Chicken with Brie and Mushroom - Incredibly Easy

I love a good challenge in the kitchen - difficult recipes that make me wonder if they’re going to turn out right, until the moment I taste it.  Those can be very rewarding and exciting.

But sometimes, since I have a much busier schedule than I ever thought I’d have, I need some quick recipes that are just as delicious and satisfying as the difficult ones.  Here’s one I concocted a while back that I’d like to share, for home cooks on the go.

All you need are thinly sliced chicken breasts, a wedge of good brie, 2 portobello mushrooms thinly sliced, a bottle of Pinot Noir, and finely chopped fresh parsley.  Well, kind of.

Anyway, preheat the oven to around 250 degrees F.  Heat a dash of olive oil in a skillet, and season your chicken breasts on both sides with kosher salt and black pepper.  Saute the chicken until it’s cooked on both sides, and remove from heat.  Place the chicken in a baking pan(s), depending on how many you are serving.  In the same skillet, saute the portobello mushrooms, seasoning with the kosher salt and black pepper.  Once they have cooked down a bit and begun to brown, add about a cup of Pinot Noir (it doesn’t have to be expensive, but not something cheap and that you wouldn’t enjoy to drink - I suggest a basic Bourgogne rouge but any everyday Pinot Noir will do), and cook down, with the mushrooms, until it begins to thicken and form a sort of sauce.

Over the chicken, places thin slices of the brie, and then top with the mushroom sauce.  Bake at 250F until the cheese melts.  Remove from the oven, sprinkle with the parsley, and serve, and enjoy with a glass of Pinot Noir, and maybe some crusty bread.  If it sounds easy, yes, it is.  The whole thing hardly takes more than 20 minutes.

Pesto

A little blogging for my/your entertainment tonight, since it’s almost 11pm and I’m tired of working, and yes, I really am in bed, listening to The Cars and drinking Domaine Le Serp 2012 Madiran (70/30 Tannat/Cab Franc).  There’s something to be said for drinking wine in bed.  Especially a favorite.

Madiran is special to me.  I realize Madiran is a place, but to me, it’s more like Oz (not like Australia, I mean in the Wizard of Oz) - it’s more than just a wine region I can spot on a map.  It’s more than knowing Madiran is red and Pacherenc is white.  It’s more than knowing the wine is made from Tannat.  Yes, that’s all special to me.  But I attended my first Guild of Sommeliers master class a few years ago, and it changed my life.  It was on the wines of Sud-Ouest, or South West France.  The honesty and purity of the wines was shining through and the uniquely expressive aromas were intoxicating as I absorbed the information and tasted through the lineups, and as the 2 master sommeliers made their presentation.  One of them began to describe his travel through Sud-Ouest, including Madiran, and the humble yet endearing, expressive yet mysterious culture began to leave an impression on me (and mind you, I’ve never even been there), yet via the wines, I manage to go there in my mind and on my palate all the time.

Pesto on Penne

Wines of humble means are special to me.  Yes, I love the great wines of Bordeaux and Burgundy, Tuscany and Piemonte, but those rustic creations of God and man from places many have forgotten or have never even heard of are among my favorites.

The foods, too.

Americans seem to be in this peculiar habit lately of serving “peasant food” in luxury settings.  I’m talking about lentils, beans, and the like.  But for me, rustic foods are staples.

Tonight, the one I want to tell you about is pesto.

I know you’ve heard of pesto.  I’m sure you’ve tasted pesto on enough occasions.  Perhaps even in a nice restaurant.  But why?  It’s something you can make in 5 minutes from ingredients you might just grow in your own home garden.

My pesto can go on any macaroni (that’s probably pasta to you - but in our house, it’s macaroni) - and the pesto itself includes about 2 large handfuls of fresh basil, a small handful of fresh parsley, pignoli (about a tablespoon or 2), some sea salt and black pepper, about 3 tablespoons of good olive oil, a small garlic clove (or believe it or not, a few good shakes of garlic powder if you’re a little shy about garlic), about half a teaspoon of anchovy paste, and about a teaspoon of fresh lemon juice.

What else you’ll need - boiling water with a touch of sea salt and olive oil for cooking your macaroni, another small pot of boiling water (to blanche the herbs), and a salad spinner (or you could just dry the herbs with paper towels, but trust me when I tell you that the salad spinner is a godsend.  You’ll also need a food processor.  And a bowl of ice water.

Wash the basil and parsley, and blanche them.  Know what blanching in?  Just in case you don’t, it’s putting the ingredient into boiling water (in this case for about 10 seconds) to lock in the bright natural color.  Then you quickly remove it so it doesn’t keep on cooking, and cool it in the ice water to stop the cooking process.  Remove and place it all in that salad spinner, and let the device do its job.

In a small pan, lightly toast the pignoli (no more than 2 tablespoons), and set aside a few for garnish.

And now for the food processor - place the dried fresh basil and parsley, lemon juice, salt, pepper, garlic, anchovy paste, and pignoli in and begin to puree it.  As it’s pureeing, drizzle in the olive oil.  Once it’s all chopped and mixed, it’s done, and thanks to blanching, it should be bright green still.

Boil the macaroni.  Once the macaroni is drained, stir in the pesto and mix until macaroni is coated.

I like to plate it and serve it as an appetizer, but if you’d like, you cna toss in some slices of chicken breast.  Anyway, plate it individually, and top with grated cheese (for me, it’s parmigiano reggiano), and a bunch of toasted pignoli, and if you’ve got any tiny basil leaves, they look adorable stop the green macaroni masterpiece.

Serve it with a chilled Italian white.  On Easter, it was the 2011 Pieropan La Rocca Soave, and it was perfect.

Easter 2014

http://champagne-taste.blogspot.com/2014/04/easter-2014.html

Post from Champagne Taste

Buona Festa di San Giuseppe!

St. Joseph’s Day was last week - and if you grew up in a Sicilian/Sicilian-American household, you know the importance of celebrating St. Joseph’s Day.

You probably also associate the feast day with pastries.  Yes?

Did you also have the dinner, and not just the pastries?

We do.  We use perciatelli macaroni (thicker than spaghetti and hollow on the inside of the tube), and top it with a sauce.  Some simply use the sardines, fennel, and raisins, but we add it to the basic marinara sauce, ladle it over the macaroni, and top with grated cheese (for me it’s always parmigiano reggiano) and “sawdust” - remember, St. Joseph was a carpenter.  Anyway, the sawdust is sauteed bread crumbs.  And it’s delicious.

The pastries?  I’ve made sfingi at home, which eventually I’ll write about, but on the holiday we usually buy them from the Italian bakery - the pastries, some with cannoli filling and some with custard filling.  Amazingly good.

And bonus: if you can find a cool loaf of Italian bread in the bakery or make it at home - in the shape of the J, or a fish, or a cross, or the like - it’s fun.  This year we had one in the shape of a fish.

Also - pair with Italian red wines - basic Sangiovese wines from Tuscany, Nero d’Avola from Sicily, you know the drill.

Lamb...& Deep Fried Soft Boiled Egg

I rarely blog on the day of the creation, but it’s a snowy night (it was a snowy day - again), and I made some fun things today, and I can’t help but share some recipes.

In keeping with my posting lately what I’m listening to while I write, it’s Boccherini.

I felt like making a cool appetizer tonight before dinner, but I had to use only ingredients that are already in the house, since there was no venturing out in that snow today.  There are usually more than enough fun ingredients in the kitchen anyway but still, I had to choose something that involved only ingredients that were already here.

I chose something new that I’d never made before - deep fried soft boiled eggs.

If it sounds amazing, it is.  I chose a basic Bordeaux blanc for it.  I boiled a few eggs for about 7 minutes and then let them cool in cold water.  After peeling them VERY carefully, I rolled them in flour, and then in beaten egg and then rolled them in panko crumbs.  Into a small pot of very hot oil and remove them just a few moments later with a slotted spoon once they’re just golden brown and ever so slightly crispy, and that’s it!  They’re runny and delicious and I’d do that again in a heartbeat.

For dinner, it was lamb, a green leafy salad, and baked potatoes.  The lamb was awesome.  The chops are pan seared medium/medium-rare.  And then just when the lamb is almost cooked, I deglazed the pan with just a bit of basic Bordeaux rouge.  Once the lamb was removed from the pan, I drizzled it with just a bit of what was left at the bottom of the pan, plus a little balsamic vinegar.  The topping I made for the lamb was minced garlic sauteed a bit, with kosher salt, black pepper, some lemon zest, and fresh chopped rosemary and parsley.  Once it’s all cooked down and mixed together, I just applied it and pressed it a bit into the lamb.  And that’s it.

The lamb was paired with the 2009 Grgich Hills Napa Cabernet Sauvignon.  To me, it’s an old school style, almost Bordeaux type of California wine.  Reminiscent of dark plum and plum flesh, blackberry, raspberry, and black currant, with dark chocolate, subtle vanilla, herbs, lilac, and what I like to call “pencil shaving” - the wood and the graphite minerality - quite delicious anyway, with a soft texture, smooth, dry, clean, and balanced, with a lengthy finish.  I could not have been more pleased.

Coq au Vin & Snickerdoodles

California Pinot Noir and some American jazz standards on this snowy evening...

Snowy day today

Actually, it snowed all day.  So what did I do?  Well, I did the grocery shopping early this morning, and after a very slippery drive home, I did my work from home today, and then baked snickerdoodles, and made coq au vin for dinner, and opened a bottle of Pinot Noir.  And enjoyed a few more chapters of a wonderful book this evening, which was a Christmas gift - George Washington’s Secret Six, by Brian Kilmeade and Don Yeager, about the Culper Spy Ring that was secretly a tremendous part of the American Revolutionary War.  It’s something that fascinates me since a great deal of it took place right here where I live.  Literally.

Snickerdoodles

But about what I made...

I’m really into cookie recipes.  Usually I’m undertaking something difficult or working to perfect recipes I’ve been working with for years (see some of my Christmas cookie recipes back in December posts), or enjoying a classic.  But there was one cookie I really wanted to try (especially since I’d never even tasted one before) - the snickerdoodle.  Don’t ask me why, but I really wanted to.  So when I saw it was snowing this morning, I decided it was a snickerdoodle sort of day.  And it was.

And it’s fun using the new Kitchen Aid stand mixer too.  I blended together butter, sugar, and eggs, and then added flour, salt, cream of tartar, and baking soda.  And after chilling the cookie sheets and the dough (which was easy as I just left them out on the covered porch for a few moments in the winter air), I rolled the dough into small balls and coated them with cinnamon sugar, and baked them.  It’s really as simple as it sounds!  And they’re delicious and fun.

Coq au vin going into the oven

Coq au vin - finished!

Coq au vin is not nearly as intimidating as it may sound.  I’ve made it a bunch of times but each time it seems to get better.  I use chicken thighs since I strongly prefer dark meat, but obviously you can use any and all chicken parts.  I heat some olive oil in a dutch oven, and brown the chicken thighs a bit, until they’re golden, and season them with kosher salt and black pepper.  I then remove the chicken pieces and deglaze the bottom of the pot, and add some sliced onions, and cook them until they’re softened.  I return the chicken to the pot, and then cover it with the rest of the bottle of Pinot Noir (I used a Romanian Pinot) and some chicken stock, and finished it off with a bit more kosher salt and black pepper, parsley, thyme, rosemary, and several cloves of popped and roughly chopped garlic.  I simmer it for about 10-15 minutes, and then into the oven, covered, for another hour or so, at about 375 degrees F.  It really isn’t difficult at all.  And it smells amazingly good, and pairs very nicely with Burgundy, Bordeaux, and the like.

Tomorrow night’s menu promises to be easy and fun too - creamy roasted red pepper and basil sauce on macaroni, and a caprese salad, with (in all likelihood) a nice Italian red.

Hasenpfeffer

Cerasuolo

Rabbit in dutch oven

Sunday afternoon and I’m listening to Sylvie Vartan, I can’t help but be happy while listening to her music, and also after the awesome weekend I had.  Some great wines were opened, but that’ll be part of the post and part of my upcoming wine blogs on Champagne Taste.

Friday night I made something really fun - hasenpfeffer.  I’ve had rabbit before but not quite the same style, as last time I had it was at a South Western French themed restaurant.  And while I usually cook southern Italian by instinct and I love working with French classic recipes, this time I was slightly less confident as it was a German/Swiss type dish and I never cook German.

Rabbit and vegetables marinating

So 2 days before the rabbit was to be cooked, I marinated it, with the help of a recipe from a friend.  I ordered the rabbit from d’Artagnan, fresh, and it was labeled young farm raised American rabbit (which means it’ll be less gamey, and American rabbits are all white mean, whereas the typical hasenpfeffer is made from European wild hare, which is generally dark meat).  The marinade consisted of dry red wine (I used a Romanian Pinot Noir), good red wine vinegar, water, sugar, pickling spices, juniper berries, kosher salt, lots of black pepper, and sliced onion and carrot.

On the day the rabbit was to be cooked, I removed the rabbit loins (which I had cut into pieces and removed the veil) and 4 rabbit legs, and seasoned them with kosher salt and black pepper and coated them with flour.  I also removed the onions and carrots and set them aside.  Then I strained the berries and spices out of the marinade, and set the liquid aside, to be used for deglazing, cooking, and sauce.

Hasenpfeffer - plated

I started rendering fat from salt pork but it was getting a little too smoky and decided to supplement the rest with olive oil.  I browned the rabbit pieces in a dutch oven and then removed the rabbit, deglazed with a bit of the marinade, and then cooked the onions and carrots in it.  I then returned the rabbit pieces to the pot and covered with more of the marinade (reserving still more of the liquid for the sauce), and at this point you can also add currant jelly (which I’ve read in recipes), but I opted for lingonberry.  Cover the dutch oven and instead of simmering on the stove, I cooked it in the oven for about 2 hours on 375 degrees F.

Meanwhile, I boiled a pot of egg noodles to be plated underneath the rabbit pieces, and I made the sauce, which was the remaining marinade liquid, made into a roux with a handful of flour whisked in over a fairly low heat.

Hoch Ybrig and Cambozola Blue

Also while the rabbit cooked, in keeping with the theme, I went with 2 cheeses - Hoch Ybrig, a firm cow’s milk cheese from Switzerland with nutty characteristics, and Cambozola Blue, a soft triple cream subtle blue cheese from cow’s milk from Germany.  Both are awesome in texture, flavor, and aroma, and I brought out leftover open samples of German Riesling from Nahe and Elbling from Mosel.

Humagne Rouge

The wine I chose for the hasenpfeffer was a Humagne rouge, a red from AOC Valais in Switzerland, which is what I like to call and “honest” expressive wine with a unique identity, stony mineral notes and bright acidity with an almost elegant rusticity (if that makes any sense) and red fruit notes, some ripe rich fruit, wild berry and red plum skin.  That was a delicious pairing, and the other red we opened was a Cerasuolo di Vittora from Sicily, a blend of Nero d”Avola and Frappato, with notes of mostly red fruits, berry, cherry, and volcanic mineral typical of Sicilian reds, and fascinating characteristics of raw pine nuts and savory herbs and tarragon - another awesome match with the rabbit (which was absolutely delicious and fun to look at before eating it).  Textures, flavors, and aromas came together to make for a great culinary experience in my very own kitchen - just the way I like it.