Simple Pleasures (Brined, grilled chicken with garden salsa)

So, it’s the end of the season. You’ve still got tomatoes, peppers, and boatloads of basil. You’re tired of making salsa. You’ve got enough pesto. What to do?

As little as possible. That’s what:

• 1/2 c. salt
• 1/3 c. sugar
• 2 cloves minced garlic
• 2 c. water
• boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• a tomato or two, diced
• a green pepper or two, diced
• pine nuts
• basil leaves, chopped
• couscous

Now, if you’re running really short on time, you can skip the brining. But if you have 10 minutes the night before, it’s so worth it. Brining makes anything (other than beef) juicier, more tender, and more flavorful.

Other than the brining ingredients, vary the amount of ingredients to your liking.

Put the water, salt, garlic, and sugar in a pot over high heat. Stir occasionally until all the solids have dissolved. Remove the pot from the heat. Either let cool to lukewarm or add a handful of ice cubes. Put the chicken in a ziploc bag. Add the brine. Seal the bag and put it in the fridge for at least four hours – overnight is better.

When dinnertime gets close, get a grill to medium-high heat. Drain the chicken and pat dry. Rub the chicken with a little olive oil. Sprinkle with ground pepper. Grill the chicken until the juices run clear – usually 6-8 minutes per side.

Meanwhile, heat a skillet over high heat. Add the pine nuts. Toss until lightly toasted. Add the tomato, pepper, and basil leaves. Cook, stirring, for one minute. Remove from heat. Add salt and pepper to taste and set aside.

Also, make your couscous. For this one, we used pearl couscous – but you can really use anything you like here.

When the chicken is done, remove from the grill and let stand for 5-10 minutes. Plate up. Pour a medium bodied, fruity white wine. Torrontes is a great choice. Chow down.

Egg[plant] Man (Roasted Eggplant with Tomatoes)

I love me some eggplant.

I have a hard time pinpointing exactly when I fell in love with those tasty purple critters, but I’ll use just about any excuse to cook with them now. One my the recipes that the Sweet Partner in Crime requests for special occasions is my Eggplant Parmesan, which I make from scratch. Yummy.

Today, though, we’ve got a more Middle Eastern take. This recipe takes a little time to put together, but a good chunk of the cooking time is hands-off, so you can find other things to do while you’re putting it together. This is my take on a recipe from a recent issue of Food & Wine. Here’s what you’ll need:

2 small eggplants (1 3/4 pounds)

6 garlic cloves, minced

1 (15 oz.) can diced tomatoes, drained

1 tablespoon sweet smoked paprika

1 1/2 tablespoons ground cumin

Pinch of cayenne pepper

3 tablespoons chopped parsley

2 tablespoons cilantro leaves

juice from 1 lemon

Get a good, heavy pot. Prick the eggplants on all sides with a fork. Put the pot over medium-low heat, add the eggplant, cover and cook. (Yes, you read that right. Nothing in the pot but the eggplant.) Cook for about 40 minutes, turning a couple of times, until the outside is charred and the inside is soft.

When cooked, transfer the eggplants to a colander. Cut a lengthwise slit in each and allow them to drain for 10-15 minutes, or until the eggplants are cool enough to handle. Cut the eggplants in half and scoop the flesh into a bowl. Take a mashing utensil (potato masher, bottom of a glass, phone book) and pulverize the eggplant.

Put the pot back on the stove and heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil over medium heat. Add the eggplant mush, garlic, and spices. Cook until most of the water has evaporated and the tomatoes start to break down – 10-15 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Add the herbs and lemon juice. Turn the heat down to low, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes or so. While this is simmering, make the couscous. Plate it up and chow down.

If you’re looking for a wine pairing with this, a red from the Rhone region of France is a good bet. I opened a nice Chateauneuf-de-Pape with it, but a good Cotes du Rhone would do nicely.

    

 

 

 

Where Is My Mind? (Roast Chicken with Tomatoes & Marjoram)

Ever tried to make dinner when you’re…shall we say…not completely there? I mean, who’d be silly enough to work around in the kitchen after that third happy hour martini or after a Lazy Sunday Afternoon with no mind to worry.* Certainly not me, of course. For the sake of argument, though, let’s imagine that we’re faced with this situation. Pop quiz, hotshot…what do you do?

The best way to deal with this little hypothetical would be to have a recipe or three in one’s back pocket that can be thrown together with a minimum of effort and time. Picking up an item or two at the store might be necessary, but I’ll assume your hypothetical shopping was done with a little more foresight than your pre-cooking revelry.

You really can’t go wrong with roasting chicken and tomatoes. It’s practically foolproof. Marjoram has a really fascinating flavor – it’s halfway between cilantro and sage. Besides, if you can still pronounce “marjoram” correctly, you’re probably in good shape to make this. A bottle of Spanish rose makes a great accompaniment.

Disclaimer: If the cook’s mental and physical state is such that a few simple slicing tasks pose a significant risk of permanent disfigurement -- plop down on the couch, put on some Allman Brothers, and call your local pizza place or Chinese delivery. Bodily humors make a poor seasoning for this dish. 

• 3-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 2-3 tbsp chopped fresh marjoram (or 3/4-1 tbsp. dried if you must)
• 5-6 minced garlic cloves
• 1-2 tsp. red pepper flakes
• 3-4 tomatoes, cut into thin wedges and seeded
• 1 c. couscous

Preheat oven to 450. Pat chicken dry. Mix all but 1 tbsp of the marjoram (or 1/2 tbsp. if using dried), the garlic, and the red pepper with about 1/4 c. olive oil in a large bowl.

Add the tomatoes and chicken to the mixture and toss. Spray a roasting pan with cooking spray and pour everything in. Arrange the tomatoes in a single layer around the chicken. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper.

Roast for about 30 minutes. Check the pan at this point. The tomatoes should be breaking down and making a sauce and if you cut into the chicken (which should be browning), the juices should run clear. If it needs a little more time, put it back in for 5 more minutes.

Meanwhile, make the couscous however you prefer to make couscous. I keep it simple…water, salt, and a little bit of olive oil.

When everything’s done, put down a bed of couscous, top with the chicken, pour the tomatoes and collected juices over everything, and sprinkle the reserved marjoram over the top. What you’ll end up with this is this scrumptious one-plate meal, an easy cleanup, and plenty of time to either crash or recover, depending on your plans.

* Check out “Ogden's Nut Gone Flake” if you’re curious. (h/t to The Wizard of Covington)

Blue Rondo a la Turkey Burger (grilled turkey burgers with guacamole salad)

A bartender friend of mine once told me, “I like making drinks with vodka, because I get to show off. Rum, gin, tequila – they’ve all got flavors of their own, but vodka is the blank canvas where I can create…”

So it is with the humble turkey burger.

I love a good burger. One of my guilty pleasures is the Hardee’s mushroom ‘n’ swiss. Just love me some of that. But there’s a reason that it’s a guilty pleasure…

In the interest of waistlines, we end up cutting back, but that doesn’t mean that we have to eat tasteless, does it? Hell no! But turkey burgers? That almost defeats the purpose, no? There’s not much flavor inherent – especially if you’re getting the really lean stuff (usually 93/7). Doctoring up some ground turkey meat gives you the chance to eat healthy and make something very tasty.

This is another recipe where the Sweet Partner in Crime takes center stage. She’s got the touch with burger making. I handle the grilling part. So, round up:

• 1 lb. or so lean ground turkey
• 1/2 a diced onion
• Worcestershire sauce
• salt & pepper
• diced fresh herbs (we had some great fresh basil from our friend Rachel)
• 2 avocadoes, diced
• juice of a lemon
• tomatoes for slicing, plus a couple more diced
• minced garlic, cumin
• lettuce, mustard, or other desired toppings

Put the turkey meat in a bowl. Season liberally with salt and pepper. Add the onion, salt & pepper to taste, and the herbs. You know, kind of like this: Knead this all together. Then start adding the Worcestershire until it gets, in the SPinC’s words, “kind of meatloafy.” Coat form into patties, coat lightly in olive oil, and put it in the fridge for an hour or more. Make sure you get a chance to take it out to let it sit at room temperature for 20 minutes or so before you start grilling. During that time, slice your tomatoes, get your lettuce ready, toast your buns and whatnot.
Light the grill. When it’s good and hot, toss the burgers on there.
Grill the burgers over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes on a side or until the proverbial juices run clear.
While you’re letting the burgers rest, make the salad. Dice the tomatoes and avocado. Toss with salt, pepper, minced garlic, cumin, and lemon juice (basically, think unmashed guacamole). You’ll get something like this:
Put burgers on buns. Dress appropriately. Put the salad on the plates as a side. Serve it up and call it dinner. We decided to do a taste test with both an inexpensive New Zealand sauvignon blanc and a light red from the Languedoc region of France. Both ended up working out well:

The fun of turkey burgers is that you get to guiltlessly try different combinations of flavors. Grilling season is upon us. Give it a go.

Since you met Jessie Louise the Beagle last night, you should meet Mooch the Magnificent Mutt this evening. It’s only fair…

Hole in my Bread (thin crust pizza with roasted tomatoes & mushrooms)

Pizza…ain’t it great? Meal sized finger food – what’s not to love? No matter how nice it is to have someone walk up to your door and hand you food – for about a quarter of the price, you can make one of your own in as little time as it would take for someone to make it to your house from Snappy Tomato.

Making a pizza is super-easy, too. Just make some dough, get it thin, throw on some toppings, throw in the oven, wait a few minutes…and voila! Dinner is served!

OK, OK – a couple of caveats. I’m a thin crust kinda guy. I get enough carbs in my diet as is. I don’t need to load up on extra starch at home. With good toppings, why mask the flavor with a bunch of buttery bread? If you want to make good thin crust pizza, you need one of these:

This little gizmo is a wonderful invention. The crust cooks more quickly and more evenly. If you make your dough right, you don’t have to worry about it falling through the holes.
So, what about the dough? Yes, there are any number of really good, homemade crust recipes out there. But I’ll be honest. We cheat. We don’t make a lot of bread, anyway, so yeast isn’t something that I have lying around the house other than in the bottom of some homebrew bottles. For the sake of simplicity, I just get a Kroger brand pack of dry dough. Yeah, I’m probably wasting 30 cents. Sue me.

The dough’s easy enough. Basically just add water and knead. Check the package for specific directions. The Sweet Partner in Crime is particularly good at taking out her frustrations on that ball of flour and yeast. A tip? Clean your countertop really well before you start, scatter some flour, and knead it right there. Easier than trying to do it in a bowl or in a pan. Yes, you have to take some time to clean, but you have to do something while it’s baking, right?

When the dough is ready, spread it. You can roll it out, spin it, throw it around the kitchen – whatever floats your boat. Just make sure it ends up spread out on your holey pizza pan. Spread a little olive oil across the dough. Then top it.
In the case of this particular pie, we were in a roasting sort of mood. So, before we started making the dough, we preheated the oven to 425. We took some mushrooms and Roma tomatoes and sliced them thickly.

We sprayed a cookie sheet with nonstick, put the tomatoes and mushrooms on it, drizzled olive oil over them, then seasoned them with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. We roasted them for about half an hour, which is about the time it took to make and roll out the dough.

We let the roasted veggies cool for a few minutes, then put them on the pie. We added some sliced garlic-stuffed olives, crumbled feta, and basil.

Raise the heat to 475. In goes the pizza. Cook for 7-8 minutes, or until the crust gets to be about the color above. Take it out, let it sit to cool for a couple of minutes, then slice it.

Now, with this combination of flavors, I might consider cracking open an Italian red – but we went with our standby with just about any kind of pizza…dry sparkling wine. There may be some of you out there who haven’t tried this. I pity you. Champagne (and just about any other dry sparkler) is made to be drunk with fatty foods. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Bubbles cut through the fat on your tongue, and you get all the flavors instead of the coating on your palate.

If you really want to test this theory, get a bucket of KFC and open a bottle of dry sparkling wine. Or potato chips. Or Doritos. Seriously. You’ll love it.

This pizza was no exception to the rule. We had it with a bottle of dry cava, a Spanish sparkling wine. Yum.

Total time…about half an hour.

Oh, and just for the heck of it…meet the beagle:

Torn Between Two Recipes… (Roast chicken with asparagus, fontina, and tomatoes)

After you’ve been cooking for yourself for awhile, you’ll start to notice flavors and flavor combinations that you especially like. You’ll find yourself collecting recipes that mirror those likes. Since you like them so much, they’re pleasurable – and since they’re similar, it occasionally starts blending together.

If you remember from back over on The Naked Vine, on one of our New Year’s Eves, the Sweet Partner in Crime went nuts with Giuliano Hazan’s “Every Night Italian.” We worked our way through great chunks of that cookbook, and there were two recipes we really liked: “Grilled chicken breast stuffed with asparagus and fontina” and “Chicken Breast Fillets Rolled with Pancetta, Rosemary, and Sage.”

When we went to the store, we ended up getting a mishmash of ingredients. We did get the chicken breasts, but we ended up with prosciutto instead of pancetta, asparagus, fontina, and some random grape tomatoes.

First off, the actual recipe called for wrapping these things up and grilling. But two things prevented that: 1) I was tired and wanted no part of the grill that night, and 2) the chicken breasts, even after butterflying, were not easily rolled with the stuffing. Since everything was falling out anyway, we made two major adjustments: 1) cooking the chicken on stove instead of on the grill and 2) not rolling ingredients into cooked chicken....just putting everything on top instead.

Anyway, sans grill, we cooked the chicken in about 1 T of oil until slightly brown, about 3-4 minutes per side, adding the prosciutto halfway through. We then essentially braised the chicken and prosciutto (with lid on) in 3/4 cup of white wine until more or less done (about 10-15 minutes). At that point, all the wine had cooked off or cooked into the chicken (yummy). We also "pre-cooked" the asparagus in a skillet on high heat with a cup of water and salt for 4-5 minutes, then drained it. We added the cheese, asparagus and tomatoes to the chicken and put the whole thing under the broiler for about 3-5 minutes. 

If you're following this recipe, at this point, take it out and check for done-ness.

If it’s done, then plate it up, crack a bottle of light Italian red, and go to town.

The moral of this story isn’t that you need to make sure you have every ingredient you need clearly listed when you head to the store. It’s that when you start to figure out the tastes you like, you can grab things you like (in our case, chicken, tomatoes, asparagus) and cobble something together that both looks and tastes good when you’re pressed for time. Whether you’ve had a tiring day at the office or made a last minute dinner invite, trust what you like and you won’t go wrong.

(Many thanks to the SPinC for some corrections to the recipe.)