Toast

Dinner for C Part III: Chicken Nannymama

In my family we used to call this dish "Chicken T___" in honor of the now under-new-management and no good- anymore T____ Restaurant where we first ate it and approriated it- though we ultimately changed it pretty much beyond recognition. Hence "Nannymama", for my mother who changed it first, and for me, who changed it even more. Nobody has ever called it by this name before today, and probably no one ever will again. I'm just having a fit of silliness.

T______ was one of those "Continental Cuisine" type places, run as a family business, which could be fancy or fairly casual, depending on the occasion. There was not the slightest dot of trendiness about it, the decor was a reassuringly stuffy combination of red velvet mediterranean and movie theater modern. They were especially nice to you, and made special things for you, if they knew you and you went often. The food was very good and my parents, aunts and uncles went there alot. We had my parents 40th wedding anniversary party there.

The chicken never formerly known as Nannymama was on the regular menu, and my father liked it , and ordered it often, so my mother figured out how to make it. Its essense involves crustiness, garlicky, peppery herbiness, and defatted juices to dunk your good bread in. It is very easy to make, includes potatos, and is forgiving as to time if you keep a watch on it; so it is a particularly good party dish. Here it is in its present incarnation:

If you would like to make this you will need to put the following items in a big roasting pan, which you have oiled, and preheat your oven to 325 while you are at it:

your favorite collection of chicken parts, suitable number for guests expected, the better the chicken, as you know, the better the result

red onions, peeled and cut into wedges, or mix red and white onions

numerous fingerling potatoes, here of various hues, or else wedges of full sized yukon golds and redskins, mixed, do not peel

cloves of garlic, many to taste, coarsely chopped, do not peel

a preserved lemon or two, chopped (if you do not have this, you may substitute a plain lemon, it will be almost as good)

Several branches of one of the following fresh herbs- rosemary, marjoram, oregano (If you need to use a dried herb, go with the rosemary, scattered) Save a branch or two of the fresh herb to decorate your platter. This dish works best with just one strong herb presence.

coarsely ground black pepper- be generous

Sea salt to taste. Be a little cautious if you used alot of preserved lemon

2 tbsps good olive oil

Toss this all around, then spread it out in the pan. spray it all over with olive oil spray lightly- this helps insure crusty browning across the board.

I generally cook it for about two hours at 325, then crank it up high at the end unless it is very brown and crispy. If it gets crispy early, just turn it way down, it can keep on cooking for some time. If it is summer,, you won't be cooking this unless you have air conditioning to pit against the stove. I have successfully cooked this at higher temps for a shorter time, it is quite flexible. If your chicken is fatty, you may actually want to remove some developing pan fat with a baster. It is good to baste this, and push the bits around from time to time. The potatoes and chicken both develop an interior creaminess that is really nice. Also, as an added bonus, your home will smell pretty intoxicating.

So plate it up, and scrape up all the crusty bits, and scatter them on top. Garnish with your branches. Deglaze the pan with some stock, wine, and/or lemon juice. Cook it down a little, then strain it into one of those fat separator things. Pour the juices out from under the fat, into a pitcher, and serve on the side.

At C's dinner, we had this with plain lovely spinach, straight from the farmbox, steamed. You could have it with a tian of swiss chard, like I had for dinner this evening (from this week's farm box, as pictured here. I did not take a photo of the plain spinach, but I did eat quite a bit of it.). We also had a big farmbox salad, and crusty bread to mop up juices.

Swiss chard is a relative of the beet, which may explain why this ruby chard dish looks like some sort of raspberry crumble.

Farm Box IV: Friends to the Beet

I  won't try to convince those who loathe beets that they are really excellent. This is not a matter of "all the more for me." Later in the season, when the farm box contains what can only be described as "too many beets," I will be wishing there were more people I could serve them to. It's just that it doesn't work; they won't try them.

These are various things which I have found go particularly well with beets. When I got my first little bunch of small reds and their nice greens in this week's farm basket, I made a salad of some of these companionable foods.  It was a satisfying lunch with some sesame flat breads. An equally good salad can be made with any combination of them you like. They are:

ground sumac- the seasoning you find on the lebanese salad Fatoosh, it is bright red and has a lemony pucker

toasted walnuts- just startlingly good with beets

fresh marjoram

goat cheese

feta

gorgonzola

purslane- you can see a sprig on top in the picture. This is cultivated some nowadays, but you may recognize the roadside weed. Needless to say, most roadsides are subject to all sorts of chemical and other contamanents, so it would probably be inadvisable to forage for them, except in weedier portions of your own garden

olive oil

lemon juice

walnut oil

their own greens, steamed

fancy salts- show off well on beets

freshly ground pepper

boiled new potatos-whole with skins if tiny, otherwise skinned and cubed

chopped scallions

chives

chopped or thinly sliced red onion

boiled eggs- in wedges or pushed through a sieve

toasted sesame seeds

fennel fronds

belgian endive

little oil-cure nicoise-type olives

While you would not use the whole lot at once, they all go well with each other, too, so they can be mixed and matched. You can scrub your beets and cut off the greens. Then put both in a pasta pot filled with lots of boiling salted water. It is a simple matter to pluck out the greens with tongs, as soon as they go limp, leaving the beets themselves simmering. My little beets took about 25 minutes to cook (check to see if a knife point will slide in easily). Drain, skin, and cut in little cubes. If they are really small, they are nice whole, or halved. Combine them with your chosen goodies, and arrange on your plate.

Actually, quite a few other things go well with beets, including oranges, sour cream, yogurt, dill, and mint. While these compliment the beets, they do not necessarily go so well with all the interchangeble salad elements listed.

It is a good idea to arrange, rather than toss, the elements of your beet salad, so that the non-beet items can retain some of their own color. These salads are particularly pretty made with a combination of red beets and the delicious golden beets I hope to see in my farm box later this year. In addition to being being tasty and decorative, golden beets have one advantage over the familiar reds: They do not dye everything associated with them (mentionable and otherwise) shockingly pink. This feature adds versatility.

Farm Box III: Eggs Florentine

I considered giving this dish its full French title. Sadly, as I do not speak any French whatsoever, I cannot help mentally pronouncing it, "Oafs Florentine." Although very simple, it is more elegant than that, I feel. This is another supper or lunch sort of dish, and is pleasant eaten with a green salad and some toast- either some oniony nan as pictured, or thin, buttered toast triangles. A glass of some white would not be amiss.

This supper uses the first baby spinach of the year, which appeared in my farmbox this week. As expected, the box ran pretty much exclusively to greens again. There were, however, also radishes and herbs. I am thinking what to do with the kale as I write this.

Serves one:
Bag of baby spinach, washed to within an inch of its life
3 Tsp butter
nutmeg (despite appearances, this is not the only spice on my shelf)
salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 fresh eggs
1/4 cup cream
chopped chives
1 Tsbp grated cheese of choice

Preheat oven to 450. Butter a small ovenproof bowl. Cook spinach in its own water until it wilts down.
Drain, squeeze and chop. Heat 2 tsps butter in a small saucepan, and toss the spinach in it. Season with salt, nutmeg and pepper.

Line the ovenproof bowl with the spinach, and gently break 2 eggs over it. Pour the cream carefully over the eggs. Sprinkle with cheese and dot with remaining butter. Salt and pepper again. Sea salt shows itself off well here. Put your dish in the oven. Once the egg whites are firm-about 15 minutes, it is done. Take it out to check and make sure the whites aren't wiggling. Put it back if it is. If it is firm, sprinkle with chives and eat it up.

This dish is often made with poached eggs, but I like it this way, because if you are lucky, the yolks will still be soft, and as you eat, they will mix with the cheese and cream and form a yummy sauce.
When you eat this sort of meal you do not feel gluttonous. Despite the richness, it has a light quality.

In Barbara Pym's Quartet in Autumn, Letty ordered eggs florentine for her lunch on the day of Marcia Ivory's funeral.

Norman said, "I don't feel like much"... "subtly making the others feel that they ought not to have felt like much either."
Norman had a cauliflower gratin, which sounded pretty good to me, too.

Farm Box II: Potage Saint-Germain with Peagreens and Chives

When I was going through my farmbox this week, I missed something among the green piles of lettuce. There was a nice little bag of peagreens. I had been thinking about maybe cooking some of that lettuce. One person can only eat so much salad, and I have only one friend expected for dinner this week. Leaf lettuce, however fresh, can morph into a soggy monster pretty quick.

So I thought I'd make some of this lovely very simple soup, and try substituting the peagreens for part of the lettuce in hopes of making it taste even greener than usual. Also, as I had no leeks or fresh mint, I went with a combo of regular onions and the beautiful chives from the farmbox. I thought I'd use a little basil from my recently planted pot on the porch in place of the mint. For some reason, although they do not taste alike, mint and basil seem to sub for each other pretty well in alot of things.

1/4 stick unsalted butter
3/4 cup onions
3/4 cup chopped chives
2 cups chopped lettuce
2 cups chopped pea greens
3 cups vegetable broth (chicken broth is fine, too)
2 cups water
1 1/2 lbs frozen peas
some chopped basil
salt and pepper

Melt the better in a 5 qt dutch oven type pot. Add the onions and chives, and cook them very slowly, until they are soft, but don't brown them-stew them in the butter. Add lettuce, pea greens, broth and water. Bring to a boil, turn down and cook for maybe 5 minutes. Add peas and basil, salt and pepper, bring back to a boil, and cook until peas are just done. Turn off the heat and puree it up very smooth with your immersion blender.

If your immersion blender suddenly dies, and you do not have a regular blender, curse, strain your soup and puree the solid part in your food processor. Then put it back in the pan with the liquids and stir it up, and reheat. Of course, you could also accomplish this with your food mill, always assuming that you have not lost the little screw thing from the bottom and rendered it useless.

This is very good with plain little croutons of whole grain bread, toasted up with lots of butter. If you are going to serve this to guests, or take a photo of it, I suggest waiting to add the croutons until the last minute. If you do not, they will sink, and rather than looking brown and crisp, will have a suspicious, lumpy appearance . They will, however, taste just fine, even if you fish them out with a spoon and eat them separately, before taking a picture of your soup.

Farm Box I: Day-Glo Rhubarb and Pears

For quite a few years now, I have been a subscriber to veggies from the Kretschmann Farm. Beginning each June, this venture in community supported agriculture delivers weekly crates of their organically raised fruits and vegetables to the porches of "host" members in Pittsburgh neighborhoods. On my day (Wednesday), I pick mine up and drop off my empty crate from the week before. I have a "small" share, which is sometimes pretty damn big in the late summer.

This Wednesday was our first delivery this year. Because western Pennsylvanis is a climate of extremes, some things don't grow here (e.g. artichokes, lemons, figs), and the earliest and latest deliveries are generally pretty austere. Among the many things I like about my farm box is the challenge of deciding how to eat the appealing in-season goodies which turn up. I am pleased to think of the many people with similar arrangements who are enjoying this sport at the same time I am.

This week's box was, not surprisingly, mostly greens. There were two different kinds of leaf lettuce, a bag of baby greens, two big gorgeous bunches of chives (some with buds), branches of rosemary, a bag of oregano, some Japanese greens (the name of which I'm always forgetting), and about a pound of rhubarb stalks. There was also a loaf of whole grain bread to fill it out. Okay, so lots of salad, very nice, but the rhubarb is calling me. What to fix?

It has always seemed to me a little sad that the pretty fushcia color of raw rhubarb fades so when you cook it. I have heard that if you cook it down in the oven, instead of in a pot, it stays pinker, but I have not yet tried this. I did remember seeing, in Alfred Portale's book, Simple Pleasures, a recipe for pears poached in cranberry juice, which included fresh ginger and tea (tea!). The pears became very pink. I had wanted to try it, but there were only 2 pears in the house. Ginger and rhubarb are a favorite combination, so I thought I'd mix it up a bit. I increased the sugar, and substituted rhubarb for the some of the pears. I liked the result, and it is also, in my view, pretty cute:

1 cup unsweetened cranberry juice
1 cup water
juice of one small orange, strained
3/4-1 cup sugar
2 one inch rounds of peeled fresh ginger
2 pears, peeled cored and halved
1/2 lb. rhubarb, sliced in one inch pieces
1 tbsp loose darjeeling tea, or darjeeling tea bag

In a small saucepan, combine juices, water, sugar and ginger, and bring to a boil. Turn down to a simmer, and slip in the pears and rhubarb. Cook about 20 minutes- less if your pears are very ripe.
Remove pears and rhubarb with a slotted spoon, and put in a bowl. Boil the syrup down to the thickness you like. While it boils, take out about 1/2 a cup of it. Either put a teabag in it, or infuse it with some loose tea, and strain. Once the syrup is reduced, add the tea infused syrup, a little bit at a time, tasting as you go, because it has a major impact on the flavor. Pour syrup over fruit, and chill.
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A.P.suggested using either darjeeling tea, to emphasize the citrus tastes, or lapsang soochong, to add a note of smokiness. Since I had already added some tartness with the rhubarb, I thought smokiness might be too much, and decided on the darjeeling. That turned out to be a lucky choice, since I didn't have any lapsang in the house anyway.

This was really nice with yogurt, and I bet it would be great with warm English style runny custard (about which more later), if you want to go crazy.