Like having pudding for breakfast!

A few years ago, when I put oatmeal on a grocery list, James came home with steel cut oats instead. It wasn’t a big deal, but I was aware that steel cut oats took longer to prepare than regular oatmeal, so we would need to plan ahead for breakfasts that required their use. With this in mind I brought the steel cut oats to the beach house where meal preparation tends go at a more leisurely pace, and bought some regular oatmeal for our regular house. Last week when a recipe for Brown-Butter Chocolate Oatmeal (using steel cut oats, not oatmeal) showed up on my Facebook feed from the New York Times Cooking page I knew I’d found a perfect morning meal for Easter weekend.
The chocolate flavor comes from unsweetened powered cocoa, so this will only be as sweet as each diner likes using whatever sweetening agents they prefer. I used a bit of brown sugar and some sliced banana. James just used the brown sugar. We both liked our results.

I halved the recipe, and followed the suggestion to “substitute...milk...for up to half the water”.  This was thick and flavorful.

More Jam Chicken

Perhaps because we had enjoyed the sriracha hot jam chicken so much just a fortnight ago, I bought another roasting chicken -- this one organic and free-range -- during pre-blizzard food shopping yesterday. I was prepared to repeat the make-shift "recipe" I had used before, but true to the spirit of this project, Pam found a nueva receta in one of our oldest cookbooks. Clarification: the book is old, having been printed as I graduated from high school, but it is new to us, a thrifty find librarian Pam made on the free-to-good-home bookshelf in our university library.

On page 314 of the 1981 ring-bound edition of The New Cook Book from Better Home & Gardens, she found "Chicken with Currant Glaze." My first reaction was to think about the small remnant of a package of currants in our cupboard, but this was quickly made moot by the second line of the ingredients list: "1/3 cup red currant or raspberry jelly." Remembering that I had also purchased a nice local raspberry jam, I knew we had a winner for a hearty dinner I could prepare between bouts of blizzard shoveling.

Again using the upright roaster, I put Canadian whiskey in the well this time, and then prepared the chicken (with a simple rub of olive oil and a dusting of salt and black pepper. I roasted it for just over an hour, until it reached an internal temperature of 165F. A sign of changing standards is that the book calls for a temperature of 185F, which we now know as "dry" and which explains a lot of over-cooked poultry in our pasts.

At that point, I whisked together in a saucepan the ingredients for a proper sauce: the jam, 2 T lemon juice, 1 T butter, a dash of cinnamon, 1 T water and 2 t cornstarch. Pam kept mentioning that this book was for novice cooks, and I should have paid attention to one of its beginner tips. As I should know by now, the cornstarch works best when mixed with water and then added. I could not whisk out the clumps that were formed. I did make a nice, thick sauce, though, and passed it through a sieve before brushing it on.

Baking for about 15 minutes more at a moderate 350F, the glaze got just a bit crispy. The result of the cooking method and the selection of humanely-raised chicken was an exceptionally succulent meal. It paired well with the mashed potatoes I refried during those final 15 minutes and with the Malbec we selected.

Vegetarian Chili with Corn Bread Topping

This recipe comes from the New York Times Cooking page. It was labeled under vegetarian comfort food, a description with which I heartily concur. This was a little complicated, and made a hella dishes, but it was worth it in the end and made for excellent leftovers.

I deviated a bit from the recipe, as I had no cardamom (pods, or otherwise) at the beach house where I made this, a problem which I will rectify once this third-major-snowstorm-in-as-many-weeks clears up. Neither did I use lentil beans, opting instead for simple kidney beans. I also skipped the ketchup, and did include freshly ground cloves. It all ended up with a nice spicy kick.

I used plain yogurt in lieu of buttermilk for the topping which made it more thick and therefore couldn't really be spread, but rather glopped onto the casserole. It did turn out nicely browned, and tasty. We were also surprised at how easily everything came out of the dish, in neat little rectangles.

Hot Jam Chicken

A bold flavor from Stonewall Kitchen.

If three or more things are needed at the grocery, we make a list. And jam was on the list -- as in jam for our usual breakfast of local eggs, English muffins, juice, yogurt, and free-range coffee. This fuels our mornings without overfilling us, and most importantly does not require us to make decisions early on a weekday. Aside from deciding whether to add jam or not. In any case, jam was on the list, and I got a nice one from Stonewall Kitchens (we get much more local when we can, but this is our go-to). When reaching for the jar of strawberry-peach, I noticed its shelf neighbor: pineapple sriracha.

That looks terrific, I thought, but it might be a bit much for breakfast, where Tabasco on the eggs is sufficient heat for me. Plus, my bride is not a huge fan of pineapple. I picked it up though, knowing that I could do something with this and poultry.

And indeed I did! I selected a day when I knew I would be home a couple hours ahead of Pam, and made a plan to get started that morning -- which was today. I whisked a generous dollop of sriracha sauce and a generous shake of salt into a large bowl of milk. Yes, milk. I then rinsed a small, organic chicken and placed it in the bowl, adding a bit more milk to submerge the chicken. I placed the bowl in the fridge and then headed out for a full day of teaching. All day I was brining as well, without even thinking about it!

When I got home, I noticed that the tiny bit of chicken above the milk line was not soaking, so I turned the bird over and put it back in the fridge for another hour.

Then I got to work, first turning the oven on to convection at 375F.  In a small saucepan over low heat, I stirred together about 1/4 cup each of honey and the pineapple sriracha jam, until a thick sauce formed.

I then filled the well of our upright ceramic chicken roaster with port and sherry. We happened to have a smidge of the latter, so I emptied it into the well first. The well only holds about a half cup of liquid, which of course will moisten the chicken from its interior cavity. I placed the chicken onto the support (which contained the wines) and then spooned the sauce over it, covering the chicken as well as I could. I tucked the ends of the wings into small notches I made in the chicken "armpit" so that they would not get singed.

I placed it in the oven at 375 for about 45 minutes. I then chopped a few small potatoes into 1/2-inch dice and placed them in a casserole, where I coated them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and oregano. Looking at an earlier use of the upright roaster, I am now reminded that I could have placed the potatoes in the same pan as the chicken. The casserole, of course, resulted in a slightly crisp potato side, which I have made a staple of my cooking.

I continued on convection, lowered to 350, for about another hour. I would recommend checking for doneness by the usual means (clear-running juices or an internal temperature of 165), but I did not do so because the battery was dead in our kitchen thermometer. That does not excuse my failure to pierce the skin to inspect juices, but I just knew that we had lucked into perfect timing.

I transferred the chicken and potatoes to a platter and found that the chicken was so tender that it nearly carved itself. Crispity as could be on the outside and succulent on the inside, this was a very fine roast, and its sweet-hot flavor paired deliciously with the Provence rose that I had chilled.

Total time: 10 hours; Active time: total of 30 minutes (10 minutes each of three times)