A Peppery Piperade

Phew, it's been almost a month since my last post - it's a jungle out there! Not only have I been very busy at work, but I've had to deal with a couple of medical issues, as well as planning a vacation for my husband, my puppy and myself! While I work on a compilation post of all the wonderful foods I encountered on our road trip to the great state of Virginia, I thought I'd get back into the swing of things with a simple, but time-consuming, dish that works great if you need leftovers for another night of the week! Because today is a holiday, and I have ONE more vacation day tomorrow, I planned a menu for the week that included a couple of large quantity meals that will feed us through the days that are going to be busy later in the week! The recipe for Chicken Basquaise comes from a cookbook that I got from my neighbor as a lovely birthday present. The book is called Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan and I've based this week's menu around recipes from this book.

Basquaise, or "in the Basque style," usually means that the dish will have a ragout of peppers, onions, tomatoes and punch of spice. For this dish, I had to start off by making a piperade, which is another name for the aforementioned ragout. I prepped my mise en place first, and then started the cooking process. There's a lot of small batches of cooking times, that add up to quite a bit of hands-on time in the kitchen, but I decided to throw a pot on the stove to make some chicken stock, and also started a loaf of bread in the bread maker while I was waiting for each step. All the laundry from vacation even got accomplished while I was running around. It was a pretty productive afternoon.

The first step is to sweat some sliced Vidalia onions with some olive oil for about 10 minutes. You want them softened, but not colored.

Once the timer beeped, I added sliced green peppers, red peppers, and jalapenos. I added another tablespoon of oil to the onions and peppers, and then covered the mixture, allowing it to cook for the next 20 minutes, getting all soft and delicious in there. I could have peeled the peppers if I wanted to, but the rustic-ness of a few pepper skins was a more attractive option than slowly charring pepper after pepper over an open flame until I was able to peel them.

Twenty minutes passed, another load of laundry folded, a loaf of bread baking, and it was time to add some peeled and chopped tomatoes, sea salt, sugar, garlic, black pepper, thyme sprigs, bay leaf and some ground chipotle pepper to the mix. The recipe called for something called piment d'Espelette, which is a dried concoction of spicy chiles which is available in specialty stores for a pretty penny. Because it was possible to substitute a spice I already had, I went with that option to save a little money. I would have splurged had I thought I would use the ingredient on a regular basis, but I had a feeling it might just sit in the pantry for a year...so I didn't spend the money.

For 10 more minutes, the piperade simmered, covered, and then for another 15 minutes, uncovered. I made sure to stir the mixture every few minutes. Once the piperade was completed, I reserved about two cups of it for eggs tomorrow morning. A cool thing about this cookbook is that there are small suggestions on the sides of the pages, called Bonne Idees (good ideas), where they suggest other ways to use leftovers, and Piperade and Eggs sounds like a really good idea, so I will report back on that!

Now I could prepare my chicken thighs. I patted them until they were dry, using a paper towel, and then added them to heated oil (in batches), skin side down. After about 5 minutes, I flipped them and cooked them for another 3 minutes before transferring them to a bowl and seasoning them with salt and pepper. I repeated the process until all of my chicken thighs had been browned.

Once all the chicken had been par-cooked, I poured the oil out of the pan, and replaced it with some white wine, scraping up the brown bits and crunchy skin pieces that had been left in the pan, as the wine reduced. I returned the chicken to the pan, and covered it with the piperade. After bringing it to a boil, I reduced the pot to a simmer, and allowed it all to cook together for another 40 minutes. When I told you I was in the kitchen for awhile today, I meant it! At least this 40-minute interval gave me time to enjoy a chapter of my book on my new Kindle Fire, an awesome birthday gift from my husband.

While the chicken cooked, I also made some brown rice in my rice cooker. They ended up finishing up around the same time, and I plated the meal. This was a really great dish, cozy and comforting but also refreshing and light. We ate four of the eight thighs in the pan, leaving us dinner for Wednesday night, since we will most likely be getting home late, after Yappy Hour (yup, we can bring the dog and enjoy drinks outside while she plays). This was definitely worth the time, and we've even got something interesting for breakfast tomorrow as well!

I'm back! :)