Merging Dorie Greenspan’s Chicken Recipes

When I was putting together the menu and looking at chicken recipes in Around My French Table, I found myself deep in indecision . . . so many delicious recipes! Hmmm, why not make a little Frankenrecipe? Why not, indeed.

I wanted to use the technique she describes in “Chicken in a Pot”, where the chicken is browned, vegetables are browned, and after these are placed in a dutch oven, a basic flour-and-water dough is made and placed around the rim of the pot and the lid squished down for oven cooking. The dough is more craft-project than edible, but I used a gluten free blend just in case we could use it later to sop up juices (we couldn’t; it was like eating Christmas tree ornaments):



Thankfully there is a picture of this on the cover of her book, because not one of my phone-photos is even viewable!



I had lovely organic prunes on hand and was fascinated by her recipe “M. Jacques’ Armagnac Chicken”, so this formed the base of my ingredient set – prunes, cognac, potatoes, onions, carrots. However, her “Hurry-Up and Wait” chicken had enticingly mentioned lifting up the skin and pushing in some herbed butter . . . and I still had some of that truffle salt . . . backtracking a bit, the ingredients:




Chicken ready to go in the oven:




Note the lovely truffle-salted-butter peeking out from under the skin!

This was understandably quite delicious. Clara commented, “I don’t remember ever thinking that carrots were so delicious that I’d eat as many of them as I could get”. Really all of those roasted vegetables were quite transformed. An amazing dish.







 

Boeuf à la Mode with Pumpkin Gorgonzola Flans

Boeuf à la Mode is the French version of roast beef . . . a way to make a less expensive cut of meat elevated. This version is from Around My French Table.

The beef was placed in our dutch oven overnight with wine, carrots, celery, and fresh herbs wrapped in a bundle. I had to send children out in the dark with a flashlight in the rain to collect the herbs – I would have done this, but they got so extremely excited about this adventure that I didn’t have the heart to say no. The beef is turned now and then the next day. About three hours before dinnertime, the beef is removed and browned in a skillet while the wine sauce is strained and reduced by half. More seasonings are added, and to the pan where the beef browned is added a half-cup of the wine sauce, four anchovies (!) and a little tomato paste, until the anchovies melt. I was enthralled by the addition of the anchovies for umami. What would it taste like? A tiny bit of cognac was added for depth, as well. Then the whole thing was put back in the dutch oven, and into the oven.

While I did take pictures of the beef, I did not notice that the batteries were almost dead, and every last picture was so blurry as to be unrecognizable. Still, you’ve seen roast beef, right? It was very good. Perfectly melty fork-tender, and if you listened to your tastebuds, they picked up all sorts of complicated notes. I was thinking about our recent “Meals in Minutes” roast beef, and I decided I was glad to have both recipes for obviously different times and purposes. I do have one note-to-self here: this dish longed for some little red potatoes added when the whole shebang gets put in the oven. There is plenty of time for them to cook, and while we definitely ate the sauce, potatoes would’ve been just the thing. Or colorful fingerling potatoes if they were available.

Also from this book, we made Pumpkin Gorgonzola Flans because it is October and cold!!! This was a quick-to-put-together little concoction of pumpkin fluffed in the food processor with seasonings, ladled into ramekins with gorgonzola and theoretically walnuts (we roasted up some pecans because that’s what Clara is safe for), and cooked in a water bath (with, oddly enough, a paper towel):




As I mentioned, my batteries were about to die, but here is a fuzzy pic of a finished flan:

Don’t you wish I’d photoshop my pictures like other food bloggers? I should totally get rid of the pumpkin splotches on the ramekin!

Both Sophia and Clara helped me to get this dinner to the table, bless them. Sophia even found the energy somewhere to help the little girls do a “Sugar Saturday”. We had found some actual Key Limes at our local Asian food store, so we picked up gluten-free graham crackers as well and the girls made Key Lime Pie:

They’d never made pie before, and we all found their first attempt at a pie delicious. It was based on the recipe found in The Essential Baker, just altered to be gluten free.




  

Shrimp and Cellophane Noodles

This one is from next week’s menu, as I failed to note exactly when the leeks from my Azure Standard order would be arriving before scheduling them into this week’s menu. Oops. So you’ll be seeing “Asian Style Ravioli with Coconut Curry” next week – had to switch. And although this is a “Wild Card Wednesday” dish, it was done on Monday.

Cellophane noodles are a good option when grains are not one’s friend. They’re still a starch, yes, but they’re made out of bean starch or sweet potato starch. We had some with sweet potato starch, and seaweed-derived salt. They need to be soaked for about a half hour first for maximum yumminess:

All our big bowls seemed to be in use, so I used a wok

This dish is out of Around My French Table. It had a large collection of ingredients, but wasn’t a particularly difficult dish to prepare.

Because of Clara’s reaction recently to sesame oil, we made two separate woks, one with, one without. As with many dishes, the key to this was cutting, dicing, measuring, and prepping everything beforehand. Once the woks were fired up, everything moved super fast and we were glad to be prepared.

There was a general agreement that this preparation was very “different”. We all had complicated reactions to it, neither “love” nor “hate”. If you have this book, or have it from the library, try the dish out – it’s a really unique combination of flavors and we’re all glad to have eaten it. However, it doesn’t seem to be one that anyone will request on a regular basis.

Scallops with Caramel-Orange Gastrique

In the spirit of Sweetheart Sunday, even though Sweetheart himself is out of town this weekend, I did seafood, and took advantage of his absence to do something with scallops, which my dear husband really dislikes. From Around My French Table , a little whipped-together scallop fry in a gastrique. Dorie Greenspan advises trying the juice from squeezed oranges as the acid for this dish, and she was right, it was good. I was also trying Kirkland frozen scallops to see how dreadful a substitution it would make in desperate times when fresh scallops are unavailable (wink). I don’t know if it was the recipe, but while fresh scallops would’ve been amazing, frozen ones were fine for a get-it-on-the-table dish, for sure.

This was a very quick treatment for scallops – whip the gastrique together, set it to the side, briefly pan-fry the scallops while candying some zest, plate a couple of quick sides, and you’re outta there.
Just a few ingredients:



Didn’t have time to listen to my playlist (really enjoying Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices on the Asthmatic Kitty label tonight)!

 
I absentmindedly tossed the orange peels in the trash without zesting them first, so ended up candying some lime peels to toss on top of the finished scallops. Candied orange peels would’ve been by far more attractive, particularly on my plating, which included broccoli and a green salad. Blah visually (entirely my fault - she recommends carrots) but tasty:




Note to self for future reference: the two pound Kirkland bag of jumbo scallops contained 14 large scallops. We had 5 people eating this dish, and I followed serving guidelines and felt like it wasn’t enough. In the future I’d figure 3 or 4 scallops per lighter adult appetite and 5 each for my teen males, in addition to whatever side dishes. Fortunately my males know how to run in the kitchen and make a quick sandwich when this happens! Do you suppose French teen boys eat more lightly? Baguettes to the side, how could I have missed it?

Good quick dish; thanks Dorie Greenspan!