Portuguese Braised Chicken

OK. We need to talk, people. If you're a meat eater, you must must must make this dish. This weekend. I'm not even kidding. I'm posting this recipe today so you'll have ample time to go to the grocery and get everything you need to make this. Because really, this is amazing.

I'm been on a big roasted chicken kick lately, but this braised chicken from the most recent edition of Bon Appétit was out of this world! They claim that winter is for braising, and if that lets me eat stuff like this for the next several months, then I'm down with winter cooking. (Even if I keep flirting with the idea of firing up the grill...)

Lucky for me (and my house guests for the weekend), I'm making this again Saturday night! Just thinking about this makes me want to make it right now...

Portuguese Braised Chicken
Source: Bon Appétit February, 2011

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tbsp plus ¼ tsp paprika
1 3½ lb chicken, cut into 8 pieces
2 tbsp olive oil
1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
4 slices bacon, cut into ½ inch pieces
12 pearl onions, peeled
2 roasted red peppers from a jar, cut into ¾ inch strips
6 large garlic cloves, smashed
4 large springs Italian parsley
4 bay leaves
½ cup dry white wine
½ cup sherry
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp butter

Preheat oven to 350°.

Mix four and 1 tbsp paprika with 1½ tsp salt and ½ tsp black pepper. Coat chicken in flour and set aside. In a large heavy bottomed skillet, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Brown chicken in oil, 3-6 minutes per side. Remove the chicken to a large heavy pot. Add tomatoes, bacon, onions, red peppers, garlic, parsley, and bay leaves.

In the same skillet that the chicken was browned in, add wine and sherry. Bring to a boil and deglaze the pan by scraping all of the browned bits stuck to the bottom. Add mustard and tomato paste and whisk until combined. Pour sauce over the chicken. Cover the chicken and transfer to the oven.

Cook chicken until tender, about 1½ hours. Remove the bay leaves and parsley. Transfer chicken to a platter and using a slotted spoon scoop out the tomatoes, peppers and onions. Return the pot with the sauce in it to the stove and heat over medium high heat. In a small bowl, stir butter and flour into a paste. Add the butter paste to the sauce and stir to combine. Add salt and pepper to taste and cook sauce until desired thickness.

Serve chicken with the delicious, thick sauce, crusty bread and rice.

Enjoy!

Roasted Chicken

 

Ever since I made Thanksgiving dinner and cooked the Turkey upside down I've been wanting to try the same technique on a chicken. I got the idea from reading the roasted Thanksgiving turkey recipe on Simply Recipes. After reading it and thinking about it, roasting poultry upside down actually makes a lot of sense! Normally, when you roast a bird breast side up, all of the juices flow down into the dark meat while it's cooking. Since the dark meat is much more moist than the white meat, you're just saturating the already moist meat with the juices from the drier white meat (did I use the word 'moist' enough times in that sentence for you?). If you flip the whole thing over, viola! The juices from the dark meat drip into the white meat while it cooks. What you end up with is a perfectly cooked, moist chicken. Hooray!

Roasted Chicken 

One note, most of the chickens you buy at the large chain super markets are gigantic. I got this little chicken (about 3.5 lbs) from a local grocery store that specializes in natural and organic food. This is the normal size of a chicken, not the 5-6 pounders you see at most places. If you can only find the massive chickens, just remember to increase the cooking time accordingly.

1 3-4 lb chicken

1 medium onion, quartered

1 lemon, quartered

3 sprigs rosemary

kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

olive oil or butter

About 30 minutes before you start roasting the chicken, remove it from the refrigerator and bring to room temperature. Thoroughly rinse the chicken inside and out and pat dry with paper towels. Place chicken in a small roasting pan or a 9x13 glass dish to roast. Preheat oven to 350.

Salt and pepper the both the inner cavity of the chicken and the outside. Squeeze the juice from half of the lemon all of the surface of the chicken. With the other two lemon quarters, squeeze the juice inside the cavity and then stuff the lemons inside the chicken. Stuff the onions and rosemary inside the cavity. Rub the surface of the chicken with butter or olive oil. Place the chicken breast side down in the roasting pan. Bake for about 1 - 1 1/2 hours, or until a thermometer stuck in the deepest part of the thigh registers 160.

Now, if you want, you can flip the chicken over to get the skin on the breast crispy, remove the chicken from the oven, use tongs to flip the chicken and crank up the temperature in the oven to 450. Return the chicken to the oven and cook only until the skin is crispy and slightly browned. If you cook it too much longer, the white meat will dry out. 

Remove the chicken from the oven and tent with foil. Let it rest for about 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

Roasted Chicken with Root Vegetables and Showdown Results!

Man, you guys are some serious cheese fiends. I heard 5 votes (one from Facebook) for cheese and zero for butter. And my vote, hands down, is definitely cheese. I love cheese. I might have some sort of weird affection for it. If there is cheese within a 10 foot radius of me, I will find it. And eat it. And it will be great. Yay cheese!

And on that note, I present you with an entirely cheese-free meal. If I had planned ahead I would have posted my favorite recipe for macaroni and cheese or cheese-stuffed pasta shells. Or some other cheese-tastic meal. But that would require a small amount of pre-planning. Which just doesn't happen that much around here. In honor of the cheese win however, I will post a totally cheesy recipe here soon. And by cheesy I mean it will be full of cheese. Not like the jokes I make all the time. Har har har.


Aaaanyway, last Saturday we helped some friends move, so by the time dinner rolled around we were starving and exhausted. This meal was perfect. Filling, quick, healthy, and really really good.

And everything except the onion and the chicken came from our share! I love it when a meal comes together like that. It makes me feel thrifty... or something.

Make this the next time you're recruited to haul boxes and furniture for friends. Or the next time you have beets on hand. You know, whenever.

Roasted Chicken Breasts with Root Vegetables
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
3 chicken breasts
3 beets
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1 potato
4-5 carrots
1/2 cup beer
Salt
Pepper

Preheat the oven to 350.

Salt and pepper the chicken on both sides.

Cut the onion into eights. Peel and chop the beets and carrots roughly into pieces. Mince the garlic.

Heat oil in a medium size dutch oven over medium-high heat. Once the pot is really really hot, add the chicken and sear for 1-2 minutes, without moving. Flip and cook the other side for 1-2 minutes, without moving. Remove to a plate and set aside. We're just trying to get some good color on the chicken, not cook it though. We'll do that later.

In the same pan, add the onion, beets, potatoes and carrots. Brown the vegetables in the pot for about 3 minutes, just to give them some color. Add the garlic and cook for about a minute to distribute the garlic. Add about 1/2-1 cup beer or chicken stock to the pan. Cook the liquid down for about 2 minutes, then return the chicken to the pan. Cover and bake for 15-20 minutes, until chicken is cooked through and vegetables are tender. Salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with rice on the side. Enjoy!

P.S. Because there are beets in this, everything will be a funky purple/pink/reddish color. Never fear, your food is not turning into something scary.

P.S.S. For the veg-heads out there, this is a really good way to cook the vegetables with a lot of flavor. Just leave out the chicken... obviously... and don't use so much butter and oil in the beginning. Yum!

Crispy Braised Chicken Thighs With Kale, Chard, and Olives

What can I say, I'm on a kale kick. It's also in season in Michigan, so it's been in our CSA share every week (new pictures of share #2 tomorrow!!). And it's healthy, so you should eat it! Aside from the fact that when you mix it with a bunch of fatty things it obliterates the bitterness and leaves you with a creamy, tender, healthy side dish! And it just doesn't get much better than that.

This recipe was originally from Thomas Kellar's Ad Hoc at Home and it calls for several things that I didn't have: fennel, fresh thyme and bay leaves. So, I did changed it up. It's what I do. Deal.

Instead of fennel, I used the newest bunch of kale from the CSA and the last of the Swiss chard from the garden. It's what we had, but you can probably use whatever greens you have on hand. Instead of thyme, I used rosemary and in place of the fresh bay leaves, I grabbed a few fresh basil leaves from the garden. I was a little worried about all of my substitutions, but it was great! (If I do say so myself.)

Mmmmm taters and garlic.


Dinner from last night: Crispy Braised Chicken Thighs with Kale and Chard, Roasted Garlic and New Potatoes from The Pioneer Woman, John's Homemade Bread and wine.

Crispy Braised Chicken with Kale, Swiss Chard, and Olives
Originally seen in Ad Hoc at Home

7 Chicken Thighs
Olive Oil
1 Medium Onion
2 Cloves Garlic
1 Bunch Kale
1 Bunch Swiss Chard
1/2 Cup Dry White Wine
4 Slices of Lemon Peel (Use a Vegetable Peeler)
1 Cup Green Olives
4-5 Sprigs of Rosemary
3-4 Basil Leaves
1 Cup Chicken Broth

Preheat oven to 375. Heat oil in an oven-proof skillet over medium heat. Choose one that is large enough to fit all of the chicken in a single layer. Once hot, add chicken thighs, skin side down and cook for 4 minutes. Flip chicken and sear on the other side for 1 minute. Transfer chicken to a cookie sheet and place into the oven to keep it warm.

Add the onion to the hot pan and cook for about 1 and 1/2 minutes. Next, add garlic and let cook for 5 minutes, until onions are translucent. In batches, add the kale and chard to the pan and cook until wilted, about 5 minutes. Add wine and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring. Add lemon peel, olives, rosemary and basil to the pan. Stir, then add chicken broth. Once the mixture comes to a boil, return the chicken to the pan, skin side up and nestle it into the greens. Cook for a few minutes, then transfer the entire pan to the oven. Cook until chicken is done, about 20-30 minutes. Turn the broiler on and cook the chicken for 2 minutes to get the skin crispy. Serve immediately.

Enjoy!