Chicken and Veal Stew

I needed a meal for four. I had chicken for two, veal shanks for two, and absolutely no desire to go to the store. A look into the pantry revealed potatoes and carrots. I had what I needed for a stew!

The first step was to braise the veal shanks. A braise will be successful if the meat is dredged in seasoned flour, then browned before beginning the actual braise. There’s nothing fancy here, just some salt and freshly ground pepper in flour. Be sure to leave air around each piece while browning, even if you have to do it in stages, as in this case.

It isn’t strictly necessary to use aromatics, but I really like to melt some mirepoix to make an extra rich broth. I didn’t have celery, so I used carrots, onions, and red capsicum (bell pepper), better known as the Cajun trinity. I just cooked the trinity in some extra virgin olive oil until the onions were starting to look translucent.

You really need wine and stock for a good braise, although stock alone will work fine. I had some wild mushroom stock left over, and a goodly stock of dried wild mushrooms to make more. I put the shanks into the pan and added hot stock until it was about halfway up the shanks. This went into a 350°F/175°C oven, uncovered, for about three hours. After an hour or so, I turned the shanks over, and turned them back about two hours into cooking.

At this point I needed the oven to make bread, so I finished the stew on the stovetop. It would have worked just as well in the oven.

While the braise was working, I skinned two chicken leg quarters and visited the herb garden for rosemary, thyme, and parsley. The rosemary and thyme were wrapped in a scrap of cheesecloth and secured with a food-safe band–kitchen twine would have worked fine.

After the shanks had cooked to the point that the meat fell off the bone, I removed the veal bones and added the chicken quarters along with more stock and the now-reconstituted dried mushrooms used to make it, three cloves of garlic, and the herb packet.

I cooked this, covered, at a simmer until the chicken meat literally fell off the bones when I picked them up with tongs. At that point I added baby red potatoes, quartered yukon gold potatoes, and carrots. I continued cooking at a simmer until the potatoes were done.

Then I strained the liquid into another container and degreased it. Meanwhile the pot went back onto the stove with wine, which was reduced by one-half, then more stock, and finally the degreased juices from the braise and simmer. At this point I tasted the sauce, and added a bit of salt and pepper. Notice that this was the first and only seasoning, other than the small amount of salt and pepper in the flour used for dredging.

Cooking slowly for more than five hours extracted a lot of flavor from the veal and chicken bones, as well as from the meat. Wine has some sodium in it, and reducing the stock and juices concentrated the flavors. Thus, only a small bit of salt and pepper was needed. The parsley isn’t there just for looks. A bit of  minced parsley adds a subtle fresh note that really finishes a dish.

Turned out that I made too much. No one seemed to complain about having this stew two days running, and yes, it was better the second day!

Chicken Marsala

I had just finished breaking down a chicken for a photo session when I realized that it was time to eat. Fortunately, I had some chicken on the cutting board. A quick trip to the pantry for inspiration yielded sweet Marsala wine and veal demiglace. Sometimes you need to test recipes a lot to get them right. Other times you can just throw something together and it’s virtually perfect.

First, I prepped the chicken breasts. Bone-in and skin on is the juiciest way to prepare chicken breasts, but I’d deboned and removed the skin on the breasts for photos, so boneless, skinless chicken breasts seemed an excellent choice.  A quick rinse and pat dry with a paper towel, then salt and pepper (3 kinds) completed the prep.

I try never to start cooking without thinking things through and getting organized. While the chicken rested for a few minutes, I prepared my mise en place: slice some onion and crimini mushrooms; have a couple tablespoons of unsalted butter ready for the pan; pour a couple tablespoons of marsala into a prep bowl so I won’t be pouring alcohol from a bottle into a hot pan; make sure to have a tablespoon or so of demiglace ready. Okay, I’m set and I have a plan.

When I’m doing classes and demos, I hear lots of questions about food sticking to the pan. I rarely have that problem, and here’s why. First, I let the protein I’m cooking come to room temperature or as near to it as 30 minutes sitting out will do. Then I put some fat in the pan, usually olive oil, butter, or both. Then I preheat the pan–never preheat an empty pan, it can burn. The pan is ready when the oil shimmers or the butter foams. Only then do I put the protein into the pan.

Patience is a virtue when cooking. It’s really important to wait until the protein is ready before turning it. With most meats you’ll be able to see that the color has changed. Turn it once and let it finish. The small bits that cling to the pan are what makes sauces so flavorful.

When the chicken is almost done, lift it out and set it aside, covered. If you cover it, residual heat will finish the cooking. Add butter and maybe a bit of olive oil to the pan and sauté the mushrooms and onions. Be sure to add salt and pepper.

Push the mushrooms and onions to one side of the pan and deglaze with marsala. Be sure to keep your face back when pouring the wine into the hot pan just in case it ignites. Wine rarely ignites, but there’s really no point in taking the risk. Stir in the demiglace, mix everything nicely, and taste. It’s probably just fine, but taste it to make sure and adjust the seasoning, as necessary.

Plate the chicken, add a nice potato gratin and salad greens dressed with a simple balsamic vinaigrette, then spoon the marsala sauce over the chicken. And that’s how I paid the photographer. Thanks, Dad!

Technique: Breaking Down Poultry

Photos by Donald L. Mark

There was a time when every home cook knew how to break down whole poultry into parts, because they didn’t have a choice. Then we learned to pay exorbitant amounts of money for other people to do it for us. Well that’s just silly. It only takes a small amount of instruction and one chicken to learn how to break down poultry, and you get to eat the chicken because YOU CAN’T FAIL.

Whole chickens are usually less expensive than their parts. The day I bought this one it was 99 cents per pound, wings were $1.29 per pound, legs and thighs were $2.39, and boneless skinless breasts were $3.29. If I had purchased just the two breast halves I would have spent about six dollars, but instead I bought the whole chicken for $4.27. You can get a quart of good chicken stock and four entrée portions from one chicken. That’s about a dollar a serving plus a few cents for chicken stock.

Okay, so what do you need to break down a chicken? A cutting board, a knife, a plate for the parts, and some paper towels. I use a boning knife because I happen to have one, but any sharp knife you’re comfortable with will work.

Start by rinsing the chicken in cold tap water, cleaning out the inner cavity where you’ll find the neck, gizzard, liver, and heart, and patting it dry with paper towels. Save everything except the liver for chicken stock. Use the liver for paté, a quick snack, or pet food.

Lay the chicken on its back on the cutting board. Pull the leg and thigh away from the body and make an incision in the skin to give yourself room to work.

Feel around to locate the joint between the hip and the thigh, then snap the thigh downward to pop it out.

Using the tip of your knife, remove the leg quarter from the body.

Now, feel along the breast centerline with your fingers and locate the breast bone. Using the tip of your knife, make an incision along one side, keeping the tip of the blade against the bone and cartilage.

Carefully scrape the tip of your knife along the rib cage while pulling outward on the meat to separate the breast from the bones.

Cut along the wishbone, then pull the breast away from the rib cage, scraping the meat away from the rib cage as necessary, then cut it free.

If you wish, remove the wing by first dislocating the joint, then cutting through the cartilage. Note how I’ve curled my fingers to keep them away from the knife. I want to cut the bird, not myself!

Repeat these steps on the other side, and you’re done. It’s just that easy, and since all poultry are constructed the same, the instructions work just as well on duck, goose, turkey, or any other edible poultry. Makes you wonder why you paid so much more for those parts than you did for the whole bird.

Capellini with Chicken and Mushrooms

Capellini with Chicken and Mushrooms

Remember that roasted chicken? Well, half of it was still sitting in the refrigerator at lunch time! I removed the breast and cut it into chunks. Then I sliced up a couple of large crimini mushrooms. Meanwhile, a pot of salted water went onto the stove, and when it reached a boil, I tossed in some capellini.

I sautéed the mushrooms with some butter, olive oil, and minced garlic until the mushrooms were nicely colored, then deglazed the pan with about a tablespoon of chardonnay. I added the chicken and cooked until the mushrooms were done and the chicken was warmed. Then I added about a quarter of a cup of crème fraîche and reduced until the sauce was nicely thickened.

By then, the pasta was ready, so I drained it and tossed it with the chicken and mushroom sauce. A bit of minced parsely finished the dish.

So far, that chicken has produced dinner for two and lunch for two, and there’s still a leg quarter and the rest of the carcass remaining.

Roast Chicken

Roast Chicken

I bought a whole chicken on sale. It was rather late in the day and I didn’t feel like doing anything difficult, so I decided to roast it.

Roasting a chicken is really easy. You’ll need a roasting pan and rack, or a nice grill pan, which is what I used. Start by rinsing the chicken, then drying it thoroughly, inside and out, with a paper towel. Let the chicken air dry while the oven is warming to 425º. Once the oven is ready, put the chicken in for 20 minutes, the reduce the heat to 400º. Roast it about another 40 minutes, until the temperature of the thigh meat reaches 175º.

While the oven was warming, I made a compound butter to put under the skin. A compound butter is butter mixed with seasonings, in this case minced garlic and a few herbs. I gently pushed the compound butter under the breast skin and massaged it into the breast meat to add flavor and moistness. I also crushed three cloves of garlic, rubbed the interior cavity of the chicken with the garlic and some salt, and then left the garlic in the cavity to add more flavor. Some fruit or herbs would have worked just as well.

I wanted a sauce with the chicken, so I sautéed the neck, heart(s) and gizzard with about one-half tablespoon each butter and olive oil, plus about one-quarter onion, minced. Once that was nicely browned, I deglazed the pan with about two tablespoons of chardonnay and added a cup of water. I then simmered until the liquid reduced to about half a cup. I strained and reserved the liquid.

The pan went back onto the stove with about two tablespoons each of butter and olive oil, in which I sautéed some sliced mushrooms. When they gave up their moisture I added some leftover caramelized onions, the reserved liquid, and about half a cup of red wine, and cooked until the liquid was reduced in half. I then added about a quarter cup of crème fraîche and simmered until the liquid was once again reduced to about a half cup.

A side salad, plus bow tie pasta dressed with extra virgin olive oil, a chiffonade of basil, and freshly cracked black pepper completed the meal for two. Total time was about 90 minutes, including waiting. Half the chicken remains to be used for something else.