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This is a great dinner for family or friends, and it doesn’t have to be Sunday. A whole roast chicken makes for an impressive tableside presentation followed by a delicious meal and the tender, tasty leftovers can be used for several other dishes, if there are any left! For faster, more even roasting, cut the backbone out of the chicken with poultry shears or heavy duty kitchen shears. This allows the bird to lay flat in the roasting pan. Keep the backs in a freezer ziplock until you have several, then make chicken stock with the giblets, diced onions and celery, aromatic herbs such as savory, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper and a bay leaf in a couple quarts of water. Bring to a boil, then simmer for a minimum of two hours, longer is better. Pair this with some fresh homemade biscuits and you’ve got a proven winner! We found a great restaurant in the little town of Boulder, Utah called Hell’s Backbone Grill that makes the absolutely best biscuits that we’ve ever tasted! They are easy and quick to make and are positively addictive. We always make a double batch if we want any for the next couple of days. You can use the hot oven for both roasting the chicken and baking the biscuits. Make sure to include plenty of vegetables, as they roast up well and balance out the rich roasted chicken flavors. Herb and Vegetable Roasted Chicken3-4 Lb chicken 1 lemon, halved Fresh rosemary Fresh thyme 8 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed 2 Tbsp butter, softened Salt and fresh ground black pepper 4 small red onions, halved 8 small potatoes, halved 4-6 medium carrots 4 medium parsnips, peeled Extra virgin olive oil Heat oven to 450F. Rinse chicken, pat dry with paper towels. Place chicken in a large roasting pan or skillet. Cast iron is best. Squeeze lemon juice to cover chicken then put lemon halves, rosemary, thyme and 4 cloves of garlic into cavity. Rub chicken with butter, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Arrange remaining vegetables around chicken and brush with olive oil, season lightly with salt and pepper. When oven is hot, roast for 15-20 minutes, then bast chicken with pan juices. Reduce heat to 375F and continue to roast for about 45 minutes more, basting every 15-20 minutes until skin is crisp and golden. Remove from oven, cover with lid or foil for 10-15 minutes (while biscuits are cooking) and let rest before carving. When removing chicken, reheat oven to 450F. By the time you are ready to bake the biscuits, the oven will be at temperature. Black Powder Buttermilk BiscuitsThis is our all time favorite biscuit recipe! You must have two things to be successful here- a hot oven and cold dough. These are made and bake quickly, so get everything ready before you start. 3 Tbs cornmeal 2 1/2 Cups flour 1 1/2 Tsp salt 1/2 Tsp baking soda 1 Tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp course black pepper 1 Tsp sugar 1 stick (1/4 Lb) butter- cold- cut into 1/2″ chunks 1 Cup buttermilk or substitute 1 cup milk with 2 tsp lemon juice Adjust rack to middle position of oven, lightly oil cookie sheet or use a nonstick spray. Sprinkle 2 Tbsp over surface. It’s best to use a food processor for the next two steps, then lightly knead the dough by hand or in a stand mixer. It makes for better biscuits! Add flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, pepper and sugar in food processor bowl, pulse 5-7 times with cutting blade to mix. Next, add butter chunks and run until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. This can be done with 2 knives and some patience. Transfer to stand mixer bowl. Using low speed, fold mixture in while slowly pouring buttermilk over top. Mix well until dough is sticky and moistened through, with no dry patches. Turn dough onto lightly floured worktop, using floured hands to prevent dough from sticking. Using knife or bench scraper, cut dough in half and stack one piece on top of the other. Flatten with rolling pin, but don’t over do it. Repeat cut, flatten and stack for 3 more times. Add small amounts of flour necessary to keep everything from sticking. Dough will be very moist- as it should be. Transfer dough to cookie sheet. Roll to about 1 inch thick, then cut into squares about 2×2″. Sprinkle with remaining 1 Tbsp cornmeal. Bake until golden brown, about 12-15 minutes. Serve with the roasted chicken and enjoy! Today we are bringing you an article from a guest author that has a wonderful website full of delicious recipes that are all easy and tasty to make. Elizabeth Trementozzi Krause has kindly contributed this article on a very common yet misunderstood vegetable that has many uses in the kitchen. Please read, enjoy and let us know what you think! Transforming zucchini from a seed in your garden to a meal on your plate.We call it ‘zucchini’ here in the Americas, but where the British and French roam, it is known as ‘courgette.’ Technically, it is not a vegetable, but an immature fruit, as it is the swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower. Sounds pretty unappetizing, until you sauté it in a little butter or olive oil with garlic and onion. How to Grow In your gardening bed, make large, flat mounds of soil, spacing them about three feet apart. Into each mound, plant 3 or 4 seeds at least six inches from each other and water generously at least once a week. The idea behind all this spacing is that when the vines grow, they will need room to run; to really stretch out. Once the zucchini seeds have begun to grow, thin them down to only 2 or 3 per mound. Do not thin by pulling the plants by their roots as this can disturb nearby plants. Simply use a scissors and snip the unwanted plants at their base. You will know when your zucchinis are ready for harvesting when they approach 5 to 6 inches in length. Waiting until the zucchini are too large can result in a tougher outer skin. However, if you discover you missed a few zucchinis which are now overgrown, try using the insides of the plant for a nice zucchini soup. Keep in mind, if kept unchecked, zucchini will take over your garden. One recommended way to keep this from happening is to eat the large, female flowers on the ends as they blossom. Sure, you could eat them raw, but then you would miss out on a great Italian recipe for fried zucchini blossoms. Simply wash the blossoms gently and then stuff them with herbed ricotta cheese. Next, dredge the blossoms in an eggwash and breadcrumbs mixture. You can use Italian breadcrumbs, plain breadcrumbs or even your own if you are so inclined. Pan fry them in a sauce pan over medium-high heat and let drain on paper towels on a plate. You will end up with a wonderful easy appetizer that would stop Julia Child in her tracks. Some Italians are known to fry the blossoms without any stuffing, and just pan fry them with the egg and breadcrumbs mixture. Storing Food History Nearly every backyard garden includes zucchini – and it is no wonder why. These easy to grow vegetables (or immature fruits) provide a variety of culinary uses from simple appetizers and salads to the staple ingredient in a main meal. No matter how you choose to use them, these green vegetables will give you great eating pleasure throughout the summer months. This is a wonderful winter chowder, warming and hearty to chase away the cold winter blues. It uses readily available winter ingredients- potatoes, onions, garlic and carrots, along with some frozen corn. Homegrown frozen sweet corn will be the best, but a good quality frozen sweet corn will work. I use this as a starting base for experimentation and new directions. This is perfectly delicious, however, just as it is! Lobster, crab or shrimp makes this an excellent seafood chowder. Fresh sausage gives a completely new flavor, especially if it is spicy or smoked. Smoked pork works magic as well. Use your imagination and unique, local ingredients to shape this into a new regional specialty in your area! Corn and Potato Chowder Sea Salt, to taste 1 Stalk celery, chopped coarsley 1 Medium carrot, chopped coarsley 1 Sprig fresh parsley, can use dried 1 Bay leaf 5 Black peppercorns 1/4 Lb. salt pork, or smoked pork 3 Medium yellow onions, peeled and diced 3 Cloves garlic, peeled and minced 1 1/2 Lbs. unpeeled red potatoes, cut into 1/2″ cubes. 4 Cups corn kernels- (about 6 ears worth) 3 Cups half and half Cayenne pepper Freshly ground black pepper 1 Tbsp. Chicken base- Better Than Bouillon is a great brand 10 Cups water In a large, heavy stockpot (preferably cast iron) heat the water and mix chicken base. Once simmering, add celery, carrots, parsley, bay leaf and peppercorns. Cover and simmer over low heat for 1 1/2 hours, then increase heat to medium until stock is reduced to about 6 cups, about 10-15 minutes. If using seafood, cook in stock base now, only til just tender and remove for later. Cook salt pork or sausage in separate heavy pan over medium low heat until crisp, about 20 minutes. Remove, drain and slice. Add to stockpot. In same pan, saute onions and garlic until soft and browned. Add to stockpot along with potatoes and corn. Simmer on medium heat until potatoes are tender, about 10 minutes. Stir in half and half, cayenne and return to simmer. If using seafood, add now and heat through, about 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls and serve hot. Please let us know how you like it, and what adaptations you make! There is a lot of talk, writing and thought about self-sufficiency now, mainly due to the partial economic and industrial collapse that we’ve all watched in the past year or so. The thought of being dependent on no one else is appealing, at least in the short run. This is short term thinking, however, without the realization that humanity has not been completely self-sufficient for 15,000 years, if ever. We were, possibly, self-sufficient when we were hunter-gatherers, but not really even then, as groups of people would trade and help each other. The progression goes from dependence, to independence to interdependence. At one point we were interdependent with communities mostly supporting themselves, with some goods and services coming from outside. We have since regressed to dependence in just about everything- water in most cities, food, clothing, supplies for housing and just about any other goods we use. What, exactly, is produced in your town or city? This brings us to the present self-sufficiency dilemma. Here is an alternative- resiliency and resilience thinking. This takes into account the many variables that have been stumbling blocks for many- from industries down to family gardeners. For example, the home gardener that finds a few bugs and a disease have pretty much wiped out their tomatoes. They are surprised at this downturn, thinking it abnormal. In fact, you will be hard pressed to read anywhere that the diseases, pests and other challenges in gardening are anything other than something to be managed and minimized, as if they aren’t entirely normal events! Resilience thinking plans for these events in several ways, so that there is no surprise at loss, only at gain. What a radical concept! This is something that has been taught in several range management and natural resource management courses for a number of years now. This concept works extremely well in environments that have definite, finite limits and resources, similar to the home gardener and small grower. Resilience thinking acknowledges that ecological systems are very dynamic, experiencing storms, pests, diseases, flooding and droughts. These are not surprise events, but normal and natural over time. These are also not always on a global scale, but often very local patterns. The optimal growing conditions one year are sometimes completely different the next. This way of thinking is definitely not new, yet has been overlooked in the commercial production of food and goods where profit and continued growth are the main driving forces. Using diversity in our gardening to overcome the losses of one or more varieties is only one example. Bio-intensive gardening, companion planting and square foot gardening are more ways that adapt to the changing conditions while working to produce viable amounts of food. Building the health and abundance of the soil is one of the most critically important, as everything literally follows the health of the soil. It stands to reason- if the soil is full of minerals and nutrients available to the plants, supported by the active living communities in the different layers of the soil, then the plants will take up the full spectrum of nutrients and minerals to produce the best fruits and vegetables possible. If, on the other hand, there are no living communities due to chemical applications of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and there are only 8 to 10 minerals available, that is what the plant will take up. The results are easy to see- we all love the supermarket tomatoes, don’t we? Have you ever stopped and thought about why the common backyard, hybrid tomato tastes so good compared to the supermarket one? You have the answer now- the health of the soil they were grown in. Variety or diversity of species is one of the key elements in resilience thinking, by the simple expedient that the more types or varieties of a species there are, the more likely that a significant portion of the population will make it through whatever challenge appears, from pests to disease to weather. This is why there are so many different types of heirlooms, as each one offers different benefits to changing conditions. This gives you the ability to choose, instead of being forced to rely on a small number of varieties to perform in multiple growing conditions, as hybrids do. Having 6 or 7 types of tomatoes planted, interspersed with lettuce, carrots, garlic and nasturtiums will give you a much better chance of a good crop than a row of only 1 type of tomato with nothing else in the row. Not to mention all of the other produce that you will get, in addition to the tomatoes! This is a bonus on bonus situation. Even if there is a loss of a couple types of tomatoes from pests, disease or weather, there will be enough other production to provide a good harvest. No one goes hungry! This is also greatly applicable to the soil. If the soil has healthy communities of multiple organisms in many layers of the soil, there will be plenty of nutrients for both the soil dwellers and the plants, so everyone benefits. Diversity of the soil communities works the same way, the ability to respond positively to a change or challenge without major losses. Of course we benefit from the healthy plants and their production, so it is in our best interest to build and grow the soil, the garden and the plants to their most resilient stage that we can. We gain the benefits of longer, better harvests that are more tasty and nutritious, which increases our health and our resiliency to outside events. We are more easily able to support ourselves and our communities with fresh and healthy food. It has been cold here, much colder than in the past several years, so I’ve been making some great cold weather dinners. Onion soup is one of the classic cold weather dishes- rich and hearty in flavor and aroma. We bought a cazuela at The Spanish Table in Sante Fe this past September, and I love cooking with it. You can use it over a direct, but low, flame on the stove-top. This saves the time of soaking the clay pot, loading it with the ingredients, putting it into a cold oven and then turning it on. The warm up time of the oven greatly increases the cooking time, as the clay pot needs to come up to temperature slowly to avoid cracking. Not so with the new cazuela! It is glazed and has been high fired, so is ready for action. I’ve done several pots of slow cooked beans that are heavenly, as well as some other soups and stews. Today is about the onion soups, though… For several years now I have faithfully cooked the French Onion Soup recipe from the Le Cordon Bleu Home Collection cookbook, and as you would expect, the results are fabulous. It does take some time and preparation, but the results are wonderful. If you have any desire to learn even a small part of the French traditional cooking, and the techniques and reasons behind the techniques- get this cookbook! This time, I didn’t have quite all of the ingredients or the time or maybe the inclination to spend over an hour at the stove. So I started looking for a good but tasty alternative to the hallowed French Onion Soup. And found it in a Southwestern recipe from the Roaring Fork restaurant in Scottsdale, AZ. The premise of the restaurant is “Upscale Campfire Cooking”. In Scottsdale. The thing that I like is that most of the cooking is done in cast iron. Wonderful stuff, lasts forever and if seasoned correctly can cook anything. I tried it, with some modifications that I’ll share, along with the original recipe so you can make both and see for yourself which you like best. Both are great, with different flavors and different approaches. Here goes- French Onion Soup from Le Cordon Bleu Home Collection cookbook. 3 Tbs unsalted butter 1 small red onion, thinly sliced- Rossa de Milano is perfect here 3 white onions, thinly sliced 1 clove garlic, finely chopped 3 Tbs all purpose flour 3/4 cup white wine 6 cups brown stock- (I used Better Than Bouillon- beef flavor.) 1 bouquet garni- (Leek outer wrapper, bay leaf, sprig of thyme, celery leaves, few stems of fresh parsley tied together) 1 Tbs Sherry 12 thick slices French baguette 1 1/2 cups finely grated Gruyere cheese Melt the butter in a large heavy bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Add the onions and cook for about 20 minutes, stirring often, until caramelized and dark golden brown. This is the most important step, as the color of the onions at this stage will determine the color and the ultimate flavor of the final soup! Stir in the garlic and flour and cook, stirring constantly for 1-2 minutes. Add the white wine and stir the mixture until the flour has blended in smoothly. Bring to a boil slowly, stirring constantly. Whisk or briskly stir in the stock, add the bouquet garni and season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. simmer gently for 30 minutes, then skim the surface of any excess fat if necessary. Add the sherry to the soup and adjust seasonings to taste. To make the croutes, toast the French baguette slices until dry and golden on both sides. Ladle the soup into warm flame proof bowls and float a few croutes on top. Sprinkle the top of each bowl with Gruyere cheese, place under preheated broiler until cheese melts and turns golden brown. Serve immediately. Serves 6 as a first course. Double ingredients for main course. The first thing I would say is to use heirloom, locally grown onions and garlic, as the flavor will be exponentially better- fresher, deeper and with more dimension than onions and garlic that have been grown and shipped halfway across the country, having sat for who knows how long before you bought them. Don’t believe me? Please try it both ways, and let me know! You will be sold on the first bite of the local soup… If you haven’t ever tasted truly hand made from scratch French Onion Soup, you are in for a taste treat. It is heavenly on a cold winter’s evening with some fresh made bread and butter on the side, with a glass of wine. Very satisfying. Worth the time to make it. Shiner Bock Onion Soup from The Roaring Fork restaurant, Scottsdale AZ 3/4 cup chopped bacon- smoked is better, imparts a depth to the overall flavor 6 cups finely sliced yellow onions- Walla Walla or Sweet Spanish Utah are great 1 Tsp minced garlic- a robust flavor will stand up to the chiles and beer 1 Tbs finely chopped serrano chile- optional. I used 1 chopped Chipotle en Adobo chile; great flavor and smokieness 3 Tbs butter 1/4 cup flour 1 12 oz bottle of Shiner Bock or light microbrew ale 4 cups veal or chicken stock- again I use Better Than Boullion- chicken flavor Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste Pinch of cayenne pepper Cook the bacon until crisp in medium hot cast iron pot or heavy deep saucepan. Reduce heat to medium low, add onions, stir well and cover. Cook for 10-12 minutes then add garlic, chile and butter. Stir until onions begin to caramelize, about 10 minutes. Add flour, stir to thicken and do not allow to stick to bottom of pan/pot. Once flour has blended in, add beer and stir to completely mix in. Increase heat, slowly bring to a boil and add stock. Return to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer the soup for 5-10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper, simmering until the beer has smoothed out and incorporated with other flavors- about 10-15 minutes. Soup should just be starting to thicken. Add pinch of cayenne, stir in well. Ladle into warm soup bowls and serve immediately. The flavor of this is completely different, but incredibly delicious. It is easier to make and do something else in the kitchen, as you are not over the pot for most of the time. I used a Chipotle en adobo chile, chopped fine and added some extra adobo for the smoky flavor and it was a great addition. A smoked bacon adds a lot of flavor as well. I doubled the garlic, as it roasts in the onion mixture and mellows its flavor. Again, a locally grown garlic and onion will make all the difference in the world with both of these soups. I’m hesitant to experiment too much with the French Onion Soup, as it is an established classic, and also the flavor is so definite and distinct that to start to change it might result in something less than where we started. The Shiner Bock Onion Soup I will most definitely experiment with, as the flavor is wonderful, but almost begs to be taken in a new direction, as the flavor is bold and new. I could see adding some purple or fingerling potatoes to the mix at the point where the stock is added and brought back to a boil. The texture of the purple potatoes will thicken the soup, as they will cook into it quickly, while the flavor will add a completely new dimension. Fingerlings won’t cook into the soup nearly as much, but will add a nutty creaminess that I think would be amazing. The combination of bacon, onions and really flavorful potatoes would make this pretty much a one dish winter meal with some fresh hearty sourdough bread, butter and a dark beer. So there you have it, a trans continental journey with the simple ingredients of onions. The flavors are almost as distant from each other, yet perfectly wonderful in each separate way. Please try these and let me know what you think! |
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