Skip to main content

A whole chicken, part 4

Our next step on the chicken expedition is the legs. I wanted to get a little fancy with it tonight, though, so I tried out a few new ideas.
See Part 1
See Part 2
See Part 3

My first new idea was removing the meat from the bones. I really didn't want to eat with my hands, so the bones had to go. It took a little longer than I would have liked, mainly because my knife wasn't sharp enough (guess who's sharpening knives this week...). As I've mentioned before, I don't like wasting, so the bones got used for broth (more on that later). 
My second idea was to make a roasted veggie sauce. I thinly sliced some onion and carrot, crushed a garlic clove, chopped a kale stem, and tossed on a chicken leg bone. I poured some extra virgin olive oil over it, seasoned with some salt (on everything) and pepper (on the veggies), then threw the pan into the oven at 350 for about 12 minutes or so. The veggies went into the food processor; the bone went into a pot of water, which I heated to a boil then reduced to a simmer while I started cooking the chicken.
I seasoned the meat with salt, pepper, and celery flakes and pan fried it in a tablespoon of butter and a drizzle of olive oil. I started it skin side down and let it cook until that skin got a bit browned and crisped up. I added a clove of slivered garlic, gave the chicken a flip, let it finish cooking, then tossed it onto a plate and covered it with foil to keep it all warm. Simple, how I do.
Once the chicken was removed, I deglazed with some white wine and dumped in some slivered garlic and let that start frying. Once the edges started to turn brown, I added in some chopped radicchio and wood ear mushrooms and let them cook down for a few minutes before I dumped in the kale leaf.
Once the chicken broth had cooked down a bit (I kept tasting it over time until it hit the strength of flavor I was wanting). I had added a bit of salt, too. With broth, I just keep tasting, adjusting, and keeping an eye on it. I promise I'll be doing a broth post soon. Anyway, I added the broth into the food processor with the roasted veggies and blended it all together. I was hoping for a sauce; I got a chicken veggie soup instead: imagine if Campbell's chicken and veggie soup tasted fresh. So, for plating, I put down a bed of the veggie blend, set a (boneless) chicken leg on top, and ladled a bit of soup onto the plate. Eating it all together was a bit of a dream.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

I don't understand food

Part 1 the morning after, while eating a sausage, egg, and cheese everything bagel from Bergen Bagels Last night, I had the pleasure, privilege, and audacity to eat at a Brooklyn restaurant named Aska . I know it's cliche to refer to a fancy restaurant meal as a life-changing experience, but this was straight up paradigm-shattering. I've written before about food being a medium of communication, about how I strive to reduce food waste as much as I can, about sharing our cultures and stories with each other through the meals we create, but seeing how Chef Fredrik Berselius is able to do this at such an intricate, elegant, and elevated level is both humbling and inspiring. The experience started before the first bite. I walked into the 10 table restaurant, and they knew me by name. I was shown to my table (right in the middle of the place, looking directly into the open kitchen), and they even pulled my chair out for me and pushed it up under me. I was a little uncomfortable with...

The hibiscus flower has bloomed, day 3

Now y'all know I love to experiment, and I generally go into my experiments with a plan, an experimental design, if you will. But after playing for a few days with squid and not royally fucking anything up, I was feeling a little restless, so I decided to just say "yes" to whatever popped into my head. Dry fried ginger, pattypan squash, and red onion? Sure, that sounds like a good combo. Purple sweet potato, shishitos, and sweet onion dry fried? Why not? What if I dump some some butter into that ginger/squash/red onion pan? I bet that will taste good. How about I dust some chopped squid with salt and oat flour and squirt it with some fresh lemon juice? I'm sure that will be fine. And I bet what will be even better will be tossing that squid into the ginger pan. That's when I remembered how much I loved that squid that was cooked low and slow. Unfortunately, I was out of white wine, so I looked in my fridge and saw some high pulp Simply Orange orange juice. I poure...

Why not give a shit?

About a month ago, I cooked up a big pot of a miso vegan stew. It was a Sunday evening, so I knew I needed to cook enough for Sunday night dinner and Monday's lunch. A vendor was taking us out for dinner on Monday, so I needed enough to cover Tuesday's lunch, too. I had plans with a friend on Tuesday night, so I wouldn't have time to cook, so I needed enough for Tuesday dinner and Wednesday lunch, too, so I said, and I quote, "Fuck it. I'll just cook enough for the week." Unfortunately, as I packed away my leftovers that night, I realized that I cooked enough for a week and a half. Normally, that wouldn't be a huge issue, except that I was leaving town Friday morning and wouldn't be back until Monday evening and did not have room in my freezer to store more than a bowl. Luckily, I was able to pawn a few bowls off on coworkers, so it all worked out alright. However, when I told this story to someone close to me, they said I should think about donating t...