Lemony Chicken with Extra Lemon

PROGRAM NOTE: This will be the 601st post on Nueva Receta, which has had 123,083 views as of this writing.  Thanks to everyone for joining us in the ongoing adventure of cooking at home! And if you have not already done so, please read the origin story of this blog, in honor of the late Dr. Bob Phillips.

I picked up some extra chicken during the weekly grocery run. Even though Pam was making chilaquiles on Tuesday, I decided that it would give me a good possibility for a nueva receta later in the week. I checked only one book -- Dishing Up Maryland -- but I did not find anything I had not already tried that would not require returning to the grocery store. (We're still on Covid-19 precautions, so I really try to limit grocery shopping to once per week.)

Being too lazy to return to the cookbook cupboard, I turned to the New York Times, where I found Lemon Chicken by Paul Mones. The byline mentions that it is adapted from a recipe by Nicole Mones, suggesting that this is another couple that cooks and writes together.

Speaking of cooking together, Pamela noticed that yesterday was National Men Make Dinner Day, one of those concepts that sounds egalitarian and sexist and heteronormative all at the same time. The web supports our misgivings by using a Mad Men-era icon of a man sipping coffee as part of the page banner. We decided to play along anyway; I even put on an apron for photographic evidence that I know how to use a kitchen.

I followed the recipe mostly as written, but using our indispensable cast-iron skillet since we gave away our wok between grad-school moves decades ago. 

One departure from the recipe is that I used regular wheat flour instead of potato flour for two reasons: first, to avoid returning to the grocery store and second, because the reader comments below the recipe exhibited a lot of disagreement about how the flour was to be used, or whether its use is intended at all -- with something called potato starch offered as an alternative by one reader.

I am not sure how potato flour would have been different, but the egg-flour mix was essentially paste, even after I added about a half cup of milk to it. This was very different from any egg bath I have used before, but I do think that it worked well. Readers of the recipe will note that the chicken itself calls for no lemon -- it appears only in the sauce, which is essentially a lemonade reduced with cornstarch. 

As a lover of all things lemon, I decided the recipe could use an enhancement: lemon-infused olive oil that we recently received from our friends at L.O.V.E. in Frederick, Maryland. I also used the oil in preparing brown rice as a side.

The result was delicious comfort food during an angst-ridden election week in which comfort was sorely needed.

This is a photo of what mine did not look like:

Photo: Dwight Eschliman NYT with Food Stylist Kevin Crafts

Halibut with Ginger-Raisin Crust

 

We rarely use our For Cod and Country cookbook but it looks like we are starting to turn that around. This is the second post this week from this big book, which has a lot more to it than recipes. The introduction to the recipe in the book starts with "I love raisins with fish-they have the perfect balance of sweet and acid...". It reminded me of a conversation I had with my mother in March just after we all went on lockdown. She was going through her pantry and refrigerator and discovered some raisin English muffins and some salmon cakes and decided to make a sandwich. She was surprised how good they tasted together. We discovered the same thing when I prepared this recipe. 

I chopped 1/4 c. raisins and mixed with 3 T panko bread crumbs, 2 T melted butter, some freshly grated ginger, 2 t mace, and the zest of one orange to form a paste.

The paste was pressed into the halibut which was cooked (breading side down) in our indispensable cast-iron skillet for four minutes. The skillet was then placed into the preheated 300 degree oven and baked for 20 minutes. Once it was cooked through we flipped the fish over and served. It came out light and flaky. We served this with the leftover tarragon rice from James' offering the night before.

Tarragon, Seafood Paragon

 

Photo from Tarragon, King of Herbs
(by someone even more impressed by this herb than I am)

When thinking of seafood options for the weekend (and into Monday, it turns out), I decided to go to Kyler's Catch with some specific recipes in mind. The fish there is always so good that it is easy to do what is easiest -- very simple preparations that foreground the fish (or shellfish) itself.

But in the spirit of Nueva Receta, I sat down with For Cod and Country, which we have cited just a couple times since purchasing it for our seaside weekend house a few years ago. I remember learning of the book on public radio, but I do not think it was as long ago as author Barton Seaver's 2011 interview with Leann Hanson. The book is a paradox: a chef who is deeply concerned about the overharvesting of fish endeavors to teach us to enjoy fish sparingly -- avoiding some imperiled species altogether, and getting the most out of the fish we do use by maximizing both flavor and land-based ingredients.

Many of the recipes appear more ambitious than I was feeling this weekend, but I did find two that seemed to meet the effort-outcome balance I was hoping for. One is a grilled salmon with tarragon butter; the other is a crusty halibut preparation that Pam will be making tomorrow.

The salmon recipe is unusually simple for this book -- it is one of those recipes whose title conveys almost the entire story. I softened butter, and mashed it together with finely chopped tarragon and orange zest, along with black pepper and a small amount of salt. Seaver suggests grilling the salmon (skin on) over high heat to get good grill marks, and then to transfer it to a cooler area of the fire. All I could picture was losing half the salmon through the grill grates, and the Big Green Egg provides only very uniform heat. So I opted to heat the grill to 400 and simply bake the salmon -- I actually used milder Arctic char -- on the griddle inset. Once this was cooked through -- about 12 minutes -- I transferred it to a plate and dabbed the butter mix on it. The result was simply scrumptious.

Meanwhile, I had cooked some brown rice, mixing a bit of the tarragon butter into it partway through the cooking process. This was a delicious accompaniment. Author Seaver suggests that tarragon is a perfect pairing for many fish; I expect to be testing that theory!

Orange Chicken with Vegetables

We can get a lot of things besides milk in our weekly delivery from Crescent Ridge Dairy, including meat. Since the pandemic started, however, we've found that it is harder to get some things than it used to be, especially poultry products, so we were glad to see that there was pound of organic chicken breasts available this week. James seemed a little skeptical that we could do much with a pound, but I knew better. I went right to the New York Times Cooking Page and found this recipe that calls for "1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast, preferably from a small producer of free range chickens..."

This recipe is labeled "One Pot" on the NYTimes page, which is true as far as the cooking goes - everything was cooked together in my indispensable cast-iron skillet. However, I needed two separate bowls to mix different sets of ingredients in before adding them to the skillet. The recipe also says it takes 10 minutes. Again, that is only true for the cooking part. As long as you have sous-chef to do all the chopping and dicing for you it is indeed a quick and easy dish. To be fair this wasn't difficult, and I was ready to serve within 30 minutes of starting. And it was delicious.

Buckeyes

 

Last year when I cleaned out my refrigerators (one at my primary residence, and the other at our beach house) I found one partially-used, expired jar of peanut butter in each. We'd already been empty nesters for a few years and this one-time staple in our household had apparently become superfluous. Our only child came to visit for a few weeks over the summer and requested that we purchase a jar. Unlike some of his other food requests he actually ate some of the peanut butter, but there was still quite a bit remaining after he left. I decided not to wait until this jar expired and instead went looking for a recipe to use it up. I found this recipe for Peanut Butter Balls on the New York Times Cooking page.

These were easy to make. The only "cooking" involved was melting the semi-sweet chocolate chips in the microwave.  A super-sweet, fun treat.

National Lobster Quesadilla Day

What is today all about?

Part of librarian Pam's daily routine is to check the National Day web site to see what is being recognized each day. She was always a fan of these things, but has certainly followed them more closely during the pandemic. 

Careful readers might have noticed some resulting recipes; careful readers would have noticed even more if I had not fallen down on the blogging job. 

We both continue to innovate in our cooking, but the queue of unblogged recipes is indeed growing. This was so good and so easy, though, that I had no excuse to put off writing about it.

Key ingredients

Early this morning, as we sipped home-roasted coffee from Rwanda, Pam mentioned the happy coincidence of National Quesadilla Day and National Lobster Day. This seemed almost like a command from the Fates to the Hayes-Bohanans.

I simply googled the combination and found this simple recipe at Chop Happy (a site I had not previously known). Simplicity was called for because this was to be a weeknight dinner at the end of another tiring Covid-19 week. More importantly as I have gradually gained confidence in cooking seafood, I have followed an unwritten rule: the more expensive the ingredient, the simpler the recipe should be.

So the simple recipe was very appealing. I got some excellent lobster tails from our favorite fishmonger -- Kyler's Catch in New Bedford (yes, the seafood capital of North America), and chopped them into chunks of about 3/4 inch. I then chopped some scallions (in the recipe) and cilantro (in our fridge, so why not?) and tossed them gently in a bowl. 

Notice my use of the quantity "some" -- I must admit I did not even look at the recipe after my morning coffee. 

I melted butter over low heat (I have never used butter or low heat for quesadillas before) while shredding an entire package of Cabot's pepper-jack cheese (from the farmer-owned cooperative in Vermont). I then assembled the quesadillas and put them in the pan side-by-side, turning the heat to medium-high. I treated them much more gingerly than usual -- in part to make sure lobster did not fall out in the process.

The result? We both pronounce these the best quesadillas we have ever had, and we have had a few. (Like a few thousand, probably). This paired beautifully with our complex, fruity, and bold home-vinted Malbec.

We are also aware that these were by far the most expensive quesadillas we have ever made. But they are not the most expensive we have bought. Cooking at home saves money, but for a special occasion, it can mean that "splurging" for the best ingredients brings the price of an extraordinary meal up to the cost of a mediocre meal at a mid-range restaurant. We know we are lucky to be able to do this from time to time.

Lagniappe

We usually have lobster dinner with friends on Christmas Eve. In 2020, in the depths of the pandemic and before any of us could be vaccinated, we could not do it. So our gift to these friends was lobster quesadilla kits so we could feast together by zoom. 

Apple Cake

 

Last spring the Bridgewaters' One Book One Community Read was Thanks A Thousand by A.J. Jacobs. This memoir recounts the author's attempts to thank everyone who brought him his daily cup of coffee beginning with the barista at his local coffee shop and ending with a trip to South America to thank the farmers. Ultimately he thanks about a thousand people, while realizing he didn't even get to everyone. 

As a children's selection along the same theme we found Dawn Casey's Apple Cake which features a young child thanking all the people, plants, and animals who provide the ingredients to make Apple Cake. A recipe is included in the book, so in honor of the start of fall I made it. I made my own almond flour by grinding almond slivers in the blender. The cake is dense and not too sweet although it has 3 cups of honey.