Duck and Root Vegetables

On tonight's menu, pan-seared duck breast, with roasted root vegetables (pearl onions, carrots, parsnips, turnips, leeks) and apples. Not too many pyrotechnics to this dish: I chopped up the vegetables, cooked them in just a little bit of duck fat -- we have to be somewhat healthy, after all -- and then put that skillet in the oven at 375 for about a half hour. I added the apples to the skillet twenty minutes or so after placing it in the oven. I then seared the duck and put it on top of the still-roasting vegetables until it was medium-rare. Everything was a hit, except maybe the overly bitter turnips, but even they were -- what's the right word? -- entertaining.

Through it all, I had what's quickly become my favorite cocktail, a vodka drink, with two parts lemon juice, one part lime juice, one part agave nectar, and a garnish of fresh ginger. This drink was first introduced to us by Craftbar as a Sunshine Squeeze, which is fine and all, I suppose, but hardly the sort of drink a hockey player, even a twerpy one like myself, would ask for. We're thinking of renaming it: a Hip Check? a Shiner? Ah, but a Texas beer already has that name, alas. Please, suggest away.

Sausage and Lentils with Fennel

Chelsea finished out her three-day rampage of deliciousness by preparing this Sausage and Lentils with Fennel dish from epicurious.com. Other than using chicken sausage instead of pork, she didn't deviate much from the recipe. My, the process was simple: after heating the lentils, she chopped up a beautiful fennel bulb, a few carrots, and a medium onion; meanwhile, I sauteed the sausage. Our kitchen is pitifully small, and just a few cutting boards and stray pot lids can completely cover our counter space. Though it can be a frantic place to cook, there's something charming, at least to me, about the way we duck, slide, spin, and curtsy out of (or sometimes into) each other's way, all the while managing to not step on our two hopeful and sometimes successful canine scavengers, one of whom made it into tonight's picture.


The end result of tonight's effort was a hearty and subtle bowl of goodness, one that features three parts of the fennel plant: the bulb, the fronds, and the seeds. This pleased my inner geek to no end.

Day 2: Chicken in Riesling

Is it wrong to admit that I spent the morning dreaming about lunch? Not in my book, at least not when lunch is leftovers from a great meal.

For Day 2 of Restaurant-Free Month, we were a little more ambitious. I don't normally cook new recipes for company, in case something goes horribly, horribly wrong. But I really wanted to try a Chicken in Riesling recipe from the now-defunct Gourmet magazine, and we really wanted to see our friends A. and D. I decided to make an exception.

I love a good stew, and I welcome any chance to pull out my beloved Le Creuset casserole dish. The Chicken in Riesling recipe is similar to a Coq au Vin, only with white wine, a finishing of cream, and a lot less cooking time. I made very few adjustments to the recipe. (I didn't want to deal with a whole chicken, so I bought thighs and legs; I added a spoonful of sour cream since our market didn't have creme fraiche; and I left the skins on the red fingerling potatoes for more color.) The stew takes only an hour to make and calls for browning the chicken then braising it in Riesling with carrots and leeks. Parsleyed potatoes and a little cream finish the dish. It was incredibly good and tasted like it had been cooking all day. We sopped up the sauce with crusty bread... otherwise we'd have licked the bowls.

In case the stew went terribly awry, I decided to make one of our favorite appetizer/salad dishes so that there would be at least one good thing on the table -- endive with walnuts and blue cheese in a white wine viniagrette. This is so easy and delicious: buy two or three heads of endive, pull off the largest, prettiest leaves, then chop the rest of the endive and toss it with blue cheese, toasted walnuts and a homemade viniagrette (I whisk together two or three tablespoons olive oil with two or three teaspoons of white wine vinegar and add a little salt and pepper). The chopped salad mixture is served on top of the whole leaves. It doesn't keep well, so the end of the night saw me picking at all the leftover pieces so we wouldn't have to throw them out. (It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it.)

Our friends brought a delicious bottle of homemade (!) sparkling (!) red wine and a pumpkin cheesecake. We ate and drank very well and stayed up late talking and laughing. It was a great start to the new year.

Leftovers and lunch

This month isn't really about saving money, for that would imply we have some to save; it's really about not spending money we don't have. So, with our hands on our empty wallets, we pledged to try our best to not let a single lettuce leaf or slice of bread go bad. That means most of our lunches will have to be the previous night's dinner. Unfortunately, though, last night's dinner was Chelsea's chicken kebabs, a dish that almost never makes it to our Tupperware. Indeed, we were left with nothing more than a serving or so of rice and a half breast of chicken. Still travel-weary and uncreative (not to mention dismayed by the Penguins' poor showing at the Winter Classic), I decided to make chicken fried rice.



I chopped up an onion and some ginger (two of our produce basket's staples) and then two carrots. Then I cut the chicken breast into pieces, sauteed those with peanut oil in our non-stick skillet, then added the vegetables. Once those looked cooked, I added the rice. After the rice started to brown a bit, I added three slightly beaten eggs to the pan, scrambled them, and then topped it all off with a dash or two of soy sauce. Filling, but not cloying, as it so often is when the chef uses too much soy sauce--it wasn't bad. Most importantly, though, we have no leftovers left over.

Day 1: Unskewered Red Curry Chicken Kebabs

Happy New Year! We rang in 2011 at a wedding in Charleston, S.C., and drove back to Atlanta on the 1st. It was late afternoon when we got home, so we knew better than to try anything too ambitious for our first dinner. Instead we turned to an old standby, unskewered chicken kebabs in a red curry marinade, served over jasmine rice with a yogurt-mint dressing.

I discovered this recipe last year from Food and Wine: Red Curry Chicken Kebabs with Minty Yogurt Sauce. I was drawn to the simple ingredients, most of which we keep on hand (we keep Thai red curry paste in the pantry at all times for another recipe). I made the dish once as written, and then the modifications began. For starters, in the marinade I use less oil than the recipe calls for and probably more thai curry, I put almost no honey in the dressing (a teaspoon or so) and more lime and mint to taste, and at this point I don't measure anything.

For six months or so, we grilled the kebabs, until one night last winter I went out to light the grill and found a hungry creature looking for crumbs inside it. That was the night we learned that the oven broiler works just fine. Better even, since we can skip the skewers and just dump the chicken pieces on a big tray, making this quick dish much, much quicker. We do cut way back on the oil when we broil, since it has nowhere to drip away. This makes the dish spicer, which is just fine with us.

It takes only about two minutes to whisk the marinade together, and I usually throw the chicken in the oven once the rice is cooking, turning it every few minutes until nice and crispy. The yogurt dressing can be made ahead or while the chicken is cooking. It's simple to make yet completely satisfying and complex. (The picture below doesn't do it justice...)

Last night's dinner was served with Citrus Squeeze cocktails (our version of the Sunshine Squeeze served at Craftbar Atlanta: fresh lemon, lime and ginger mixed with vodka and agave nectar). Delicious!