Pam's Sublime Turkey Burgers

Sometimes you just have a good idea and have to implement it. The inspiration for this recipe came from the fresh mint growing in our garden. I have used mint before in turkey burgers, and remembered that I also have drizzled said burgers with lemon juice. I took this idea to the next level by making my own mayonnaise using lemon-infused olive oil.

For two burgers I used:

1/2 lb. ground turkey
a few dashes each of salt and pepper
about a dozen fresh mint leaves, minced
a few shakes of crumbled feta cheese

Patties were hand formed and cooked on the stovetop.

For the mayonnaise I used

1 uber-fresh local egg gifted by a friend
1 dollop of lemon-infused olive oil
1 dollop of basil-infused olive oil
a few shakes each of salt and pepper

The ingredients were put in the blender and mixed until emulsified. The result was a bit heavy on the olive oil taste, so I added some more salt until there was a better balance. 

Burgers were placed on sesame buns and topped with the mayonnaise.

We enjoyed this on the back deck with some white wine and potato chips. Bats and birds helped to create an ideal atmosphere. The evening was complete when we got to watch the best back-yard lightning-bug show so far this season.

Chicken Breasts in Cherry Sauce

I adapted this recipe from the New York Times Cooking Pages recipe Duck with Cherries and Red Wine Vinegar. Besides substituting chicken for duck, I also substituted Dr. McGillicuddy's Cherry Liqueur for the Cognac (it seemed like the thing to do when I found the almost empty bottle in our liquor cabinet).

I was pleased to discover that we had all the other ingredients on hand (or at least reasonable facsimilies thereof) so I didn't need to do any shopping.

I started by grinding the fennel, clove, peppercorns, and bay leaves in our handy spice grinder. Our allspice was already ground so I just added that to the mix after. The breasts were seasoned and left for several hours to meld.

I started the sauce ahead of time as well with red wine vinegar, Malbec, sugar, chicken broth, cayenne pepper, fresh ginger and salt.

Once it was time to prepare dinner it didn't take long. The chicken breasts were placed in a skillet and cooked on each side for seven minutes. I finished the sauce with butter, more sugar, whole (pitted) cherries, and the cherry liqueur. 

The chicken breasts were sliced, plated, and served with cherries and sauce. I air fried some frozen sweet potato fries as a side dish, which made for a very colorful presentation. The meal was paired with the same Malbec I used in the sauce.

Very tasty!

Fancy Comfort Food - Chicken with "a tangle" of noodles

One-Pot Creamy Chicken and Noodles comes from From the New York Times Cooking Pages. It is rather simple, and really is prepared all in one pot, however, it does take two hours. I started by putting some lemon-infused olive oil into our indispensable cast-iron cook pot, placed the whole chicken in, and then dotted with butter. The chicken was seasoned with salt, and lemon pepper (inside and out), and a bit of Paremesan rind was also put inside the cavity. A bunch of garlic cloves (still in their sheathes) were added to the pot as well. This baked in a 500 degree oven for 30 minutes. Then pot was removed to the stovetop, garlic cloves were crushed, and 5 cups of water added and brought to a simmer. Meanwhile the oven temp was lowered to 400. The chicken was placed back in the oven and baked for another hour, whereupon it was again removed to the stovetop so more water, and egg noodles could be added. The noodles and chicken boiled until the noodles were softened and then fresh rosemary was added to the pot. After five minutes several tablespoons of sour cream were added. 

We brought this most appetizing pot to the table with fanfare. I don't believe it would have been possible to have prepared a more tender chicken. We both had seconds, and are looking forward to enjoying the leftovers today for lunch!

Turmeric-Black Pepper Chicken with Asparagus

 

A search for what to do with some leftover asparagus led me to this recipe from the New York Times Cooking pages. Everything was cooked in my indispensable cast-iron skillet.

After cutting chicken breasts into small pieces and tossing with a mixture of flour, turmeric and salt I cooked them with some oil for three minutes on each side. Chopped asparagus was added and then a mixture of water, honey, and pepper. Lastly some rice vinegar was added.

A relatively quick, easy, delicious, and nutritious weeknight dinner.

Chicken Stew

 After deciding to do "something with chicken" I remembered seeing a recipe online for chicken stew. I don't remember where I saw it, but I figured that if I found any chicken stew recipe it would do. A google search brought me to Food52 "Chicken Stew with Potatoes, Carrots, and Celery". Since I had potatoes, carrots, and celery on hand I figured it was a good choice. However, I discovered that the baby carrots had gone past their prime and had a bit of a slime on them. No worries, I simply added mushrooms instead (since I already had some of those).

I seared two boneless, skinless chicken breasts in my indispensable cast-iron stew pot, and then removed them to cut into small chunks. The chicken was set aside while I prepared the rest of the stew. Diced onion and garlic were cooked along with some herbs. I used sage, thyme, and a pouch of something I found in the spice drawer called "Winter Savory" - no clue what was in it. Next the celery and mushrooms were added to the pot.

Once the vegetables were cooked I added flour and vegetable broth. The recipe called for chicken broth, but I didn't have any. The vegetable broth was left over from the weekend's salmon recipe.

Finally the chicken chunks and potatoes (cut into bite-sized pieces) went in. Everything simmered for 20 minutes until the potatoes were fully cooked.

A warm cozy dish for a cold winter's eve. Made for some dandy leftovers too.

Chicken Salad

A few weeks ago while James was in Brazil (and I was on my own) I thawed, poached, and shredded two chicken breasts. Although I only needed one breast to prepare Chilaquiles, I cooked both simply because they came in a package of two. Once the superfluous breast was shredded I put it in the freezer to use later.

Often in the summer I like to have cool salads for meals, so last week I took the prepared chicken out of the freezer, thawed it and made a chicken salad. I decided not to follow any recipe and let the ingredients I had on had be my guide. 

The chicken was mixed with two dollops of  sour cream, about 1/4 c. chopped red onion, and some salt, pepper, and dried basil. At this point I gave it a taste test and determined that it was a bit "onion forward"  so I found some prepared cranberry sauce in the refrigerator and added about two tablespoons. The sweet/tart flavor softened the harsh onion for a lovely flavor combination. We made sandwiches with the salad and had some roasted potatoes on the side.

Roasted Chicken Thighs in Blueberry Sauce

It looks like we are going to have a bumper crop from our backyard blueberry bushes this summer. So in addition to some refreshing smoothies, blueberry cobbler, and blueberry salmon we will be looking for some more recipes that use these summer favorites. One such recipe serendipitously showed up on my Facebook feed from the New York Times Cooking Pages. While we regularly prepare chicken breast, or a whole chicken, thighs are something we cook much less often, but Roasted Chicken Thighs with Blueberries is likely to become a favorite.

Using my indispensable cast-iron skillet I cooked the well salted thighs on a medium low heat for 15 minutes, then flipped for another five and then moved them to a plate while I used the rendered fat and a bit of water to sauté four large cloves of thinly sliced garlic. Spices were added, then 3 cups of blueberries, a tablespoon each of mustard and honey. The thighs were placed on top of the berries and then the skillet was placed in the preheated 400 degree oven.

Ready for the oven

The thighs baked for 15 minutes and came out a beautiful golden color surrounded by a deep blue sauce. Served with a green summer salad and paired with Pinot Noir Rosé from Westport Rivers Winery this meal was full of texture and flavor - tender and juicy, sweet and savory. 

On mange!

Chicken Florentine

 

Often when I post about a recipe from the New York Times Cooking Pages the name of the dish gives all (or most) of the ingredient list, not so with Chicken Florentine which goes even further in its "not like the others-ness" in that the ingredient list provided does not provide any measures. This list simply reads:

Chicken breasts

Extra-virgin olive oil

Butter

Flour

Spinach

White wine

Heavy cream, sour cream or yogurt

There are instructions, however about what to do with the ingredients. I followed the steps provided using the two chicken breasts we got from our weekly delivery. As I've discovered on previous attempts to cook these in a skillet the breasts are very thick and any indication that they can be cooked through with 5-6 minutes per side is pure fantasy. I doubled the time and still had to give it a final blast in the microwave to cook it to a safe doneness. 

As for the portions of the rest of the ingredients the instructions do call for two tablespoons each of butter and olive oil, as well as 1/2 cup white wine.  Otherwise I went with a dollop of sour cream, and four large handfuls of spinach leaves.

A very lemon-y meal

We recently bought some lemon-infused olive oil, as well as some white balsamic vinegar, so we've been on the look out for lemony recipes. (This post describes a meal by Pamela and a dessert by James; Pam writes first.)

I chose Lemon Chicken with Garlic-Chile Oil from the New York Times Cooking Page for last night's dinner. The recipe is clear that the garlic oil be cooked slow so as not to burn, and then removed from heat, but I admit to simply adding my chicken breasts to the cooked oil, and then keeping the heat low. This did mean that the chicken took longer to cook, but the garlic never burned and the chicken was tender and flavorful in the end. As a side dish I prepared Greek Lemon Potatoes (made with the lemon olive oil) and topped it off with some of the Lemon Bundt Cake James made for Easter dinner.

James continues (writing a few days later) ...

I did indeed prepare the lemon Bundt cake, based on the New York Times recipe Pam mentions above. But I took the lemon-ness to a higher level -- incorporating all of Yossy Arefi's excellent ideas and adding some of my own. In fact, my intentions for this cake were what had gotten us to the oil-and-vinegar store the week prior. (It does not take a lot to convince us to go to these stores, and in fact we have two, in Marion and in Fredrick.)

Photo: Yossy Arefi

I must first recognize Arefi's most important contribution. Step 4 of her recipe looks complicated at first, but it is an elegant way to make sure that every lemony part of the lemons ends up in the cake, with the pithy white part between the rind and the fruit removed. Standing the lemons on end as she suggests makes this easy.

The recipe calls for 3/4 of a stick of butter, plus 1/4 cup of neutral oil, by which I assume she intends canola or the like. I substituted the lemon-infused olive oil that Pam mentions above, raising the lemon quotient just a bit.

The real difference is in the glaze. I remembered the glaze that helped us win an award from Marley Coffee for my mocha cake, and simply lemonized that concept. I substituted lemon-infused white balsamic vinegar for some of the juice in the glaze. I might never make a glaze without balsamic again!

Hot Chicken Salad

 Sometimes the most important reason that we pick a particular recipe is that we already have all the ingredients to prepare it. So it was for Hot Chicken Salad. We had some chicken thawing and using the New York Times Cooking search feature found a recipe that didn't require a grocery store run. Having just done some major Costco shopping neither of us were interested in going to the store again. 

The chicken breasts were cut into small pieces and cooked on the stovetop in our indispensable cast-iron skillet, then tossed in a bowl along with celery pieces, mayonnaise, shredded cheddar cheese, slivered almonds, diced onion, lemon juice and salt and pepper. This was then placed back into the skillet, topped with crushed potato chips and baked at 350 for 32 minutes. This turned out a bit saltier than I would have liked, perhaps I over salted, or maybe it was the potato chips. In any case, we ate every bit of it.

Chicken Enchiladas

 

This recipe came from our Best Simple Suppers for Two cookbook. The original intention was to make it for Valentine's Day, but we decided to roast a whole chicken instead for our romantic February 14 dinner. Since this recipe called for shredding a prepared rotisserie chicken it made more sense to use the leftover chicken for this one. The recipe says this has a prep time of 10 minutes, which I found wildly inaccurate. It took about twice that long to shred the chicken, chop the onion and garlic, cook it all with the other ingredients, then divide, and assemble. 

Full ingredient list includes:

4 six-inch corn tortillas (next time I will use six tortillas)

2 T olive oil

1 garlic clove (minced)

1 small onion (chopped)

2 cups shredded cooked chicken

1 can black beans (rinsed and drained)

1 can diced tomatoes

juice of one lime

1 cup corn kernals

1 t. cumin

1 c. enchilada sauce

2 cups shredded pepper jack cheese

While sautéing the onion and garlic in our indispensable cast-iron skillet I charred the tortillas in a dry cast iron pan on the stovetop. I added the chicken and beans to the skillet and seasoned with some salt and pepper. Once the chicken and beans were warmed through I removed half the mixture to a separate bowl and mixed half the corn, half the tomatoes, half the cumin, half the lime juice, and half the enchilada sauce into what was left in the skillet and sprinkled a third of the cheese on top. Two tortillas were placed on top of this, and then the rest of everything (except the cheese) was mixed together in the bowl with the remaining chicken and bean mix, and then put over the tortillas. A third of the cheese was added, and then the other two tortillas followed by the last of the cheese. This was all baked in the skillet (with its lid) at 350 for 14 minutes. We topped our enchiladas with sour cream.

A spicy, flavorful meal with a lot of texture. We both liked this, although it wasn't especially simple. It had a lot of ingredients, a lot of steps, and created a lot of dishes. We will likely have this again, but I will save it for a weekend meal next time.

Cilantro-Forward Chicken

As we contemplated upcoming meals over yesterday morning's Nicaraguan coffee, I mentioned that we had received some local chicken in our dairy delivery and that I would find a way to prepare it using some ginger that remained from a soup our son had prepared during a recent visit. Before I could say "una nueva receta cada semana," Pamela had found several options on her now-favorite cookbook: NY Times Cooking on her iPad.

I chose the first one she mentioned: ginger-scallion chicken sounded both simple and tasty and (spoiler alert) indeed it was. I started to thaw the chicken, which had arrived frozen just a couple hours earlier, in the usual Hayes-Boh way (note below).  

The recipe was, in fact, similar to what I was thinking of doing without any recipe, but I am glad we had Melissa Clark's adaptation of a recipe by Lan Hing Riggin. The ingredients were something I might have come up with on my own, but the technique was a delicious improvement on my usual approach to stir-fry, which is to brown the meat and then add vegetables, sauces and seasonings. 

They suggest a more nuanced approach, which I followed almost to the letter. One exception: we usually keep only one kind of oil in the house (proving we are not really foodies), so I used EVOO instead of the lighter oils suggested. First, though, I started cooking some brown rice, because I knew that this recipe would be ready pretty quickly. If I am going to serve something with rice, I usually start it early and I use a technique that has worked well for me recently: I heat some oil (or butter) in a small saucepan while rinsing 1 cup of rice in a sieve. I then put the rice into the medium-hot pan, stirring vigorously with a fork and perhaps adding some seasonings (in this case black pepper and oregano). After just about 2 minutes, I add 2-1/4 cups of water and bring to a boil. I then cover and lower to a simmer, where I can forget about the rice while making the rest of the meal.

I prepared all of the ingredients before I started any cooking, because this does indeed go quickly. I trimmed two large scallions and then separated the white from the green. I cut each lengthwise into quarters and then into one-inch little sticks. This was a little tedious but the texture at the end did seem to benefit. I tossed the green pieces together with one full cup of chopped cilantro (leaves and fine stems) and set aside. I put the white pieces on a plate with some finely chopped ginger and a finely chopped hot red pepper.

I cut the chicken into one-inch pieces and heated the oil in our indispensable cast-iron skillet.  I stirred frequently and followed the recipe's guidance to remove the chicken to serving plates as soon as it was cooked through, not browning it as I usually might. I put the mixed cilantro and green scallion on top of the chicken and the rice alongside it on each plate. I then lowered the heat in the pan and added the ginger and pepper, which I stirred for just about a minute. I added the scallions for a half minute more and then stirred in a tablespoon of sugar and a glug of soy sauce. I stirred this just long enough to reduce it slightly and then poured it over both the greens and the rice.

Voilà! This was an easy, delicious, healthful meal. And the red peppers helped make it look as festive as it tasted.

Thawing note: I put the frozen package in a bowl full of water. This is both faster and safer than simply leaving the package out on the counter. If the kitchen is warm enough that thawing is achieved early in the day, we will return it to the fridge; if we start the process a day early, we can just thaw things like this in the fridge itself. In any case, we avoid microwave thawing, which always seems to result in some uneven pre-cooking.

Chicken with Walnuts

A quick recipe from a classic cookbook (Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book) this used several leftover ingredients that I had in my refrigerator including two half bell peppers (one green, and one orange) and 3 scallions. 

I started by slicing two chicken breasts into about 20 pieces and then slicing the peppers, and scallions. Everything was set aside while I made the sauce which consisted of what was left in my bottle of soy sauce (the recipe says 3 T), 2 t cornstarch, a bit of port wine (in lieu of cooking sherry), a sugar cube, a bit of ground ginger, salt, and crushed red pepper. 

Using my indispensable cast-iron skillet I first sautéed the chopped vegetables for two minutes on high heat with orange-infused olive oil (I chose this flavor cooking oil because the recipe lists kumquats as an option for serving). The veggies were removed and then a cup of chopped walnuts were given a turn in the skillet for one minute. They were removed and then the chicken strips were cooked in the skillet. Once they were cooked through (it only took a few minutes) the sauce was added and then the vegetables and walnuts were put back in. Everything was covered and cooked together for another minute. 

We had some leftover lemon rice with almonds which we heated in the microwave oven and served with the chicken. 

An easy, delicious, and nutritious weeknight meal.

Algorithm Chicken

 

Photo: AllRecipes user Rebecca Lepore

Although one purpose of this blog is to push us to leaf through the pages of the several dozen cookbooks we own, frequent readers will notice that we are just as likely to seek our inspirations online. 

It seems that it is not only our human readers who have noticed our patterns -- the algorithms were quick to provide assistance yesterday. I went to All Recipes at midday on a Friday. The timing suggests a user seeking an easy meal; the fact that it was me suggests that I'm looking for yet another way to prepare an item that is a staple of our weekly dairy delivery. The fact that it was either one of us suggests that a listicle is in order. This led the ghosts in the machine quite inevitably to put these words front-and-center on the AllRecipes screen: 

12 Top Chicken Breast Dinners That Use 5 Ingredients or Less

I scrolled through the list until I found two that seemed likely candidates: recipes we would both like and without breading because I've been kind of overdoing that option lately. I sent both links to Pamela and her exact words were "Both look yummy!"

I chose Balsamic Goat Cheese Stuffed Chicken Breasts, a recipe whose title is almost the entire recipe. I followed the recipe almost exactly as written, reducing the balsamic for about 15 minutes instead of 10. I did assemble the dish pretty much as directed, though it was not very pretty (hence the stolen photo above) and I did not believe the toothpicks would make it any more so.

Because I was using our oven as an air fryer at 400F for some potatoes to go with this, I decided not to bake the chicken in the oven, but rather to use an indispensable cast-iron skillet with a lid as a Dutch oven. Starting out a bit hot and then keeping the heat minimal worked well for this; it was cooked properly in 35 minutes.

I regretted not noticing the recipe's suggested inclusion of sautéed mushrooms -- it was written as an afterthought, and not included on the ingredients list.

We both agreed that this was as delicious as it was easy. I liked it as much as Pamela did, even though she is by far the bigger feta fan. We will definitely be making it again, perhaps with a flavored balsamic.

Lagniappe

I am certain that the runner up will be featured here very soon.

Easy Honey Mustard Mozzarella Chicken: Têm

 This was the title of a recipe Pam read to me as we made the Friday mid-day transition from "we have plenty of food so we don't need to shop for dinner" to the making of an actual plan.

My response was, "I like every word of that title!"

She then read the ingredient list, answering herself with "Têm!" after every word. This is a bit of family lore, dating back to my dissertation travel in Rondônia in 1996. A neighbor who enjoyed sharing a lot of foods with me invited me to cook a big meal in his kitchen. I would need ingredients that I had not yet seen in the area. As I asked him about each thing I would need to make a chicken and pasta dinner, he would nod solemnly and pronounce "Têm!" -- "They have it!" This sounds so much better in Portuguese, so it is how we share the good news that what we need is on hand. (That meal, by the way, became a minor legend. During a return visit in 2000, people would stop me in the street to ask me if I could cook for them again.)

But I digress. We had everything mentioned in the title of Easy Honey Mustard Mozzarella Chicken, plus the additional ingredients: lemon, pepper, and above all: bacon.

This is another recipe that it is taking me longer to describe than it might take a reader to prepare. I began by putting the rice on to cook as a side dish, and then following the recipe almost to the letter. I used a splash of lemon with the ground pepper, since our jar of lemon-pepper was in the other kitchen. And I used some nice fresh mozzarella, which I shredded/crumbled. The only thing I will do differently next time is to put the bacon on earlier in the process; the thick slices we use could not really crisp in 10 minutes. 

Lagniappe

When I don't think a dish will make for a good photo, sometimes I take a photo of the ingredients, or of the dish in progress. Other times I will poach a photo from the recipe website. In this case, just trust me: this is more delicious and easy than it is photogenic. It just looks like melted cheese at the end. The website has 70 photos. I scrolled through half of them before I concluded that there are a lot of ways to make this look ugly. 

New Year's Eve dinner - Fettuccini with Chicken and Mushrooms

Welp, 2021 closed much the same way that 2020 did, so as we entered our third year of pandemic James and I spent a quiet evening at home. We managed to stay up until about 10:30 before we decided we'd had all the Netflix excitement two baby boomers could take. We did however, have a lovely meal before we settled in to the boob tube.

We selected Fettuccini with Chicken and Mushrooms from one of the oldest cookbooks on our shelf - 365 Ways to Cook Pasta. The recipe was selected because we had chicken and mushrooms in our larder. It calls for a mix of white button, shiitake, and oyster mushrooms. I only used the first two of these. We had purchased some white mushrooms for another recipe, and the shiitake came from a log James insisted we take with us from a shiitake mushroom farm we visited on Martha's Vineyard - our last trip before the country shut down in March 2020. The log was supposed to have been soaked that spring in order to cause the mushrooms to come out, but that was never done, so were were pleasantly surprised to find a 'shroom growing out of the log earlier in the week. I plucked it to use in our last meal of 2021.

The accidental shiitake mushroom

The recipe itself was of a rather straightforward chicken/pasta/creamy-tomato-sauce variety. Peas were also added to make it a complete meal in itself.

Easy Spicy Chicken

Deciding to continue our recent success with recetas nuevas, on Sunday afternoon I took An Appetite for Passion from the shelf. For the long version of our interest in this book -- which has nothing to do with the author and everything to do with the writer of its forward -- see our 2014 Cooking in the Car post.

I include a photo of the book cover because it is much more attractive than a photo of the dinner would be. Delicious food is not always photogenic. 

Thumbing through the thin volume for dinner ideas, I noticed that many of the recipes are for seafood, but we would not have a chance to get to the fishmonger before Monday. And I no longer buy seafood at the regular grocery store. If there are not boats behind the store, I'm probably not buying fish there. I might be moving this book to the shelf of our ocean-proximate kitchen in Fairhaven.

The book has a lot of desserts and breakfasts, which could serve as a dinner. But I kept turning pages. At least two recipes call for venison, duck, or other meats that I am not set up to bring in, as it were. 

But then I saw a simple recipe for spiced roast chicken. I do often roast chickens, as readers of this blog know. But I decided that this recipe could succeed with the boneless chicken breasts that are part of our weekly dairy delivery. 

Preparation was very simple. In a small bowl, I combined brown sugar, ground cinnamon, cumin, red pepper flakes, fresh-ground black pepper, ground coriander, chili powder and just a little salt. I crunched these together thoroughly with a teaspoon. 

The recipe calls for rubbing this mixture under the skin of the chicken before roasting -- much as I have done with Thanksgiving turkeys in recent years. (In fact, I might just spice up next week's turkey just a little next week.) I knew that these chicken breasts would be delicious and tender, but with no surface fat to work with. So I turned them in a bowl with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil before rubbing on the sugar-spice mixture.

I then heated a mixture of oil and butter in an indispensable cast-iron skillet, adding the breasts when the pan was hot enough to sear them. After 2-3 minutes, I turned them, searing the other side. I then lowered the heat and began to prepare the side dish -- just leftover brown rice that I fried in another skillet, scrambling in one farm-fresh egg from our friend's chickens.

I served this with some chilled cranberry sauce -- a delicious mix of flavors, temperatures, and textures. We often write that our meal paired well with Malbec from Mendoza, but this time it was an exceptional pairing. Highly recommend. 

Chicken Saltimbocca

Sometimes we just want to use what we have in the house without doing any big shopping. We had some chicken breast in the freezer and some soft queso blanco and sliced ham in the refrigerator, so we did some searching on The New York Times Cooking Pages and found this recipe.  A fairly easy dish, but be sure you cover the chicken before flattening with a meat mallot (or in my case a big spoon), and it does need time to marinate, so even though it is easy enough, you will want to start at least 90 minutes before you plan to eat.

The recipe says to brown the breasts in a skillet and then transfer to a baking dish to broil. Of course if you use your indispensable cast-iron skillet, you will be able to brown and broil in the same dish. The sage gives this not only a nice flavor but texture as well. I don't like prosciutto, so plain ol' ham was substituted.

Very Local Chicken

Which came first, the chicken or the #BigGreenEgg? 

I really do not know, but they came together nicely for two dinners a few weeks ago. Our good friends at Maribett Farm recently offered chickens either whole or cut in the traditional eight pieces, expertly processed and frozen. Given the choice between the two, my immediate answer was "YES," by which I meant one of each.

Something about the restaurant industry makes it nearly impossible to find bone-in mole poblano in restaurants and something about the poultry industry makes it almost as difficult to find a whole chicken cut-up (as opposed to packages of a half dozen or more of the same part). So I used the pieces to make a scrumptious mole, following a combination of the many mole approaches described in this blog over the years.

For the whole chicken, I took an opposite approach: simplicity to bring out the flavor of humanely and sustainably raised poultry. I followed the recipe for chicken with lemon, garlic and rosemary from the Big Green Egg web site, with no variations. Following the temperature and timing guidelines, I did not open the Egg until the time I would expect for the somewhat larger size of the bird we had, and we were very pleased with the result. 

NOTE: Readers in southeast Massachusetts can check the Maribett Farm Facebook page for chicken availability. As of this writing (June 14), the farm is taking orders.

Lagniappe

It is difficult to believe how long it has been since I assisted the Maribett chicken operations by delivering chickens to the farm a couple of times. For a summer delivery of a couple dozen live chickens, the family station wagon was the ideal conveyance of new chickens to the farm.

Chicken Run Selfie: I'm James and I will be your driver today.

Skillet Chicken with Mushrooms and Caramelized Onions

I found this simple dish on the New York Times Cooking Page. I had all the ingredients on hand (except I used chicken breasts instead of thighs, and I used whatever kind of mushrooms were in my 'fridge).

The recipe doesn't say to put olive oil in the skillet before the onions, but I did anyway. It just didn't seem right otherwise. 

This recipe has a lot of "waiting" time that was a bit unnerving. For instance, once I put the onions in the skillet it says to let them cook "mostly undisturbed", same with once the mushrooms were added, and the chicken.

Those who don't like to read the descriptions of the dishes on recipe sites, miss out on suggestions such as the one I took to add a some spinach near the end of the cooking. It made the dinner a bit prettier, and healthier, but only those who don't skip right to the recipe will get this reward.