Poule au Pot-ish (Dutch Oven Chicken)

We're still up at the cottage. It's bloody cold out and we're knackered from unpacking, cleaning, re-packing, moving furniture, cleaning, &c. So tonight's menu is comfort food: Chicken in a Dutch oven.

You'll need a Dutch oven, or something like it. I used a Le Creuset pot.

--A whole chicken
--Salt and pepper, garlic, thyme
--A lemon
--Some dry white wine
--Oil
--Vegetables: I used potatoes, onion and mushrooms, but celery and carrots, maybe a turnip, would have been excellent, I just didn't have any.

Put a tablespoon of oil into the pot and get it hot. Coat the chicken in a mixture of salt, pepper, thyme and garlic powder. Stuff a lemon into the cavity.

Plop the chicken, breast side down, into the pot for about five minutes to brown the skin. Chop your vegetables while it's browning. Turn the chicken and add the vegetables around it.

This is just after I've turned the chicken and just before I've added the vegetables. If you don't do this, the chicken comes out looking very peaked and sickly. 

We're now at the point where cooks differ on how to proceed. To add liquid or not? In point of fact the chicken doesn't need any additional liquid. You can cover it and walk away. It won't burn. Me, I add some white wine. You can choose. You'll see later why I add white wine.

Cover the chicken and go do something else -- evidently, as proven for the umpteenth time tonight, anything other than football will do -- for half an hour. Check the chicken at the 35 minute mark. Maybe it's ready; check the temperature. If not, give it ten more minutes or so. When it's ready let it stand for a few minutes (chicken isn't like beef that has to 'rest' but it's still good to let it stand for five minutes). Then carve and serve with the vegetables and sauce.

The sauce surrounding the vegetables is the result of adding a glass of white wine. That's why I do it. 

Once it's ready serve with a simple salad and bread. It's not precisely Poule au Pot like in France. But it works. And it's très simple. Serve with either the white wine you added to the pot -- I used a white wine from Saumur (In the Loire Valley and the home of the French Cavalry school), but a Pinot Noir from Bourgogne would do very well also.

Steak (not on the grill)

We Americans are obsessed with our grills. But rest of the world isn't. So this weekend at the cottage --with the temps hovering around 20F and four inches of fresh snow on the ground -- I decided to try steak, not on the grill. Alain Ducasse has what might be the most decadent steak (w/o sauce) recipe in history. Here's how it works:

--Pick out a nice Ribeye or T-Bone steak. I chose a T-bone.
--Salt and pepper
--Garlic-- a couple cloves minced.
--A sprig of fresh rosemary
--A sprig of fresh thyme
--Half a stick of butter

Season it with salt and pepper, let it sit at room temperature for 30 minutes. Put some oil -- use canola because you're cooking at high temperature -- into a cast iron skillet and get it hot. Once it's shimmering, add the steak and let it cook for about five minutes. The bottom side should be pretty crispy. Turn the steak and add the garlic, thyme, rosemary and butter. Once the butter has melted begin basting the steak with the mix of herd, garlic and butter. Keep it up for about 6 minutes until the steak is medium rare.

Take it out of the pan and let it sit for ten minutes. 

I served it with leeks and zucchini. Slice the leeks and zuke, put some oil in the pan and add salt, pepper and thyme. We also put some cannellini beans on. Cook the beans as usual, but add some pepper and rosemary. This helps tie everything together. 

After the ten minutes resting, cut the steak off the bone and slice against the grain of the meat. Serve with a big red like a cabernet or a malbec.

Uniform of the Day: A Long Weekend in the Country

We just bought a small place in the country. It's an old farm house, a cottage really, in Sullivan County, New York. We'll try to get up there as often as possible and this long weekend -- a bit expanded -- is a good chance.

The whole point of getting up there, and of having a place in the country at all, is to get away from the stresses of city life, right? So the dress code is bound to be pretty relaxed, but there will be one. In the winter, so far at least, it's mostly jeans and sweaters. (In point of fact, we've owned the place for precisely nine days as I am drafting this.... and I made the 5 1/2 hour each way drive four times in seven days.)

I've decided to keep some clothes up there as permanent party: a Gore-Tex shell and fleece, and a pair of warm boots that are all left-overs from my time in the Army. These are good for beating around the property and doing chores. Some house slippers (actually a pair of Birkenstock Bostons), a 'mad-bomber' hat in waxed cotton and rabbit, and a sizable portion of my rapidly-becoming-vintage L.L. Bean collection including a flannel robe, a down vest, a ragg wool sweater, some lined chinos, a river driver's shirt, and a pair of Maine Hunting Shoes and boot socks. Almost all of these all arrived in my duffle bag on the trip up to formally close on the house.

The traveling load varies with the weather. Last weekend, when we had owned the place for all of three days, we hit an ice storm on untreated roads in Wayne County, Pennsylvania. So we spent the entirety of Friday night on the side of the road waiting for the salt & sand truck to do its work, advancing slowly as each section of the road was sanded. The hilly, nine-mile trip to the Delaware River crossing took about nine hours--we should have arrived at the cottage at 1130pm, we did arrive at about 930am. Luckily, we were well prepared for the weather because we had extra blankets and quilts we needed for the house stuffed into the wagon. But still, sheesh.

The previous trip, another two-nighter (one of which was the day I closed on the place) included temps ranging from 45F to -6F thanks to the Polar Vortex. (You can look it up. Go ahead, I'll wait....) But I had also well prepared, packing inter alia outerwear for both cold and wet, two pair of boots, more next-to-the-skin pieces than should be necessary, and (unnecessarily) sunglasses.

So the packing for this trip -- the weather predictions include temps ranging from 15-35F and the rare snow flurry -- is pretty basic: plan for cold and mostly dry conditions.

A Baxter State parka, a pair of cotton rollnecks and a sweatshirt, a couple of  flannel shirts and an OCBD. 

A couple pairs of jeans, a Norwegian fisherman's sweater and an Irish fisherman's sweater--black sheep variety--(there must be a joke here somewhere) a cashmere roll neck and some tan cords in case we go out somewhere.

A lighter down jacket that will likely become permanent party and a pair of Aussie boots (mine are Rossi rather than Blundstone; Rossi are the preferred brand in Western Australia) for trips to the barn and the hardware store. And, of course, lots of next-to-the-skin clothes.

Uniform of the Day: Skull Session.

So today I'm off to the university to sit with my boss and strategize over how to proceed on a somewhat delicate task. Money and alumni are involved and I'll leave it at that.

It's pretty miserable weather outside: the T has just crested freezing for the first time in a week and, of course, it's raining. We started the morning with freezing rain, so just-plain-rain is an improvement except that the rain is melting the remaining snow and ice, so we've got streets full of slush.

No formalities involved today, so I went with warm and dry.

LL Bean Maine Hunting Shoes (I like the feel of these better than the "Bean Boots."), maroon J.Crew cords, white Brooks Bros. OCBD, O'Connell's Fair Isle sweater, the 5513, and the Barbour Beaufort.

Roasted Pork Loin with Wine and Herbs

Brutal cold on the East Coast this day. My instinct was to make a cassoulet, but I don't have the time nor the half-dozen friends present to make it worthwhile. Alas. I dove back into Elizabeth David's classic French Provincial Cooking and adapted one of her recipes for a roast pork loin.

Ms. David calls her dish Carré de Porc Provençal, which my feeble brain translates as a square of pork prepared in the style used in Provençal, but which can reliably be translated as a pork loin with wine and herbs.

To begin with, use a boneless pork loin. Salt and pepper the meat, slice up a few cloves of garlic and rub the loin with them. Put the loin and the garlic cloves into a ziploc bag and add a few sprigs of fresh thyme (from the porch, even in this weather) then add a glass of white wine (I used a French chardonnay), and stick it in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Ready to go into the bag and in the fridge. 

Preheat your oven to 350F. Put the loin and the marinade into a baking dish and cover with foil. Put the dish into the oven for about an hour to an hour and 15 minutes. Check it pretty regularly and if the marinade dries out, add some water or more white wine. You're trying to bring the temperature up to about 120F.

Going in.

Meanwhile, chop about half a cup of fresh parsley and mix that with an equal amount of breadcrumbs. When the loin reaches 120F, pull it out and rub it all over with the parsley and breadcrumbs mix. Lower the heat in the oven to about 300F and put the loin back in, uncovered, for probably 15-20 minutes.

Just added the breadcrumbs. The loin at this point, because it has been covered, looks unappetizing.

Baste the loin with its own juices (yes, over the breadcrumbs) every few minutes, this helps the crust form. You might have to add some wine or water because the bread crumbs that slide off the top will soak up lots of juice. Monitor the temperature pretty closely. When you get to 140F, pull it out and let stand covered for about 10 minutes.

Now it has great color and even better flavor. 

At some point during the baking, you might have started some Potatoes Lyonnaise and a salad.

Spanish Chicken

New Year's Day. A long walk with the dogs in Rock Creek Park, a visit with my niece, her husband, daughter, and their paternal grandmother, and a quiet dinner at home. Nice.

Tonight's dinner is Spanish Chicken, a dish I've adapted from practice and several recipes in the cupboard, the most influential of which is by Emalee Chapman.

So here's what you need:

--A whole chicken
--A ham slice
--A red capsicum pepper
--A medium onion
--Two tomatoes
--Dry Sherry
--Chicken Stock
--Red pepper flakes
--Garlic
--Salt and pepper
--Some asparagus
--Olive oil

I suggest you serve this with saffron rice and a salad. So gather what you'll need for that, too.

--Rice
--Saffron
--Chicken stock

and:

--Salad stuff.

So, cut the chicken into pieces (cut out the back and save for stock; then two breasts, leg/thigh combos, wings...). Put some oil in a large pan with high sides over medium heat; once it's hot add some peeled garlic cloves for a few minutes then pull them out and discard.

Add the chicken skin side down and let it brown, turn and do the same--about 8-10 minutes total. Pull out the chicken and set aside. While this is happening slice the ham into small pieces -- about the size or half the size of your pinky finger seems fine to me. Then dice the onion and cut the capsicum into pieces a little smaller than the ham. Dice the tomatoes.

Add the ham to the pan and stir once in a while for about five minutes. Add the onion, the capsicum and 1/8th teaspoon of red pepper flakes. Stir once or twice.

Once the onions have started to become translucent, add 1/2 cup of stock bring to a boil to deglaze the pan. Add the tomatoes. Let this cook together for about five minutes. Add another 1/2 cup of the stock and let this cook for five minutes.

Just added the second round of stock and ready to stir it up.

Put the chicken pieces back in the pan and add 1/2 cup of dry sherry.

All together now. Notice that the chicken isn't even close to being cooked. It will finish cooking in the pan and absorb the flavors of the sauce, the ham, and the vegetables. 

Let this cook together for about 30 minutes. About five minutes before it's done, through a handful of asparagus tops into pan.

Meanwhile, make the rice. Cook the rice as you usually would, except replace 1/2 of the water with chicken stock and add a big pinch of saffron threads.

Put the salad together.

Once it's all ready, lay out plates of rice.

A cup of chicken stock and a generous pinch of saffron add both color and flavor to the rice. 

Then, serve the chicken, vegetables, and sauce atop the rice. Even without the yellow band of color on our plates, this is very colorful dish--the red of the capsicum and tomato, the pink of the ham, the brown of the chicken and the green of the asparagus, all on the rich ocre of the saffron rice. 

This goes really well with a white Rioja but a crisp Chardonnay or even a lighter red like a Gamay will work, too.