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! :)

Making Bread Without the Bread-Maker

Yesterday, I sat down to plan out our meals for the week, and realized that we have a lot going on! Because we have some things to do after work today, I decided to make something for dinner last night that we could enjoy again today, without too much effort. I opted for a Dijon Chicken Stew with Kale. It sounded hearty, and warming, and it seemed to make a large amount which meant we could enjoy it for two nights of deliciousness! But...what to serve with it? It sounds great, but you can't JUST have a heaping bowl of stew for dinner...I'm a fan of having different things on my plate. So, I turned to my binder full of recipe cut-outs and thumbed over to the Bread section. What kind of bread would be good for soaking up the remnants of a hearty stew like the one I decided to make? Aha - I got it! Rosemary focaccia!

I've never made focaccia before, and I'm more the bread-machine type of bread maker, but I decided to give it a go. If you have a few hours to kill, and the patience to be in and out of the kitchen for those few hours, then this recipe is for you! This is not the type of dough that can be made in a bread-machine, nor can it be cooked that way. This is a hands-on task...know that before you take it on!

I don't have pictures of all the steps because it was kind of slow-going, but the entire recipe can be found at the link above, so everyone should give it a go! I have a feeling I'm going to add it to my repertoire because this is some DELICIOUS focaccia. After making a boiling water, honey and rosemary concoction, and allowed it to cool to a warm 110 degrees, I added some yeast and let it sit for about 5 minutes. Meanwhile, I gathered the rest of the ingredients for the dough, and once they were all incorporated, I began a 10 minute stint of kneading...and boy are my arms tired. Ten minutes is a long time to be moving, kneading and pressing into dough, but eventually, it got to that smooth, elastic-y point where it was ready to rest, and rise!

Forty-five minutes later, I walked into the kitchen to find a giant ball of dough, which I punched down, and then spread out on a baking sheet with my fingers. The dough was really plyable and I just knew that I was doing things right! Ya know how you can tell when something really doesn't seem right? I didn't have any of those feelings, even though this was my first attempt! After another 20 minutes of rising on the baking sheet, we were finally ready to brush the surface with egg yolk, olive oil and and water. First, I had to make those infamous focaccia indentations with my pointer finger. After the surface was glossy with egg yolk mixture, I sprinkled some sea salt along with chopped rosemary all over the top and it was finally ready for the oven!

After 25 minutes in a 350 degree oven, we finally had focaccia to enjoy! As it was cooking, I started on my stew and while the focaccia cooled considerably while the stew was cooking, it tasted so fresh and delicious. The savory salt and rosemary flavors paired really well with the Dijon Chicken Stew, and provided the perfect "sopping" tool! What a delicious meal! I can't wait to eat it again tonight!

The Breadman TR2700

Cue epic introduction music...

It's here! The Breadman TR2700 has arrived! My kitchen is starting to look like a home-goods store, and I'm loving it! Our stainless steel breadmaker arrived on Thursday evening, and we've already had a loaf of Portuguese Sweet Bread, made with a mix we had from King Arthur Flour's bakery store. I'd post a picture of the beautiful loaf but...um, we ate it already. It was delicious and I probably won't be using store-bought bread anytime in the near future, which is an exciting prospect for me! Homemade bread is just so much fresher, and even tastier! We made toast, french toast, and sandwiches with this, our first loaf of homemade bread!

This particular model of the Breadman (heehee, it sounds so epic, doesn't it!?) seems to be able to do it all, just with the touch of a button! It can make white, wheat, french, sweet, low carb and gluten free breads. It also makes pizza dough, along with other types of dough, as well as JAMS! There's even buttons for adding stuff to the bread, like fruits and nuts!

You'll be hearing a lot more about the Breadman TR2700, I promise you that!