the fridge for up to a week!

Bitten

I admit. The Brides Bug has bit. I find myself taking “What kind of Couple are you?” quizzes…by myself (I am a “Traditional Couple” in case you were wondering). This experience, however, has offered me new insight into an event which I have never actually attended – yes, the Brides intern has never actually been to a wedding. Why is Moroccan such a popular theme amongst middle-class white couples? If you think about it, isn’t a bouquet weird? Whatever happened to originality in a wedding dress? White (check!), strapless (check!), and big poofy skirt (check!) seems to be all the rage these days. And yet, when they do it right, isn’t it lovely? Take, for example, the Kelly green Grecian Style wedding dress worn at a small intimate garden wedding I stumbled across yesterday…perfection. But for every one of those there are four too-fat-for-strapless disasters at Disney World. Dear readers, without this lovely little blog, I think I may be completely swept away into the world of all things matrimonial, for better or worse.

Today, our very glamorous “cafeteria” was offering French fare at the Global station (previous global regions have included the American South, complete with country fried steak)…braised lamb shanks and beof bourgignon. Delightful. However, knowing that the era of French Cooking in my kitchen is about to begin, armed with my new cookbook, I stayed away (painfully), and got sushi instead. And as my farewell dinner to all things not-French, I made one of Jaimie Oliver’s risottos, the other night, and then again for lunch the next day. It was marvelous.

It’s a very summery risotto, with freshly shucked English Peas (yes, hand shucked by yours truly), mint, basil, and a wee bit o lemon zest. Oliver adds prawns to his, but seeing as I can neither afford Prawns financially, or calorically, at the moment, I swapped the Prawns for sweet Italian chicken sausage (go ahead and use pork, you pork lovers, but know that chicken or turkey sausage is just as delicious and a thousand times healthier!). The mint and basil are added at the last minute, leaving them fresh and bright – a bite of sweet basil or mint against the creamy savory risotto is too perfect. The peas are sweet, too, and for me, are a key summer flavor. Risottos are deceptively easy to make – the key is keeping the temperature low, not getting impatient, and constant stirring. But really, its so easy you won’t believe it! And its such an impressive dish and so delicious its easy to let people be fooled into thinking you’d slaved away at such a fantastic dish when, really, it was a piece of cake. I don’t know how many eyebrows I’ve lifted merely by uttering the phrase, “Oh yeah, I make risotto all the time!” Its an infinitely impressing skill upon those who’ve never made it, who, are, lets be honest, the vast majority of people you’ll meet. So go ahead, don’t be shy, step right up and try your hand…you won’t believe you actually made the end results. And don’t be afraid to half this recipe…it makes a helluvalot of Risotto!!!

Mint and Basil Risotto with Peas and Sweet Italian Sausage
Serves 4
1 cup Arborio rice
3 ½ cups chicken stock
½ cup dry white wine or vermouth
2 leeks coarsely chopped, white and pale green parts only
2 garlic cloves
½ head celery, chopped fine
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup freshly shucked English peas (set pods aside – do not discard)
A handful of basil, chiffonade
½ handful of mint, chiffonade
1 lemon, juiced
1/3 cup parmesan cheese, grated
½ tspn salt
¼ tspn pepper
1 large or ½ medium sweet chicken Italian sausages



1. Heat chicken stock in a pot and place the pea pods in the chicken stock (will infuse the broth with the sweet delicate taste of peas), bringing the heat down to low and simmering until its time to use it
2. Boil a small pot of water and place peas in boiling water for about 5 minutes, until soft, but not mushy. Drain and set aside.
3. Heat olive oil in a large pan to medium high and add sausage. Brown sausage and set aside.
4. Reduce and cook leeks and celery at medium heat in same pan until soft, add garlic at the end and cook for another minute or two, letting garlic toast but not brown
5. Add rice and let toast for another minute or two
6. Add wine and turn heat down to medium low. Add salt and pepper. Begin stirring constantly.
7. Remove pea pods from chicken stock and discard. When wine has been completely absorbed, add about ¾ cup of chicken stock until completely absorbed and repeat this step three more times, waiting for each batch of stock to be completely absorbed before adding the next one.
8. When the last pour of chicken stock has been almost completely absorbed, add the peas, sausage, mint, basil, and parmesan cheese. Fold in all the ingredients and take off the heat. Cover with a lid for about 3 minutes off the heat before serving to get that cozy creamy texture that makes risotto so irresistible. Enjoy!

Whisk me away

During the week, I live in Chinatown, where it smells like cheap perfume, grease, and fish, and I work in Midtown, where sour air from the subway grates waft up from the streets to mingle with the dirty smell of diesel fuel. I therefore smell something like a hooker on an industrial fishing vessel by the end of the day. The only respite from the smells of the city is not offered by my apartment itself, which was inhabited for the previous nine months or so by a group of six girls who allowed their white bathrooms to turn a slimy shade of brown and a crust of god-only-knows-what to accumulate on the floor around the refrigerator/sink/stove. But rather, the only times lovely smells are floating around my head are when I’m in the shower or at the stove. And since this is not a blog about personal hygiene, we shall not, at present, go into my bathing routines and rituals.

This weekend I spent the better part of my Sunday traipsing around downtown, hitting, I’m sure, every used book store south of 14th Street in search of a book I found in Venice, decided not to buy, and have since been unable to locate. Go figure. I was enfolded in the smells of old paper and leather and dusty wood all day and it couldn’t have been a more welcome change. Although my search for Girl, 20 by Kingsley Amis was largely unsuccessful, I did stumble upon one of those “They don’t make ‘em like they used to!” cookbooks about regional French cooking. Its huge…and has full page pictures…and over 300 recipes…and they all incorporate butter, bacon, animal fat of some variety (usually lard or goose fat), and/or cream…and everything looks delicious (except for that pigs-feet and tripe recipe I couldn’t quite wrap my head around). I spent my evening multi-tasking, watching Iron Chef: Battle Parmiggiano while post-it marking every recipe I intend to make in my new cookbook. It was bliss. Except it would have been nice to see Batali get his ass handed to him for once…but that’s another post. So expect a slew of French inspired recipes in the next couple weeks along with some Risotto recipes I intend to adapt from a Jaime Oliver cookbook I almost but didn’t buy.

In the meantime, upon my friend Amanda’s suggestion, I’m going to post a recipe I concocted and executed last week, which I’m calling Lamb Bolognese. I’ve started replacing beef with lamb when I can, because it is leaner than beef and more easily digested (any of you who have taken a break from beef only to return to it with an evening spent in the bathroom will appreciate this).

It’s an easy straightforward recipe and the results are really delicious…the lamb holds its own against all of the other ingredients and gives it an excellent flavor that is immediately discernable from the flavor you’d get using beef and also detectably less greasy. It’s a richly flavored and delicious sauce, but not too heavy and is just as good the next day, brought to work in a brown-bag or reheated for dinner part deux. I made it with Penne, which was the only thing I had in the cupboard and which I truly despise. I’d make this again with tagliatelle, linguine, fettucine, or even pappardele.

Lamb Bolognese
Serves 4
1 tblspn olive oil
½ - ¾ lb ground lamb
½ large brown onion
1 cup cremini or Portobello mushrooms, caps only, cleaned and sliced
1 tblspn fresh rosemary or ½ tblspn dried rosemary
½ tspn fresh thyme or ¼ tspn dried thyme
1/3 cup red wine
1 can of diced tomatoes
8 oz tomato puree (not flavored!)
½ tspn salt
¼ tspn ground black pepper

1. Heat olive oil in large saucepan over medium-high heat
2. Fill pot with water and bring to a boil, cook pasta and set aside.
3. Add lamb when oil is heated and brown
4. Remove browned lamb to bowl and drain off all but a little bit of the fat
5. Add onions and mushrooms to pan, reducing heat to medium and stirring frequently until onions are soft and translucent and the mushrooms have been reduced and softened
6. Add rosemary and thyme and let toast gently until fragrant, only about 30 seconds
7. Add lamb back to pan and pour in red wine and bring to a boil, scraping bottom of pan
8. Reduce red wine by half before adding the tomatoes and puree along with salt and pepper
9. Bring mixture to a boil and then reduce heat to simmer. Cover with a lid and let cook, stirring occasionally for 30 min.
10. Remove lid and let cook with lid off for another 15 min – as liquid evaporates, the sauce will thicken and the flavors will intensify.
11. Pour sauce over pasta, grate parmeggiano reggiano over the top and enjoy!

Its like ten thousand spoons…

Thursday, 9:15 am – The fact that I am even awake and functioning at this hour is already an unhappy fact. To make matters worse, one of my dearest and oldest pairs of heels has just broken on the subway. I knew I should have taken the escalator instead of the stairs – to hell with my “get excersize where you can!” mentality. I must hobble a block and half down Lexington like someone with a clubbed foot until I spot a cheap shoe store with models in the window that aren’t too offensive. I come out with a pair of silver thongs with straps that instantly begin to drill a blister into the space between my toes. Fabulous. One more open wound to add to the collection of monstrous blisters (given generously by my new black pumps worn to impress all of my coworkers that couldn’t have cared less what was on my feet on my first day of work) that have been inviting various bacteria from New York’s infamous city streets to make themselves at home at my expense. At least my outfit isn’t ruined.

2:05 pm – I have been stuck in a closet organizing and packing all day. And when I get back from lunch, I go for my usual afternoon coffee. Besides dreading having to go back into the closet, the day has gone ok since my shoe injury. Bam! Coffee. Everywhere. Desk. Floor. Papers. Notepad. Shirt. Pants. Its all I can do to stick to proper office décor and not yell the obscenity that is ringing in my ears. Deep breath.

6:45 pm – Something is wrong with the subway. The local is running as an express. Which means I have to go all the way down to the Brooklyn Bridge, transfer to an uptown local and then get off at my stop. And my ipod has died, leaving me hanging in the middle of a critical chapter of my book on tape, A Room with View.

7:15 pm – I drag myself, defeated by the day, into my apartment. Home at last! Get out of my coffee stained pants and into a nice snuggly pair of sweatpants. Finally I am in the kitchen, deciding what to make for dinner. I know exactly what I want – something comforting and warm and simple and delicious. Braised potatoes with tomato marmalade. Perfect! Even though it is muggy and hot outside, it is very chilly in my one-setting (which is, of course, blast chiller) air-conditioned dorm. I need carbs and comfort and something that will make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

These potatoes, which I was inspired to make by the silky and flavor-laden side dish that accompanied my brother’s main course at Providence, the Los Angeles foodie-favorite of the moment. The recipe, I’m proud to say is one of my own concoctions. The potatoes are cooked until they are so soft a fork slices neatly through them without resistance, but have a bit of a crunch on the top from the browning, and the marmalade is tangy and bright. Another one-pot dish, its also even better the next day so I advise you to make extras for tomorrow’s lunch!

Braised Potatoes with Tomato Marmalade
Makes about 4 servings

4 yukon gold potatoes, cut into 1 ½ inch thick rounds
4 strips of smoked bacon
¼ cup red wine
½ cup of beef broth
1 can of diced tomatoes (preferably San Marzano)
2 cloves garlic, chopped coursely
1 bay leaf
1/4 teaspoon salt
pinch of pepper

1. In a sauté pan with lid, render bacon fat over medium-high hat, making sure that it doesn’t burn. Remove bacon and discard.
2. Place potatoes in bacon fat and brown on each side. Remove potatoes to plate.
3. Turn heat down to medium-low. Add garlic and just softly sauté until fragrant.
4. Add red wine and bring to a boil. Reduce by about half.
5. Add beef broth. Bring to a boil and reduce by half again.
6. Add tomatoes, bayleaf, salt, and pepper. Place potatoes back in the pan and turn the heat down to very low. Simmer with a lid on for 15-20 minutes until the potatoes are very tender.
7. Remove potatoes to a plate. Turn heat back up, bring liquids to a boil and cook, lid off, on medium heat, until marmalade has thickened. Pour marmalade over potatoes and serve!

We've come a long way, baby

Dorm life is tough. You are arbitrarily chosen to occupy an (usually) uncomfortably small space with another just as equally arbitrarily chosen human being, with whom you often have nothing in common but your sex. And people wonder why NYU students aren’t allowed to access apartment balconies.

Fortunately, the human being with whom I was arbitrarily chosen to co-inhabit my dorm room this summer is fabulous. The kitchen, however, is not. If my kitchen were a person, we would be leaving horse heads in one another’s beds (boys, that one was for you). This is a kitchen that can’t bear much more than a one-pot meal, or some serious Ina Garten-inspired-make-ahead-of-time-and-then-assemble maneuvers for which I have neither the foresight nor the time. So, for now, until I can make it to Kmart to buy some sort of collapsible portable counter-space or convince one of my dear, city-dwelling friends to lend me their kitchen, one pot meals it is!

Last summer, one of my favorite dinners to make with the limited cooking supplies I had on hand was Macaroni and Cheese. It involved one pan and one baking dish, it was easy, and it was such a treat at the end of a long day at the office. I would make it and curl up in bed with a big heaping portion and watch the lights of the financial district fill the sky.

The recipe comes from my Aunt Michelle, and I have no idea where she found it but thank God she did. I’ve made it probably about a hundred times for most of my friends and roommates and always with extra onions- “Onions,” you scoff, “in mac n cheese? How odd!” and to you, I say, how delicious. I can never go back to Kraft or Stouffer’s and I’m a hideous snob when it comes to most restaurants’ versions.

Its not a super gloppy-cheesy sauce, its definitely cheesy – but not overboard, and can be adjusted according to taste. The trick is the flavors that go alongside the cheese that make this classic unique. It’s also too easy to add components – one of my favorite versions replaces the onions with leeks and adds Serrano ham or pancetta. You can also play around with cheeses... different combinations of good melting cheeses like cheddars and gruyere or whatever floats your boat. But here, first and foremost, is the classic

Michelle’s Mac n Cheese

Serves 4

1 box of fusili, penne, or macaroni (I love using fusili)
1 onion, chopped
2 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespoons of flour
2 teaspoons of salt
1 teaspoon of dry mustard
1/8 teaspoon of ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon of black pepper
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup extra sharp cheddar cheese, grated or chopped
1 cup aged white cheddar cheese OR sharp cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 325.

1. Boil a pot of water for the pasta and add pasta when ready, cooking only about 3/4 of the way through. Strain, pour into a baking dish, and set aside.
2. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat
3. When butter has melted, add onions, sweating them on medium-low heat until they are soft and translucent. About 8 minutes.
4. Add flour, mustard, nutmeg, salt, and pepper to onions, stirring.
5. Add milk, slowly, while stirring constantly.
6. Bring milk to a boil, and let it thicken until it lightly coats a wooden spoon.
7. Add cheese, stirring constantly.
8. When cheese has melted completely, pour it evenly over the pasta, folding it in to cover every noodle.
9. Put it in the oven for about 25 minutes until the edges start to brown.

A Thoroughly Modern Millie

“You know, when you are in France, you never even see chicken on a menu because chicken is what the French eat at home, so they don’t even bother with it in a restaurant.”
This is my mother’s favorite bit of French culinary knowledge that she picked up on her last trip to Paris and she constantly relays it to friends, family, and guests.
So when my champagne braised chicken had been presented, devoured, and praised with, “That was so good I could have eaten that in a French restaurant.”
My reply was simply, “But Mom, they don’t serve chicken in French restaurants. Didn’t you know? That’s what the French eat at home.”
My mother finished licking the finger that was in her mouth, rolled her eyes, and took her empty dish to the sink without a word.
This past semester, armed with my seasoned cast iron stock pot, which weighs about 10 pounds and is the only contribution I made to my apartment’s kitchen, I became obsessed with braising.
I braised beef and chicken in various combinations and ways at least twice a week. Braising is brilliant. Its generally a one-pot-meal and the flavors that develop are just too good to be true.
This recipe was adapted from an old Gourmet recipe that calls for Riesling originally, which we didn’t have on hand so I substituted Champagne… with dazzling results.
This past Friday, I decided to throw a dinner party for a few girlfriends before I left for the summer to tackle my dream internship in New York City. It was the last opportunity I’ll have for 9 weeks to cook in a fully furnished proper kitchen, as I’ll be working with borrowed pots and pans and whatever-else my cousin feels like throwing my way in a dangerously small NYU dorm kitchen for the remainder of the summer. Alas….
The night was lovely, with lots of wine and roses, good company, and even better conversation- we talked about our favorite books and we talked about politics – just like real grown-ups. And if I may say so myself, all in all it was a pretty good meal. Fingers were licked and plates were cleaned.
Now, with all my bags packed (and, yes, my spice collection in tow), I will be escaping the orange acid glow of Los Angeles to bask in the thick and sour air of New York City.
And for those of you who would like to transform your kitchen into a French Brasserie tonight, or pretend you’ve been whisked off to a little stone cottage in Provence, I highly recommend the Champagne Braised Chicken – its what the French would eat in restaurants….if they ate chicken in restaurants.

Champagne Braised Chicken with Cippolini Onions

* This recipe calls for a whole chicken. I don’t eat thighs so I only use whole chicken breasts with skin and the ribs attached and legs.
** I also usually skip the potatoes
***I have used both crème fraiche and heavy cream, and I have to say, I much prefer using heavy cream

1 whole chicken OR your choice of parts weighing more or less 3 lbs
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 tablespoons butter, divided
2 medium leeks finely chopped (about 1/2 cup)
8-10 cipollini onions, whole
2 tablespoons finely chopped shallot
1 cup champagne
4 carrots, chopped in large pieces
1/4 pound of fresh chanterelle or oyster mushrooms
1 1/2 pounds small red potatoes**
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/2 cup crème fraiche or heavy cream***
Fresh lemon juice to taste

Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle.

1. Fill a small pot with water and bring it to a boil. Blanch the onions for a minute or two, strain the water, and remove skins. Set aside.

2. Pat chicken dry and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon salt and a rounded 3/4 teaspoon pepper. Heat oil with 1 tablespoon butter in a wide 3 1/2- to 5-quart heavy ovenproof pot over medium-high heat until foam subsides, then brown chicken in 2 batches, turning once, about 10 minutes total per batch. Transfer to a plate.

2. Leaving the rendered chicken fat in the pot, brown the onions in the same pot you used to brown the chicken.

3. Transfer onions to the same plate with the chicken. Next, cook the leeks, shallot, carrots, and mushrooms in the same pot, adding the remaining two tablespoons of butter. Cook until the leeks and shallots are pale golden and the carrots and mushrooms are slightly browned.

5. Add chicken, skin side up and cipollinis back into the pot, along with any juices on the plate. Add the champagne and boil until liquid is reduced by half, 3-4 minutes. Cover pot and braise chicken in oven until cooked through, 20-25 minutes.

6. While chicken braises, peel potatoes, then generously cover with cold water in a 2- to 3-quart saucepan and add 1 1/2 teaspoons salt. Bring to a boil, then simmer until potatoes are just tender, about 15 minutes. Drain in a colander, then return to saucepan. Add parsley and shake to coat.

7. When the chicken is out of the oven, remove chicken to a plate and stir crème fraîche or heavy cream into the remaining mixture. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, then add potatoes and serve!

First taste of summer

My friend Jane's house is like something out of a Wes Anderson movie. It is a perfect little English countryside estate tucked into the hills of Brentwood. We're talking groomed rolling lawns, wild rose gardens, crawling vines, and a glass-walled sun room in the front with a view into the coziest of dens. In the office, baseball caps of all shapes and sizes and colors line the top of the back wall, hung on nails with stacks of papers and books scattered around haphazardly. Everywhere there is color and wall paper - rose buds in the downstairs guest room, cowboys and indians in the long-grown-up-and-moved-out eldest son's room, preschool drawings of animals in bright colors in the upstairs bathroom with the name of each animal scrawled underneath. Yak. Flamingo. Sheep. Cow. Chicken. The stair case splits into two ramshackle branches that lead to the boys' rooms on one side and to Jane's room on the other. Jane's room is a rich dandelion yellow and her white-washed floorboards are scuffed and perfect.
But most excitingly of all, at Jane's house, there is a bramble of blackberry bushes, wrapped around an old wrought iron gate - and this past week they were perfectly ripe and ready to be picked. I'd passed a kumquat tree on the way to the blackberry bramble, popping one of the tiny little orange fruits into my mouth and sinking my teeth into the sweet and stinging rind before letting the sour pulp gush over my tongue. The strange taste of this little fruit was still dancing around my mouth as I plopped in my first blackberry of the season. The bright and tangy citrus flavor of the kumquat brought out the deeper flavors of the blackberry and made for a pleasantly suprising flavor combination. An idea was born.
"Jane, we need to pick these blackberries and bake them in something. I'm going to make you a pie."
"I think its so funny that you want to bake. You and your weird food obsession," she replied.
"I don't care what you say," I scoffed. "I'm baking you a pie with these blackberries and there is nothing you can do to stop me."
And so a desperate search ensued for baskets and straw hats. It was sunny and warm and I was hopelessly lost to the illusion of being in the middle of the English country side. I wanted to put on a dress and swirl around the garden breathing the warm green fresh air. We found baskets and picked berries until they were overflowing and we didn't have any more hands to fill.
And so, deciding that it was too hot outside to pull off a pie dough (which is increasingly difficult to make as you raise the temperature) we settled in for a crumble, or cobbler, using Alice Waters' suggestion of pairing the blackberries with nectarines and adding kumquats at my own discretion. We also used Waters' measurements as our template for the cobbler topping, eschewing her suggestion for nuts and opting to add oats instead. The cobbler came out perfectly delicious.

Blackberry Nectarine Kumquat Crisp

For the filling:
3 cups of ripe blackberries
3 ripe nectarines cut into 1/4 inch wedges (skin on)
15-20 ripe kumquats to yield about 1/4 cup of juice
1/4 cup sugar (add more or less depending on sweetness of fruit)
1 1/2 tablespoon flour

Preheat oven to 375

1. Cut kumquats in half and squeeze until you have about 1/4 cup of juice. Set aside about half of the rinds.
2. Take the rinds you have set aside and, using a food processor, pulse them until you have a coarse paste. (If you do not have a food processor, use a very sharp knife to chop them into fine pieces.)
3. Combine nectarines and blackberries in a large bowl. Pour in kumquat juice and about 2 tablespoons of the kumquat rind paste, sugar, and flour. With a large spoon, gently coat the berries and nectarines with this mixture. Pour into a large baking dish and set aside.

For the topping:

1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 cup of old fashioned oats
8 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt (leave out if using salted butter)
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) butter, cut into small pieces

1. Combine flour, oats, sugar, and salt in a large bowl.
2. Work butter into the four mixture with your fingers, a pastry blender, or a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. (I mixed all of the ingredients in a food processor, pulsing it until it resembled course crumbs). The final result should be crumbly, not sandy. If your mixture is too much like a dough, or a paste, thats ok - just break it up into pieces as you sprinkle it on top of the fruit.
3. Sprinkle the topping over the fruit, coating it evenly but not entirely. Bake in 375 oven for 4-55 minutes or until the topping is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling in the dish.

A very unlikely love story

I grew up with a mother who hated to cook. My favorite foods came out of boxes and cans; Rice a Roni, Cambell's Chicken Noodle Soup, Stouffer's Macaroni and Cheese, Tater Tots. Some nights, if my mother did not want to preheat the oven, turn on the stove, or have something delivered, she'd tell us to make a bowl of cereal and call it a night. This is not to say that everything we ate was busting with preservatives and artificial flavors. There were things my mother made - spaghetti with meat sauce and always extra carrots at my behest, enchilladas, cracker chicken (chicken breasts rolled in saltine-cracker crumbs and cooked in butter), chili, chicken noodle soup that was always uncharacteristically spicy, and a few others.
And then there was her lemon meringue pie. I always loved to be in the kitchen while she was making the pie even though I still can’t stand the pie itself. I would sit on a stool at the counter and watch my mother gather her ingredients on the counter - creating a real life collage that simply looked delicious. There were always two white bowls, one for the meringue and one for the filling, half a dozen lemons, a few eggs, the squat cans of condensed milk that looked like something out of my grandmothers pantry, the graham cracker crumbs for the crust, sugar, and milk.
My mother knew the recipe by heart but she still occasionally used the tattered old piece of yellow notebook paper to get her measurements. I used to watch her pour in the thick, sticky condensed milk with a stomach that ached with the thought of eating something as sweet and creamy as it smelled. And then the lemon juice, cups of it, always squeezed by hand; a feat at which I marveled. Then, the meringue: egg upon egg cracked open , their contents poured into a bowl with sugar and whipped to an impossible state of weightlessness. My mother made her pies with a deliberateness and an air of expertise that was not lent to any other aspect of her cooking.
The moments of watching my mother make her pie, lost in the sure and familiar rhythm of a life-long routine, confident in every motion, and channeling her past through the creation of a dish - these were the moments that have defined by passion for cooking. The recipe came from her grandmother, who had made this pie and many others to sell at a roadside stand to families migrating from the dust bowl to California during the Great Depression. My family had been one of those families - they had sold their farm and auto-shop in Kansas to move west and eventually settled in Pasadena, California. They were some of the lucky one's and though they traveled the same road as Steinbeck's Joad family, they did so with much less hardship and much more success.
Since I can remember, I have been concocting disasters in my mother's kitchen - much to her chagrin. I would gather up random spices and pour them into broths and over vegetables and rices and pretend to savor the outcomes. I would bake - without any conception of the finnicky nature of eggs, flour, sugar, or butter. My "recipes" were nearly always failures, and the messes they left behind drove my mother to xanax.
However, I persevered - I began to educate myself on ingredients, techniques, styles of cooking. I began to watch the food network obsessively. I would go to bookstores and gather up ten different cookbooks - sit in the aisles and just pore over them for hours. I began reading food blogs and magazines and come last Christmas, received a cookbook from every member of my extended family. My last birthday wish list consisted of only two items: a La Crouset stock pot, and a Kitchenaid stand mixer.
So, without further adieu, I would like to introduce myself, The Unlikely Gourmand. You can call me C, and for my first recipe, I would like to share with you my family's fourth-generation lemon meringue pie. It is the perfect pie to bring to any occasion - we have ours at every Thanksgiving and Christmas. My mother always uses fresh yellow lemons, but I, being somewhat of a sugar nazi and a Meyer Lemon fanatic, prefer using these sweeter, slightly tangerine-tinged little wonders for my version. I think the flavor is more complex and because they aren't as sour, you can cut back on the sugar, and thus, the calories (not to give you the wrong idea, here, folks - you will see me using absurd amounts of butter and bacon fat in the posts to come, but I thought we'd settle in with something a little less intimidating).

Grammy Scott's Lemon Meringue Pie

For the crust:
1/4 cup graham cracker crumbs (my mother always uses store-bought Honeymaid)
5 tablespoons of unsalted butter

1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Pack into the bottom and up the sides of a pie dish
3. Bake for 8 minutes or until crust has browned lightly
4. Let crust cool to room temperature (if you don't let the crust cool, your pie will be soggy)


For the filling:
1 can low-fat sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 tablespoons of lemon zest (the zest from about 2 lemons)
2 egg yolks

1. Put all ingredients into a bowl and beat until smooth and creamy
2. Pour into cooled pie crust

For the Meringue:
6 large egg whites
1/4 tspn of cream of tartar
1/2 tspn of vanilla extract
5 tblspn sugar

1. Combine egg whites, cream of tartar, and vanilla in large mixing bowl. Beat eggs on high until eggs become fluffy and white. While continuing to beat egg whites on high, add a tablespoon of sugar at a time, slowly, until egg whites form stiff peaks.
2. With a rubber spatula, fold meringue onto the lemon filling carefully, taking care not to deflate the egg whites. Seal the edges of the meringue topping. Finally, using the spatula, make small circus-tent peaks that will brown in the oven.
3. Bake the pie for 20 minutes or until meringue begins to brown.