Happy New Year! I’m afraid all the holiday hoopla led me to neglect my little blog for a couple weeks. It’s too bad, because a lot of mighty fine eating went on around here. Not to worry, though. I saved some recipes for you, which I’ll trot out over the next few weeks.

In response to holiday butter overload, I decided to make a New Year’s Eve dinner that involved no milk fat. I am here to report that no flavor was sacrificed. In fact, the lemongrass chicken with ginger-lime dipping sauce was all the fireworks I needed to declare an auspicious beginning to 2010.

I was concerned that using so much lemongrass would result in a splintery, crunchy texture, like eating roasted bamboo. But I chopped the lemon grass very finely, and by the time it marinated all day then cooked for an hour, my worries proved unwarranted. The lemongrass just added fabulous flavor and a light note of crispness to the perfectly browned chicken skin.

The lemongrass was tantalizing, but the ginger-lime dipping sauce was the real star of the show.  It’s hot, sweet, salty, tangy and irresistible. I plan to make it again ASAP. I think I’ll marinate shrimp in it, then grill and dip. There’s almost nothing I would not happily dip in this sauce. It would make a fabulous dressing for a salad with grilled beef. The possibilities are endless. Make a double recipe of the sauce. You’ll thank me.

I served this chicken with coconut rice and stir fried broccoli with garlic and chili flakes. Sadly, I only managed to take the one uninspired picture. We had a houseful of hungry people ready to eat, and I didn’t have time for pictures.

This recipe was inspired by one in 101 Delicious Chicken Recipes, from the Best of Fine Cooking series. Their recipe is for roasting a whole chicken. I used thighs and drumsticks. I also added some liquid to the pan for a sort “broasting” effect (crispy on top like roast chicken, moist on the bottom like braised chicken.) It worked out perfectly. This is a fantastic dinner-party dish. The bulk of the time goes into the marinade, which is made well in advance, and the chicken doesn’t need much attention while it cooks.

LEMONGRASS ROAST CHICKEN – serves four

½ cup finely chopped lemongrass (3 or 4 stalks)
2 tablespoons finely chopped shallots
1 tablespoon chopped garlic
4 ½ teaspoons fish sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon dried red chili flakes
1 ½ teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons sugar
4 pounds chicken thighs and drumsticks with skin and bone
½ cup chicken stock
¼ cup lime juice
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

In a large non-reactive bowl, combine all but two tablespoons of the lemongrass with the shallots, garlic, fish sauce, soy sauce, chili flakes, salt, and sugar. Add chicken and toss to coat. Marinate from six to 24 hours, stirring two or three times. Bring chicken to room temperature for an hour before cooking it.

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Mix chicken stock and lime juice in a small bowl.

Place chicken in a single layer in an oven-proof skillet or baking dish, skin side up. Pour and scrape the marinade from the bowl onto the chicken. Add the chicken stock and lime juice mixture to create a shallow layer of liquid around the chicken.

Roast chicken for 45 minutes, basting once or twice with pan juices. Meanwhile, mix the last two tablespoons of lemongrass with the cilantro and oil.

After 45 minutes, remove chicken from oven and spread each piece with some of the cilantro mixture. Return chicken to oven and roast for 10 more minutes.

Remove chicken from pan and serve with ginger-lime dipping sauce.

GINGER-LIME DIPPING SAUCE – makes 2/3 cup

2 cloves garlic
2 Thai bird chiles (I substituted about one tablespoon of diced jalapeno without seeds.)
1 teaspoon of chili-garlic sauce (available in the Asian section of most groceries)
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh ginger
3 tablespoons fish sauce (also available in the Asian section of most groceries)
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
¼ cup water
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons sugar

Chop garlic, chiles, and ginger finely (or mash them to a paste with a mortar and pestle). Place the chopped or mashed ingredients in a small bowl.

Add chili-garlic sauce, fish sauce, lime juice, water, and sugar. Stir to blend. Let sit for at least 10 minutes before serving.

Do you like sesame noodles? Are you tempted to lick the falafel sandwich dressing right off your fingers? Yes? Then this is a recipe for you. Sesame rules the roost here. It’s deep, subtle, and toasty. Sesame is the perfect companion for roast chicken, which boasts a toasty subtlety all its own. The meat stays lusciously moist, since it cooks right in the marinade. At the same time, the skin turns a lovely, crispy, burnished brown. The green onions are meltingly delicious after an hour of stewing in the sauce. And the pan sauce…well if it weren’t for my pesky pride, I would tuck right into a big bowl of  it. Since I still retain a teensy little bit of decorum, I’m forced to settle for savoring the sauce-drenched rice in slow, deliberate mouthfuls. This one is a keeper.

I shy away from recipes with long ingredient lists. I like to be able to taste each ingredient, which is hard when there are 243 of them. I make an exception here, because I typically have all these ingredients on hand. And in spite of their numbers, they come together in a unified marinade with its own heft and personality. Besides, this recipe is blessedly simple to make. Chop, stir, and pour. Then, hours later, or even the next day, just pop it in the oven. If the stock market offered this kind of return on investment, I’d be retired by now.

Triple Sesame Ginger Chicken helped redeem me for overlooking my husband’s birthday until the day was nearly over. Luckily, he’s as pitiful as I am when it comes to remembering special dates. It’s best to have more than one date-forgetter in a marriage. Unless you’re armed with sesame chicken, in which case you may just be forgiven. If you’re only halfway out of the doghouse on day one, this chicken makes delectable leftovers on day two.

I adapted this recipe from a book I picked up at an airport newsstand years ago. It looks and feels like a magazine, but I guess it’s technically a book. It’s called 101 Delicious Chicken Recipes, from the Best of Fine Cooking series.  It’s got plenty of intriguing recipes, a flimsy magazine binding, gorgeous pictures, and all sorts of helpful pointers on cooking with chicken.

P.S. The picture above doesn’t include the magnificent sauce. Sorry for that little oversight.  It’s a lot to juggle: the food, the hunger, the family, the camera. Oh, and there’s no law that says you have to use thighs for this recipe. You could mix it up with some other chicken parts. I’m just partial to thighs. On chickens, that is.

TRIPLE SESAME GINGER CHICKEN
serves four

1 teaspoon kosher salt
5 large cloves of garlic, minced
3 tablespoons finely chopped fresh ginger
1/3 cup sesame tahini
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup sherry
1/3 cup honey
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
2 teaspoons Tabasco or other hot sauce
8 chicken thighs, with skin and bone (about three pounds)
1 bunch scallions (reserve one for garnish), white and light green parts, cut into one-inch pieces
1 teaspoon sesame seeds

Mix first ten ingredients in a medium bowl. Stir well to blend.

Poke three or four slits in each piece of chicken with a sharp knife. I usually cut off big loose flaps of skin with kitchen shears, to reduce the fat factor a bit. Your call.

Place chicken thighs in a 9×13 baking dish. Pour marinade over and flip the chicken pieces to coat.

Cover dish with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 6 to 24 hours, turning chicken a few times.

Remove chicken one hour before roasting, to bring to room temperature. Turn the pieces skin-side up. Tuck scallion pieces under and around the thighs.

Heat oven to 400 degrees.

Roast chicken uncovered for one hour. Baste with pan juices a couple times in the second thirty minutes.

Remove chicken from pan and tent with foil. Pour pan juices into a bowl or a gravy separator. Skim fat off pan juices.

Serve chicken on cooked basmati rice. Pour some of the pan sauce over, sprinkle with sesame seeds and chopped scallion.

This one goes out to everyone who ever brought food when the chips were down. I may have forgotten to write a note, given everything. I’m sure you were busy. It took forethought. You had to find that recipe, get groceries, and cook. Then you had to transport it all, which can be messy. You probably wondered if you’d ever get your Tupperware back. It was good of you.

Years ago, when my mother was dying, people brought food. There were casseroles and brownies, homegrown tomatoes and pots of soup. I was mystified. Did they really think we could eat, at a time like that? Well, yes. They knew we could. Everyone eventually does, inconceivable as it seems. I felt like a traitor, eating while my irrepressible mother was slipping away. But she would’ve rolled her eyes at that sentiment, and reminded me that life is hard enough without my efforts to make it harder.

Years later, my husband and I welcomed a son. Dinner came to our doorstep every night for weeks, courtesy of friends and neighbors. I wept with thankfulness. I wept a lot in those days, but that’s another story. I can still taste those meals, seasoned as they were with naked gratitude. I missed my Mom. I needed help. And help arrived, wrapped in tinfoil and kindness.

Birth and death are demanding. They just swoop right and in and put their feet up, blithely flicking away the orderly unfolding of our days. We are tender and tired as we attend our loved ones at the beginning and the end. We sing and stroke. We wash and feed. The clock ceases to provide useful information. These are the rhythms of lives, not days. In the midst of these marathons of nurture, gifts of food stand in simple relief. Meals arrive like little missives from the world where the clock still applies, like souvenirs of simpler times. It’s hard to remember simpler times when you’re in the thick of life’s seismic upheavals. Food gives strength, and comfort.

A family friend dropped this soup by for me and my stepfather when my mom was sick. We were dazed by the unfolding loss. My memories of that time are foggy, but I recall thinking this soup was the most delicious thing I ever tasted.  I wouldn’t have thought it possible to even notice a bowl of soup just then, never mind enjoy it. But I savored every bite. It served to remind me that a world outside of sorrow still existed. Life would be there, with all its flavors and delights, when the time came to gather up the fragments of my broken heart and look forward again.

To this day, the complicated interplay of flavors in Tom Kha Gai puts me in mind of nurture, solace, and motherhood. When I know someone with a new baby, or an illness, or a death in the family, this is the dish I most often bring. I pass it on with thanks, for all the grace and sustenance.

I get a lot of requests for this recipe, which is the true measure of any dish’s popularity, if you ask me. This soup somehow manages to be feisty and harmonious at the same time. It’s interesting enough to impress foodie types, but simple and comforting enough to appeal to less adventurous eaters. (You might need to explain to the aforementioned “less adventurous eaters” that the big stalks of lemongrass and discs of ginger floating around in the soup aren’t meant to be eaten. They’re just adding flavor.) Sometimes I throw in cooked basmati rice at the end. That may be some kind of Thai-food no-no, but I find chicken and rice a soothing combination.

THAI CHICKEN AND COCONUT SOUP (TOM KHA GAI)
makes four generous servings

1 stalk lemongrass (Available at most grocery stores these days.)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium onion, diced small
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon Thai red curry paste (Also available at most groceries.)
6 quarter-inch wide slices fresh ginger
3 kaffir lime leaves (Not available at most groceries. I usually substitute ½ teaspoon grated lime peel.)
4 cups chicken stock
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, sliced with the grain into quarter-inch wide strips.
2 cups shitake mushrooms, stemmed, caps quartered
1 14-ounce can coconut milk (Don’t use low-fat. Trust me. I tried it.)
Juice of two limes (about five tablespoons)
2 tablespoons nam pla (AKA fish sauce, also available in most groceries these days.)
3 green onions, trimmed and sliced into ¼ inch pieces
¼ cup chopped fresh cilantro

Trim lemongrass, cut into three pieces about four inches long. Whack the pieces with the flat side of your knife blade to crush slightly.

Heat oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat.

Saute onion and garlic for about two minutes.

Add lemongrass, curry paste, ginger discs, and lime leaf (or peel). Cook, stirring, for three minutes.

Add stock. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes.

Add coconut milk, chopped chicken and quartered mushroom caps. Cook five minutes, or until chicken is just cooked through.

Add lime juice and nam pla. Taste for balance between nam pla and lime. If one flavor is dominating too much, add a little of the other.

Garnish with green onion and cilantro.

Saltimbocca. It translates to “jumps in the mouth.” That’s a pretty high bar when you’re talking about a boneless, skinless chicken breast, which is sort of the Wonder Bread of the poultry world. But Saltimbocca takes the humble chicken breast to new heights. The blend of flavors here hits every note. Sage is earthy and fragrant. Marsala wine is complex and fruity. And Prosciutto, well, cured pork is just the world’s greatest innovation. The whole get-up flatters chicken to perfection.

 If you don’t have any Marsala, run out and buy some. You’ll find it on the shelf beside the sherry and port.  I’m usually the queen of substitutions, but I recommend against using other kinds of wine here. I’m sure it would taste fine, but it wouldn’t taste like this. And THIS is worth tasting. Marsala really makes this dish. It’s worth having a bottle. I’ve used dry and sweet Marsala in this recipe, and they both have their charms. Even if you don’t drink it, you’ll need some on hand when Chicken Saltimbocca goes into your regular dinner rotation.

This dish takes just a few minutes and one pan. The best part is hammering the chicken flat. Then you just dredge, brown, top with prosciutto and sage, and simmer briefly in wine. And voila! You’ll feel mighty pleased with yourself when those flavors not only jump, they shimmy and twist. It’s easy to cook the chicken breasts to juicy perfection, since you’ve hammered them into uniformly thick submission. The golden brown crust and rich wine sauce will give you a whole new appreciation for the moist and tender chicken breast. It’s heaven on mashed potatoes.

This recipe was adapted from one in Cuisine Rapide, by Pierre Franey. If you want to keep things simple and still eat well, have a look at this book. It’s been around for over twenty years, and it’s stood the test of time. Oh, and the Brussels sprouts in this picture may not look like much, but they are a divine revelation, deserving of their very own post. More on that later.

CHICKEN BREASTS SALTIMBOCCA
serves two

2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (about ¾ pound)
kosher salt and fresh ground pepper
½ cup flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 thin slices of prosciutto
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage, or 1 teaspoon dry
½ cup marsala wine

Place a breast half between two plastic bags and pound with a mallet until it is a uniform ½ inch thick. Repeat with second breast. (For ten years or so I did this with a hammer. I finally splurged four dollars on a meat mallet. It works better.)

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium high heat.

Season meat with salt and pepper. Dredge lightly in flour. Shake off excess flour.

Add chicken to oiled pan in a single layer.  Cook for about two minutes, until the bottoms are golden brown. Turn the chicken and cook another two minutes until the second side is nicely browned. Remove chicken to a plate.

Lay the prosciutto slices in the hot pan, saute until they start to brown (about 20 seconds). Place the prosciutto slices on top of the chicken breasts. Melt butter in the same pan, and return the prosciutto-topped chicken to the pan.

Sprinkle sage over chicken. Pour marsala into pan. Reduce heat to medium. Cover and cook for two to three minutes, until the chicken is just cooked through.

It was cool and rainy yesterday, when I decided I’d make chicken pozole today. I pictured cold rain slapping the roof, and a steamy kitchen, redolent with the soothing smell of garlic, chiles, and chicken. I didn’t consult the forecast. The steamy and redolent kitchen part was accurate, but it’s sunny and 85 degrees today. A crunchy salad and an iced drink would suffice. But never mind. Once the idea of chicken pozole got a hold of me, it didn’t loosen its grip just because the weather didn’t follow the script.

Pozole traditionally stars pork, not chicken. I think the authentic variety involves scary pig parts I don’t typically have on hand. I’m not sure. I’m not picky about authenticity. No sense getting inhibited by accuracy, right? Cooking is an art, not a science. At least, that’s whay I tell myself, because it makes my imprecision sound kind of virtuous.

The garnishes are key here. Offer lots. Pile them on. Cabbage and radishes bring crunch and zing. Avocado adds silky richness. The cilantro chimes in with some funk, and the lime shines a little light on the whole shebang. It’s actually a darn good salad in its own right, lively with textures and taste. But this stew and its toppings are the yin and the yang. They need each other. They love each other. It would be wrong to keep them apart.

Now or later, hot day or cold, you should try this pozole. There’s some chopping and shredding, yes. But go on. It won’t take long. You’ll understand when that first spoonful unfolds its flavors. The heat is balanced by the earthy depth of hominy and toasted pumpkin seeds.  The stew lends a sturdy backdrop to the crisp garnishes. It would make great medicine for a friend with a cold. It offers all the salty comfort of chicken soup, along with a serious dose of flavor to keep things interesting. It seems made to order for a chilly gray day. I’ll have to get back to you on that. For now I can attest that it brought some extra sizzle to this already hot and sunny day.

P.S. You can feed this to people who don’t eat gluten, or eggs, or dairy, or soy. I did. I was kind of proud of myself for coming up with a recipe that met all those requirements. Little did I realize it would it would be so tasty I would feel compelled to shout it from the cyber-rooftops.

GREEN POZOLE WITH CHICKEN – adapted from this recipe in Gourmet magazine
makes four hearty servings

1/3 cup roasted, salted pumpkin seeds
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium white onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 ½ jalapenos, seeded and chopped
2 teaspoons salt
1 pound tomatillos, husked and chopped (If you don’t have fresh, you can buy canned in the Mexican food section of many grocery stores.)
¾ cup fresh cilantro leaves
1 teaspoon dried oregano
3 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
2 15-ounce cans white hominy, rinsed and drained

Grind pumpkin seeds finely in food processor or spice grinder. Set aside.

In a large stock pot over medium-high heat, heat three tablespoons of oil. Sauté onion, garlic, and jalapenos until soft, three to five minutes.

Puree the sautéed vegetables, salt, oregano, tomatillos, and cilantro in food processor. Return the puree to the stock pot.

Cook on medium heat, stirring frequently, until thickened, about ten minutes.

Add chicken broth and raw chicken. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a low simmer. After 15 minutes, remove the chicken pieces using tongs and place them in a bowl. When it’s cool enough to handle, shred the chicken meat, discarding any big blobs of fat or gristle you wouldn’t want to find in your mouth.

Add hominy and ground pumpkin seeds to the pot. Add the shredded chicken and its accumulated juices. Simmer on low heat for about 20 more minutes.

Serve with shredded cabbage, chopped radish, diced avocado, chopped cilantro, lime wedges, and whatever else your heart desires.