Chicken Stuffed with Gorgonzola
I did a real hit-and-run shopping trip on Monday. Other than fresh produce, we just didn't need a lot. But as I was walking through the cheese section, I espied an Italian gorgonzola that really looked good. Very soft - almost runny - with a really subtle aroma. I picked up a piece with no idea what to do with it other than slather it on bread.
So... I decided to use it to stuff chicken breasts!
Traditionally, when stuffing chicken breasts, I make a slit in the thickest part of the breast, put a bit of stuffing in it, and close it up with either toothpicks or kitchen twine. If it's a cheesy stuffing, it all oozes out and it really doesn't hold all that to begin with. The other option is to pound the breast thin, put a scoop of stuffing in the center, and then fold and/or roll it up like a softball. Neither option was what I was looking for tonight.
Instead, I made my slit in the thickest part of the breast and then laid it open on its side. I filled the cavity with lots of filling, doused it liberally with panko bread crumbs, and then baked them off at 425° for about 25 minutes.
What a concept! No pounding, no tooth picks, and lots of stuffing!
Stuffed Chicken Breasts with Spinach, Walnuts, and Gorgonzola
- 2 chicken breasts
- 6 oz fresh spinach
- 1 shallot, chopped
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 3 oz gorgonzola
- 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
- salt and pepper, to taste
Wilt shallots in a hot skillet with a bit of olive oil. Add garlic, then spinach. Remove from heat when spinach is cooked and add gorgonzola. Mix well, add salt and pepper to taste, and refrigerate until cold. When chilled, add walnuts.
Make slit in chicken breasts, lay on side and open. Stuff with spinach and gorgonzola mixture.
Place panko bread crumbs on plate and carefully place each stuffed breast in the plate to coat the bottom with crumbs. Place on a well-oiled baking pan, and sprinkle liberally with additional panko.
Bake in a preheated 425° oven for about 25 minutes.
I wanted to make Israeli couscous with dinner tonight but - shock and horror - I was out! I did have the Sardinian couscous which worked out perfectly. (Note to self: Next shopping trip is not a hit-and-run!)
The Sardinian couscous cooks up pretty much the same was as the Israeli, but needs to be rinsed before cooking and can take a bit longer to cook. I also used up the last of the homemade chicken stock I had, but packaged broth will work just fine.
Couscous with Currants
- 1 cup Israeli or Sardinian couscous
- 1 shallot, minced
- 3 oz button mushrooms, quartered
- 2 cups chicken stock
- 1/4 cup currants
- 1/4 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tbsp minced Italian parsley
- salt and pepper, to taste
Wilt shallot in medium saucepan with a bit of olive oil. Add mushrooms and cook a minute or two. Add couscous, broth, currants, and garlic powder. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and cook 15 or so minutes until couscous is done.
Remove from heat, stir in minced parsley, and add salt and pepper, if desired.
This was one of those meals that looked - and tasted - like it took forever to prepare, but everything was done in less than an hour.
Balsamic Zabaglione
A great Italian dinner calls for an Italian dessert.
I got the idea for this from Bon Appetit. I changed things around because...well... that's what I do. Besides... I needed to work with the ingredients I had at home.
Balsamic Zabaglione
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 4 egg yolks
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup Marsala
- 1 tbsp good quality balsamic vinegar
- 1 pint blackberries
- 3 golden plums
- 1/4 cup Marsala
- 1/4 cup honey
For zabaglione, whip cream to stiff peaks and refrigerate.
Whisk the egg yolks with the sugar, marsala, and balsamic vinegar. Place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and beat with hand-held mixer until the mixture is thick and foamy. Remove the bowl from the heat and continue beatinging until the zabaglione is completely cool.
Gently fold the zabaglione into the whipped cream and chill.
Meanwhile, place the fruit in a large bowl. In a small saucepan, bring the marsala and honey to a boil. Add the fruit and toss to coat. Spoon the fruit into wine glasses and top with zabaglione.
It was the perfect ending to a perfect meal.
Back to reality, tomorrow.
Bucatini all'amatriciana
At the dinner table, I was telling Victor I didn't know how I was going to write this post without sounding like I was gloating.
Sorry. I'm gloating. This was one fine dish!
It has a simplicity of ingredients and a complexity of flavor that works on every level.
For years we've listened to Lidia Bastianich talk about letting a few simple ingredients be the show and not covering them up with a hundred conflicting flavors.
Now, don't get me wrong... I love my hundred conflicting flavors, too - curries and different spice blends are out of this world. But there's something about bringing just a few ingredients together and getting huge flavor from them that is truly magical.
Another thing I notice more and more as I get older is how the shape of the pasta affects the dish. As a kid growing up, we had spaghetti, vermicelli, elbow macaroni, and lasagne noodles. That was it. It took me going to work in Italian restaurants to learn what mostaccioli and rigatoni were. I didn't have ziti until I moved to the east coast! It amazed me that there would be a dozen different sizes and shapes of pasta on the shelf at the grocery store. It's taken me a while but I now understand why.
Fast-forward to tonight's dinner, and, while I think the sauce would be downright excellent with any pasta, the bucatini really does make it the perfect dish.
Bucatini all'amatriciana
- 1 ½ lbs tomatoes
- 5 oz guanciale
- 3 tbs extra virgin olive oil
- 1 - 2 garlic cloves, gently smashed and peeled
- 1 medium onion thinly sliced
- 1 tsp (or more to taste) crushed red pepper flakes
- ¼ cup dry white wine
- Sea Salt
- 1 lb bucatini
- 2/4 cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese
- Fresh ground Pepper
Before I give you the directions, let me say a couple things – Guanciale is pig jowls or actually the cheeks of the pig and it is very hard to find. You need to go to a good Italian butcher, however you may substitute pancetta. Second, I used fresh tomatoes from our garden which required me to do step one below and peel, seed and dice. Its labor intensive but worth it. You can certainly use canned tomatoes; just make sure you get good ones.
OK:
Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil. Add tomatoes and cook for 30 seconds, then drain. Peel the tomatoes, cut into quarters (seed if you want to) and set aside.
Cut the guanciale into matchsticks.
In a large saucepan, combine guanciale, oil and garlic. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until garlic begins to turn golden, about 7 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove the garlic from the pot. (If it burns it gets bitter)
Add sliced onion and red pepper flakes to pot and continue cooking, stirring occasionally until the onion is softened, about 6 minutes. Add the wine and increase the heat to medium-high and cook until the wine has almost evaporated, about 3 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes, reduce heat to low and gently simmer, covered, until sauce is rich and flavorful, about 40-50 minutes. Remove from heat.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add bucatini and cook until al dente. Meanwhile gently reheat sauce. When the pasta is al dente, drain, transfer to a large bowl, add sauce and toss to combine. Serve immediately with grated cheese and fresh ground pepper.
Victor also roasted some garlic and mixed it with a few of the fried peppers. It went really good atop buttered slices of homemade bread.
And what will next Monday bring?!?
Pane Pugliese
Victor's making his Monday Masterpiece, so I've baked a loaf of bread to go along with it.
The Pane Pugliese is a rustic bread from Puglia. Puglia is Italy's heel - and the perfect accompaniment to tonight's pasta sensation!
The bread calls for a biga - a starter - that needs to be made the day before.
This recipe comes from The Italian Baker by Carol Field. It's one of the few cook books we didn't get rid of a few years ago. I've been making this particular bread forever - and really do like it.
Pane Pugliese
- 1 packet dry yeast (or 1/2 package fresh yeast)
- 1/4 cup warm water
- 3 cups water; room temp
- 1 cup biga
- 7 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tbsp salt
Proof the yeast in the warm water. Add 1 1/2 c water and the biga, mix till blended. Add flour and salt, mix till dough comes together and pulls off the sides of the bowl. Knead 3-5 minutes in a mixer, longer by hand. Dough will be very soft and elastic. Let rise about 3 hours, shape into 2 small round loaves or 1 big flattish one. If you have baking stones, place loaves on baking peel or on baking sheets sprinkled corn meal. Let rise about 1 hour. Preheat oven to 450°, and 10 minutes before baking flour the loaf tops and dimple them with your fingers. Bake 50-60 minutes for big loaves, 30-35 minutes for small. Tap the loaves to test for doneness (hollow=done) and cool on a rack.
And the biga. I would imagine it could stay in the 'fridge and just keep adding to it as I used to do with my starters years ago.
The bread is wild. It rises wild, it bakes wild. It really has a mind of its own. One of the reasons I really like it. The unpredictability is what makes it fun.
Biga
- 1/2 tsp active dry yeast (or 1/10 package fresh yeast)
- 1/4 cup warm water
- 1 1/4 cup water (room temperature)
- 3 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
Stir the yeast into the warm water and let stand until creamy – about 10 minutes. Stir in the remaining water and then the flour, one cup at a time.
Mix with the paddle attachment on the mixer at the lowest speed about 2 minutes.
Remove to a slightly oiled bowl, cover, and let rise at cool room temperature for 6 to 24 hours. The starter will triple in volume and still be wet and sticky when ready. Cover and refrigerate until ready to use.
I made one loaf and froze the rest of the dough - as well as the biga.
Ready to go into the hot oven!
This bread is stellar! It is really crusty with a great interior.
I can't wait for dinner!
Fried Hot Peppers
One of my most favorite things to have in the refrigerator -at all times- is a big container of fried hot peppers.
They go on everything, from burgers and sandwiches to stirred into pasta or baked into bread or on top of pizza.
A juicy cheeseburger with mayo and fried peppers is to die for. Or on a turkey sandwich. Scrambled into eggs. They go on everything. Really.
I usually use a mixture of Italian peppers and long hot peppers, or sometimes cubanelles. Today I added some anaheim peppers into the mixture. It's what's at the produce store and what looks good.
The concept is pretty simple:
Clean and seed the peppers, fry them in olive oil, and eat.
I start with a really big skillet and coat the bottom of the pan with olive oil. In go the peppers and I keep the heat up for a while, moving and stirring the peppers around.
As they start to wilt, I turn down the heat and let them start to brown a bit.
I add a bit of salt and pepper, but that's pretty much it.
When they're nice and cooked, they go into a resealable container and into the fridge where they get eaten quite quickly.
A couple of huge words of caution:
- Do this on a day you can open windows.
- Wear gloves.
I have come close to dying inhaling the cooking pepper fumes. Eyes watering, sneezing and coughing like there's no tomorrow... It can be extremely painful.
Which shows you just how good they are if I'm willing to put myself through all of that!
Thai Red Curry
I've been working on updating the recipe site all day. There are 866 posts dating back to November 2005 that need to be tagged and put into categories. Plus a couple hundred that have needed pictures re-associated with them.
I'm not even a quarter of the way through.
I needed a quickie dinner idea and stirfry was it!
I sliced up some beef top round and sauteed it with onion, peppers, and mushrooms, plus a couple of hot peppers from the garden.
I added a can of coconut milks and 2 tbsp of Red Thai Curry paste.
Instant dinner.
Now back to reformatting posts.....
Raisin Scones
Victor saw scones being made on not one, but two different cooking shows this week. He took that as an omen that he needed to make some for us.
I like omens like that!
These are very simple and really good. Perfectly light and crumbly.
Raisin Scones
- 2 cups flour
- 2 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/3 cup butter, very cold and cut into small cubes
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup cream or whole milk
- 3/4 cup raisins
Preheat oven to 375°Mix flour, soda, and salt. Cut in butter, being careful not to over-work it. Mix egg with cream and add. Mix very lightly - just until it holds together. mix in raisins.
Spread onto a floured surface and pat into a circle. Cut scones into 4-to-8 wedges.
Sprinkle with sugar and bake about 20 minutes.
I had mine plain, Victor had his with butter and blueberry jam.
Freshly-brewed Black Lab coffee from local roaster Kimberton Coffee Roasting Company finished the meal.
What a way to start a Sunday!
Dja'jeh Burd'aan b'Teen
What's in a name?!? In the middle east, dinner tonight was Dja'jeh Burd'aan b'Teen. In English, it translates to Orange Chicken with Golden Raisins and Figs.
A rather exotic-sounding and foreign dish made with common ingredients found in almost any home in America. Orange juice, potatoes, chicken, raisins. Figs. Who hasn't had a Fig Newton at least once in their lives?
I mention all of this because I am just so sick and tired of the hate spewing forth from people who are wrapping themselves in the flag and calling themselves Americans, yet have no concept of what America is, or what America is supposed to stand for. The emails I've been getting from people who really should know better read like Saturday Night Live skits except people are actually taking them seriously.
"Give me your tired, your poor,your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Unless you're a Mexican, or, worse yet, a Muslim.
The Crusades ended in 1292. And began, again, in 2010. Different location. Same hate and rhetoric.
What's sad is, just like the nine Crusades before it, this is based upon ignorance and being perpetrated by politicians who don't care about you, me, the real victims of the WTC attack, or anyone else but themselves and their power.
This isn't about a community center in New York City, this is about politicians dividing and conquering us - again. It's about their power and the hell with our Constitution, our laws, and our religious freedom. Blaming all Muslims for the actions of Osama bin Laden is like blaming all Ugandans for Idi Amin or all Americans for Lindsay Lohan.
Give it a rest, folks.
Food. The great equalizer. It's amazing when you look at the cuisines of the world how similar they all are. But it's how the ingredients are put together than makes them unique. Just like people.
Through all of my years of cooking - and eating - I have really come to appreciate just how similar we all are. Universally, food is about family, community, and sharing. And, universally, people pretty much just want to live their lives as best they can. Unfortunately, we're constantly being driven apart with our differences instead of being brought together with our many - many - similarities.
Food. The common denominator.
Tonight's common denominator was anything but common. Slightly sweet and slightly spicy without being hot, it's one of my favorite flavor profiles.
It come from the book A Fistful of Lentils by Jennifer Felicia Abadi
I halved the recipe for two of us but added a lot of figs and served it over whole grain red rice cooked in chicken stock. I also used two boneless chicken breasts.
Here's the full recipe. Enjoy!
Orange Chicken with Golden Raisins and Figs
Sauce
- 1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped yellow onions
- 2 cups peeled and cubed white potatoes (any kind)
- 1/4 cup golden raisins
- 1/2 cup whole Black Mission figs or the larger, amber-colored Calimyrna figs, cut into halves
- 1 1/2 cups fresh orange juice, strained
- 4 1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce, (preferably Lea & Perrins, or another brand that lists tamarind as an ingredient
- 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
- 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
Chicken
- 3 pounds chicken pieces (white and dark meat)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- Several grindings of black pepper
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
- 1/2 teaspoon paprika
- 4 1/2 teaspoons olive oil
To Serve
1 recipe Basic Syrian Rice (recipe can be found in book)preparation
1. Prepare the sauce. Combine all the ingredients in a medium-size bowl and set aside.
2. Prepare the chicken. Rinse the chicken under cold running water and pat dry with paper towels. Place on a plate.
3. Combine the salt, pepper, garlic powder, allspice, and paprika in a small bowl. Rub the spices into the chicken skin.
4. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. When the oil is very hot, add the chicken pieces and brown, cooking for 2 to 3 minutes on each side. Pour the sauce over the chicken and simmer, covered, over medium heat until the chicken is cooked through and very moist, 30 to 45 minutes.
5. Serve the chicken pieces over rice, with the sauce spooned on top.
Tri-Tip and Artichokes
Artichokes are great. Stuffed artichokes are greater. Victor's stuffed artichokes are the greatest!
I knew the minute I saw the artichokes today that Victor was going to be stuffing them for dinner tonight. He just does a good job of it. The recipe gives ingredients - not amounts - because they vary according to how many you're making. Besides... these ain't the sort of thing where you have to put 1/8 tsp of this and 1/4 cup of that, anyway. They're stuffed artichokes. You can't screw 'em up!
Victor's Stuffed Artichokes
- bread crumbs (He used panko this time around because that's what we had in the house. He has also used store-bought and freshly made.)
- grated parmesan cheese (Maybe 3 bread crumbs to 1 cheese. Don't be cheap with the cheese.)
- Italian seasoning
- red pepper flakes
- salt and pepper
Trim outer leaves. Mix all ingredients.
Liberally stuff the breadcrumbs into the artichokes. Pull the leaves out a bit and really go for it.
Drizzle with olive oil and steam for 35 to 45 minutes.
Drizzle with olive oil again just before serving.
They really do rock.
Since we were going Italian with the artichokes, I marinated the tri-tip in olive oil, red wine, and garlic. Really basic. And then grilled it to rare perfection.
I cubed a couple of red potatoes, boiled them in salted water, drained them, and then quickly browned them in a drizzle of olive oil with salt, pepper, and garlic.
And we still have walnut pie.
Chicken Boursin
I really don't recall when I first had Boursin cheese. It seems as if it has always been around. It's one of those things that I like, but never really think about. I definitely don't go out of my way to buy it. But I really do like it.
I picked up a package of it a few days ago thinking I might use it in dinner, somehow - and then didn't. This morning, I knew exactly what I was going to do with it - it was going to become a sauce for chicken breasts!
The beauty of boursin is it mixes with anything. Into mashed potatoes, into casseroles, into dips, and into sauces.
Tonight, all I did was melt it in a small pot with a bit of milk. That's it. It doesn't get easier.
I marinated the chicken in a bit of olive oil, garlic, salt, pepper, and Italian seasoning. I then seared it in a skillet and popped it into the oven for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile, I had whole-grain brown rice in a pot with homemade chicken stock from a few days ago.
When the chicken was moments from being ready, I put a couple of thick slices of homegrown tomato on them and put them under the broiler. Then quickly cooked up a half-pound of arugula in a drizzle of olive oil, garlic, salt, and pepper.
Arugula on the plate, the chicken with tomato atop it, and the boursin sauce on top of it all.
Real chickeny rice on the side.
And...
The last loaf of the latest batch of no-knead dough.
I made a walnut pie, too.
Shrimp and Andouille Pot Pie
Okay. It's not exactly pot pie weather outside, but I was feeling slightly brain-dead. Besides... It's not your typical pot pie.
The idea was always shrimp and andouille. I just wasn't sure exactly how they were going to go together. I first thought a kind of jambalaya - really simple - and even toyed with the idea of a fritatta of sorts. But when I got home, I found we were down to one ripe tomato. I didn't want to use canned, so...
Time to change gears.
I remembered a recipe I had seen in Bon Appetit a while back and came up with a variation on a theme.
I had picked up the puff pastry during my weekly shopping trek and there was a tad of heavy cream left from making ice cream and two pasta dishes.
Shrimp and Andouille Pot Pie
- 1 sheet frozen puff pastry
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 2 tbsp flour
- 2 leeks, chopped
- 1/2 bell pepper, chopped
- 2 stalks celery, chopped
- 1 link andouille sausage, diced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1/3 cup white wine
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
- 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1 cup cubed red bliss potatoes
- 1/2 pound shrimp
- salt & pepper, to taste
Preheat oven to 400°. Cut out pastry rounds to fit bowls. Place on parchment-lined baking sheet and bake about 15 minutes, or until golden.
Whisk cream and flour in small bowl. Heat skillet and add a drizzle of olive oil. Sauté leeks, celery, and bell pepper until tender, about 10 minutes. Add andouille and garlic and sauté until sausage colors.
Add wine and simmer until liquid evaporates. Add chicken stock and and thyme. Bring to simmer. Add potato and cook uncovered until tender.
Add cream mixture to skillet; stir. Simmer until sauce thickens and boils, about 3 minutes. Reduce heat. Add shrimp; simmer about 3 minutes.
Add salt and pepper, to taste
Divide hot filling among oven-proof bowls. Top each with pastry round. Bake until filling bubbles, about 10 minutes.
This was really good. Creamy, slightly spicy, the puff pastry made a crumbly mess all over the place when we started eating... Perfectly fun food!
Doing to pastry topping in the oven first really helps to keep it flaky on top of the pot pie. No doughy-gooey unbaked pastry to deal with.
I can see several more variations on a theme as the weather turns.....
Pollo Sofrito
I could eat pasta like we had last night every night 'til the end of my days. Unfortunately, if I ate it every night, the end of my days would be here a lot quicker than I want.
Time to regroup.
This is a bit of a clean-out-the-fridge dinner. I had a couple ears of corn that needed using up, plus some fresh tomatoes and some fresh peppers from the yard that were calling to me. And poached chicken from Saturday.
Throw it all together with some sofrito sauce and chopped green chiles and dinner was served!
Into the skillet went 6 chopped roma tomatoes with 2 ears of corn cut from the cob and 4 hot peppers, chopped. I simmered it for a few and then added a heaping teaspoon of cumin, a half-cup of sofrito sauce, a can of tomato sauce, a can of diced green chiles, and a bit of salt and pepper.
To make it all even better, I cooked a whole-grain rice medley of brown, mahogany, and black rices mixed with wild rice. Not exactly Mexican, but... It's a great blend.
The peppers from the yard were much spicier than the first few we picked. It wasn't OMG hot but it had a good kick to it.
It was one of those meals that will probably never be replicated, but it worked well, tonight.