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)

The Sequel Was Better

A very Good Read

Having had a romantic holiday last week, we turned to the romance portion of our cookbook cabinet, where I found a new recipe idea. Or so I thought: we had tried the avocado and sun-dried tomato fettuccine recipe from Intercourses just after said holiday four years ago, but I had forgotten.

Pam noticed the repeat this morning, as she continues to review all of our entries for our new especialidad de la casa tag.  She is adding that tag to every recipe we post that is either completely original to us or such a major modification that we consider it our own. I am glad we had forgotten this one, because the 2014 review suggests a dish we would not have made for a special occasion (which our 33rd Valentine's Day together most certainly was).

I did the same recipe that Pam had done earlier, with just a couple of changes. First, I think I used some basil, and a bit more of the scallions. The sun-dried tomatoes I used were not packed in oil. I think I did add a bit of oil. A much more important difference is that I blended the ingredients in the bowl with a spoon, not a blender. So it was a medley, not a sauce.

Finally I did not include any cheese, but I did top this with plenty well-cooked, crumbly bacon. I think we substituted parm the first time because our vegetarian kid was dining with us. As I made this, I realized that this might succeed as a vegan dish with the use of a good bacon substitute.

Monte Hayes-Boh

As we learned from The Great Monte Cristo Sandwich Incident of 1997, a certain decadent sandwich looms large in family lore. Discovered at a favorite watering hole when we met as college students, it has been an infrequent but important part of our history with food.

(NOTE: Many entries on this blog are gluten-free, vegetarian, vegan, simple, and/or healthy. This is not one of those entries, though some ingredients were locally sourced, and we would love to hear from any readers who make substitutions.)

This story begins on a rainy Saturday morning in our weekend home, trying to figure out how to have a good breakfast without leaving the house. (We failed on that count: after we committed to this plan I realized we had none of our usual Crescent Ridge milk, so it was off to the market for some Stonyfield. No regrets.)

Milk aside, Pam noticed a combination of ingredients on hand that led her straight to the Monte Cristo concept, but with waffles instead of bread. This breakfast is pretty straightforward, once the waffles are complete. To facilitate bringing all of the components together, Pam prepared a fruit/yogurt smoothie before I began the rest. Coffee, of course, had been prepared much earlier.

I had all of the other ingredients ready for assembly by the time the waffles were complete. I placed them on plates in a warm oven so that they everything would come together at optimal temperatures. Waffles are an area of continuous experimentation at Whaling House; these were very close to the gingerberry waffles I prepared in October, except that I left out the ginger and forgot the vanilla. 

Just before the second waffle was complete, I lightly fried some deli turkey in an indispensable cast-iron skillet and topped it with a couple of slices of cheese until it was melty and bubbly.

As soon as the second waffle was complete, I spread some local berry jelly on one of them.

The hot deli slices went right on top of that.

This tableau (which includes the smoothies Pam had just made and some fairly-traded, organically-grown, fresh roasted and brewed Nicaraguan coffee) was nice for a photo, but was also an extension of our prep area. With the second waffle in place, we sprinkled some powdered sugar on top, and then divided this enormous sandwich.

A close-up of my half of our invention:
The Monte Hayes-Boh

Simple Egg Supper

Breakfast for dinner is never a bad idea. Last week I made a variation on Breakfast Tostadas with Cumin Roasted Fingerling Potatoes gleaned from this list of The Only 40 Egg Recipes You'll Ever Need.

We didn't have fingerling potatoes, but we did have a whole host of baking potatoes, which I diced into an approximation of the fingerling size. I skipped the guacamole because we didn't have any, and didn't feel like shopping, and I used a chile-pepper flavored cheddar instead of the Cotija cheese. Otherwise, I pretty much followed the recipe. It was an easy weeknight dinner. One we will likely have again.

Friend's Night In

While James was out of town earlier this month I had the chance to catch up with a friend whom I see a lot, but don't get to talk to as much as we'd like. I invited her for dinner and made a variation of  Cowboy Skillet  - a recipe I found on allrecipes.com when I searched for recipes with eggs, potatoes and sausage (three ingredients I had in abundance). The food was good. The company was charming, and the whole evening was simply hygge.  I really need to have friends over more often.

Orange Cream Pie

I returned to Teeny's Tour of Pie Cookbook for dessert on Christmas Eve for our traditional Lobster Dinner. As Teeny points out citrus fruits are in season at Christmastime, so an orange custard pie is an excellent choice.

Fortunately I had made two crusts at Thanksgiving when I made the Honey Ginger Pie and froze the one I didn't use. Also fortunately, I did not throw the extra crust away the week before Christmas when I saw it in the freezer and failed to identify it. Also, fortunately, when I read the recipe to make the "Buttery All-Purpose Crust" and saw the recommendation to freeze the extra dough a light bulb went off in my head and was able to retrieve the dough the day before I made the pie, so it was even thawed when I needed to roll it out. A true Christmas miracle.

The filling was made with
1/2 c sugar
1/2 t salt
1/4 c cornstarch (the last of what I owned)
2 c milk
4 egg yolks
2 T butter
1/2 c freshly squeezed orange juice (or in my case clementine juice)

The recipe also calls for orange zest. I did grate some zest from the clementines, but it wound up on the floor before I got it into the the filling, so I just went ahead without it.

Dry ingredients were sifted together then milk and egg yolks added. The filling was cooked over a medium heat with constant whisking until it started to thicken. After it was removed from the heat the butter, and juice were added and stirring continued until the butter melted. I also added some orange extract, as well as some Triple Sec. The filling was poured into the pre-baked pie shell, then the pie was covered with plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator to set.

A most delicious pie.

Scallops and Broccoli

Our adult kid Harvey has become quite good at finding gifts for us that connect to our interests, such as rare nautical prints that are at once unfamiliar and immediately fitting for our home. They came through again this Christmas, with the Bruce Beck's 1989 Official Fulton Fish Market Cookbook.

This is our kind of cookbook -- rich in cultural context, in this case relating to the New York institution whose name appears on this cookbook and no other. The book also has sea-creature illustrations that relate to Harvey's own interest in animal-related illustration art.

With the famous scallops of New Bedford just a few blocks away, we decided -- as readers of this space know we often do -- to look for a new way to prepare these buttery mollusks. We have tried many variations on creme sauces, so I decided to try something a bit different. I found one of those recipes for which assembling the ingredient list gets the cook most of the way through the cooking process.

Click to enlarge

Since I was determined to serve this with Malbec and we did not have any white cooking wine open, I decided to substitute ginger brandy for the wine (this was whisked together with the salt and sugar in a small bowl). For the chili oil, of course, I used chipotle-infused olive oil from our friends at Lebherz. 

I do not exactly avoid broccoli recipes, but I tend to find something else when broccoli presents itself. Since the rest of the family was ready to embrace this healthy option, however, I did, too. I blanched the broccoli as instructed, meaning I put it in boiling water for just under a minute and then drained it and plunged it into cold water. I then left it in a colander until the rest was ready. The broccoli emerged crisp but not too crunchy -- just right for me!

I then heated plenty of salted water, to which I added the linguini once I had everything else prepared. I had never trimmed scallops in the way described here, but I will from now on. I then sauteed the scallops in oil for just a minute, then the broccoli for another couple before adding wine mixture. I then drained the linguine and tossed it with the scallop mixture; we did not add soy sauce at the table as suggested, and we did not miss it.

This was delicious, and on the light side since it had no cheese or butter. It was scrumptious as leftovers.