The Funky Kitchen

I really do wish that paste was not the word to use for this. Paste just isn’t an attractive word, and it really does not do justice to the complex wonder of an elixir it is. But alas, it is a paste. That’s what it is, even though it is not nearly romantic enough for its usage. Paste may not be very alluring, but this chicken is.

Chiles, coriander, cumin, caraway, garlic and pepper are ground together in a mortar and pestle into an aromatic earthy powder, transformed into a paste by way of a splash of olive oil. They mingle together as friends that don’t often spend time together in my kitchen, but I do believe I will be rectifying that. It’s such an interesting pleasant combination of flavors. Although paste is not an overly attractive word to use, it is the vehicle that transports all of that flavor to the chicken best.

We did these chicken thighs in the oven, but I am yearning to get the barbecue put together so we can try them out on the grill.

Chicken Thighs with North African Spice Paste

(recipe adapted from Gourmet magazine)

2 – 2 inch long dried red chiles

1 Tbsp dried hot pepper flakes

1 Tbsp ground coriander seeds

½ Tbsp ground cumin

½ Tbsp caraway

1 Tbsp garlic powder

1 Tbsp black peppercorns

2 tsp kosher salt

5 Tbsp olive oil

6 chicken thighs, bone in and skin on

• Brown the chicken thighs on both sides in a screaming hot pan to render some fat and crisp the skin.
• Use your mortar and pestle to grind the spices finely. This works best if you work in small batches. A coffee grinder makes quick work of this process as well.
• Add the olive oil to the spice mixture to create a paste.
• Rub over all sides of the browned chicken.
• Place the chicken in an oven safe roasting dish and pop it into a 350 oven. Roast until the chicken is cooked through and the juices run clear (~1 ¼ hours).
• Serve immediately after taking it out of the oven.

For those who may not be so receptive to the spicy edge of the intense North African flavors in the spice paste, this dish pairs really well with a cooling and ameliorating tzadsiki sauce. Lucky, it’s a pretty easy to whip up while the chicken is baking.

Mister, who is not always the biggest fan of spicy food, enjoyed the seasoning because the spice was very present but not incendiary. He especially enjoyed the tzadsiki sauce and remaining spice paste that got left in the pan atop his potatoes.

Forty is a big number…

Especially when you hear the number 40 in conjunction with cloves of garlic. Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic?

Garlic is good, we all know that. But 40 cloves? That is just about 3 whole heads! For a moment I worried I was being lead astray by this recipe. 40 cloves would certainly be far too much garlic. 40 cloves would be overwhelming. Garlic can be such a bully, and using that much of it would put all of the other flavors at such a disadvantage. Nobody likes a bully.

Then I read further: this garlic gets roasted. Roasted into gooey, sweet, unctuous heaven that intermingles charmingly with sweated onion, white wine and thyme. I may have been filled with trepidation, but I am so happy I made this recipe. It’s definitely on my make again list.

Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

(recipe ever so slightly adapted from Nigella’s Kitchen)

Ingredients

2 Tbsp olive oil

8 chicken thighs (skin on, bone in)

salt and pepper

2 1/2 Tbsp thyme leaves

1/2 a small onion, finely diced

40 cloves of garlic, unpeeled

1 Cup white wine

• Preheat the oven to 350° F.
• On the stove, get a pan piping hot.
• Season the chicken thighs on both sides with a smattering of salt and pepper.
• Sear the chicken in the olive oil until brown and crisped, skin side down first. This will take 2 batches unless you have a truly giant pan. Set the chicken aside for a few moments after it is seared.
• Reduce the heat on the stove, and to the remaining fat in the pan, add 1/2 of the thyme leaves as well as the diced onion. Stir for a  short moment, until fragrant and the onion goes translucent. Deglaze the pan with the white wine and reserve.
• In an oven safe roasting dish, tumble in 20 of the garlic cloves. Arrange the chicken thighs atop the garlic, skin side up, and then sprinkle over the remaining garlic.
• Over top of the chicken, pour the winy sauce. Sprinkle over the remaining thyme leaves.
• Place the dish into the oven and cook for 1-1 1/2 hours, until the chicken is cooked through.

At dinner, Mister, myself and our guests dined on the chicken with lemon roasted potatoes and a salad. There was more roasted garlic present in the dish than was eaten that night, but a quick whiz of the peeled roasted cloves along with the remaining winy juices in the blender made for a tasty sauce for any leftovers.

The Mister rating:  ”Uber-tender and mecha-tasty, a garlic lover’s fantasy.” (I’m not sure what mecha-tasty means, but I’m told it’s good)

For a long time, I had a real distaste for leftovers. Why eat what we had earlier when we could eat something new, right? So much of the time, reheating methodology doesn’t really return a meal to it’s former glory either. At the same time, a person is often left with remnants of meals. Living in our house (we’ve been here a month already!) is also teaching me that leftovers are a huge time saver and that it helps to make a big batch of something, like stew for example, and be able to eat our way through it during the busy evenings of the week.

Eating stew all week is tasty, but it leaves you longing for something crunchy, or sweet, or different. My distaste for leftovers still lingers. I’m finding that what’s working well for us in our kitchen is leftover transformation. That  stew could have easily become Shepard’s pie if it visited the oven with some mashed potato on top, or gone into wraps with some cheese. In this way, I seem to successfully be able to convince myself that this meal is at least somewhat new and then the leftovers get used up!

How do you feel about leftovers? Lover or hater? What do you do to make them more appetizing?

The original meal was a tray-bake of chicken, spicy sausage and potatoes. This is such a nice and easy type of meal: get everything together, pop it in the oven, set a timer and forget about it. All of the flavors get nice and friendly with each other, the array of ingredients get all roasted and brown, and you get to put on your apron and pull out the roaster to show off your succulent meal.

Roasted Chicken and Sausage with Potatoes

(adapted from Spanish Chicken with Chorizo and Potatoes from Nigella Lawson’s Kitchen)

2 Tbsp olive oil

2 chicken breasts, cut into 1 – 1 1/2 inch cubes

2 spicy Italian sausages, cut into thick slices

1 lb potatoes, scrubbed and cut into 1 inch cubes

1 large onion, roughly chopped

1 red bell pepper, roughly chopped

1 tsp oregano

zest of one lemon

• Preheat the oven to 400° F.
• Put the chicken, sausage, potatoes, onion and pepper. Drizzle the oil over top and toss to coat, we don’t want any of our tasty supper to stick.
• Pour the contents of the bowl into a roasting pan or large cast iron skillet. Arrange so that everything is in an even layer.
• Sprinkle over the oregano and lemon zest.
• Roast until the chicken and sausage are cooked through and everything is gorgeously golden (~40 minutes). Baste with the juices half way through roasting.

I really enjoyed this supper, it was really really tasty and warming for a cold January evening. Considering the complete ease of this dinner, it makes it even better. Next time, I would like to try it with the chorizo that Nigella used, because I think it would have made it even that step tastier. That and the color you get from chorizo is to die for.

The next day for lunch this roasted loveliness was transformed into quesadillas by cutting it down into slightly smaller pieces, adding cheddar cheese and chili-garlic sauce,and wedging it between tortillas destined for the cast iron pan. I got a nestling set of three cast iron pans over Christmas from Mister and besides loving them they are perfect for quesadillas. Mister even stole a wedge of mine when I made them the day before to pack into lunches, he thought the quesadillas looked so nice.