Normally when you opt to cook with boneless skinless chicken breasts, you are training for a triathlon or body building contest (or the guy that played Tarzan in the 2016 remake) in which you are eating super lean meats and steamed broccoli to get that “six pack” for Abs. The other reason to eat the breast without the merits of bone or skin is speed and flexibility in flavor profile. Well I adapted one of Mark Bitman’s recipes (from How to Cook Everything) into one transformative quick meal that featured one of the most harmonious ingredient combinations I can ever recall.
But first, the cooking vessel. If you don’t have a 4-quart Le Creuset Brazer with lid, you must buy one (these also make great wedding gifts).
This is the 4-quart brazer with lid on:
You can fry, saute, braze with lid on or make a killer
“Grilled or Broiled Chicken Cutlets with Honey and Cumin,” as I did. Bitman
called for grilling or broiling the chicken but I thought #1, firing up the
grill is not worth the effort for boneless/skinless breasts, #2 it seemed that
the great liquids and flavors in the recipe could get lost by basting etc. and
#3 I could better control the done-ness of the chicken by cooking it on the
stovetop in a deep skillet. Nobody likes dried breast, especially me (a
lifelong dark meat guy). While I never did put the lid on to make this dish
(thus, it wasn’t truly brazed) the depth of the skillet was great for handling
the meat and the sauce without making a mess of the stovetop.
Other than changing the cooking method, I used peanut oil
instead of olive oil (peanut oil can handle higher heat to brown the chicken), sake
instead of dry sherry, white wine or orange juice, and I also added some
vegetable stock, plus I added a 1.5-inch thick cut of butter from a
quarter-pound section at the end of the cooking which gave the sauce a silky
texture. Butter makes everything better, anyway.
Two halves of a boneless skinless breast
3 Tbls Peanut oil
Half cup sake
Quarter cup vegetable stock
3 Tbls honey
1.5 Tbls ground cumin
1 teaspoon minced garlic
Salt and pepper
3 Tbls butter
Steps: Heat the skilled and just before putting
the chicken in add the peanut oil.
Brown chicken 3 minutes a side and then remove
Add sake, scrap brown bits off bottom of pan (on
medium high heat)
Add minced garlic, honey and cumin – stir and
cook for a minute or two
Cut the breasts in half (making four pieces)
Add veggie stock – cook on medium high heat two
more minutes when some of the liquid starts to evaporate, add the chicken to
the liquid and lower heat to simmer, cooking for 2 minutes.
Add the butter, stir the chicken and sauce
gently and constantly for about a minute then turn off heat.
Let stand for 2-3 minutes, then turn the chicken
pieces over and stir the sauce again.
Let stand for 2 minutes and serve.
We had this dish with sticky white rice and steamed
broccoli. Fantastic!
My former wife was burdened by my love of food and frequent
thinking and talking about food, which some may consider a compulsion, it was
her that encouraged me to start a food blog or contribute to one.
But I resisted until one day I went ahead and did it, thinking it could have saved my marriage. It didn’t.
I am what is legitimately now called an “accomplished home
chef” and my first career was as a baker, working in bakeries and restaurants. I
was trained by a Master German Baker beginning when I was 15 and worked for
Fritz Jansen until I was 19, when I moved to Aspen, CO and worked at Little
Cliff’s Bakery. I worked in restaurants as a bread, pastry and dessert baker
and was around some accomplished pro chefs when I lived and worked in Aspen. My
last restaurant job was when I moved to Boulder to start college as a
24-year-old freshman and I got a job as a baker at a “Good Earth” restaurant,
or some such name. But the early AM hours were killing me, in combination with
morning school and night studying. Something had to give so I left the food
business for afternoon retail work to get me through the rest of college.
Does this add up for me to be a natural blogger? Not so
fast.
After a little research I found many food blogs, even awards
for bloggers from Saveur, among others. Probably a marketing tactic (called
reader engagement, like most social media; the word engagement used to be used
nearly exclusively to describe a commitment to wed, but I am so old school).
Then I remembered my first book idea (still incomplete!)
after my first trip to Spain, tentatively called ‘Good Eats.’ I was on a train
from Barcelona to Valencia where I was to catch a ferry to Mallorca (which I
did, but just a day later than planned) when our train broke down.
Coincidentally and beneficially, the train came to rest next to a village. We
were about 40 miles south of Valencia. The conductor told us passengers that we
would be a few hours here so we might as well get off the train and visit the village.
The village was an old Spanish village and I don’t recall
its name. You had to walk up a cobblestone road to get to the village. It was
hot. It was hot on the train even when it was moving and the only relief from
the heat was to pull all of the windows down in the train. Once the train
stopped you wanted to flee, it was so hot. It was also hot walking up that road
to the village in the afternoon sun. I think I felt like Hemingway walking
toward the arena for an afternoon bull fight.
Not far inside the village I spotted a doorway to a square,
stone building, with long rows of beads as a door. This is a genuine village, I
thought, with a beaded door so that air could come in the building but flies
would be discouraged. Isn’t it curious how it actually works? I mean a fly can
slip between a row of vertically hung beads, given the size of flies and the
gaps between the strung beads. But they don’t. Above the door a word said “Bar”
and that was enough for me. A cold beer sounded heavenly.
Once inside I ordered the beer and drank it rather quickly.
When the waitress came over to ask if I would have another, she also asked if I
wanted food. I asked what they had. She said ham sandwiches. Eating a ham
sandwich with a second cold beer inside a cool stone building on a hot
September afternoon 40 miles from Valencia with no place else to go was exactly
what transpired next.
What happened after that was transformative. When asked by
others, as I sometimes am, “how did I become so interested, involved and active
in cooking, eating and talking about food?”
Normally attribute it to my mother, a modest cook with a big heart. But
she made great Italian food and I was a half-Italian (and half-Irish) boy. I
cooked with my mom. The red gravy (meat sauce), hand-made raviolis and
hand-made sausages were our favorite family meals and I mastered Italian while
still a teenager.
I realize now, however, that it wasn’t my mom or her cooking
that made me love food and cooking. It was that afternoon in Spain when the dark-haired
Spanish woman with perfectly tanned and toned legs brought me a second beer and
a ham sandwich. The sandwich was small. The bread was the size of a large
dinner roll. There was no spread or condiments on the bread. The only
ingredient inside the bread were a few slices of ham and a thick slice of
tomato. That was it. And one bite did it, sort of like when you meet someone
and it is love at first sight, or “you had me at hello” as the saying goes, which
to me is one of the best lines ever expressed in English and no, I don’t think
it is a cliché.
That ham sandwich in Spain, I would later learn, was made
from the infamous “Iberico” pigs that free-range and feast on acorns.
Consequently, the pork is all-world by virtue of the black Iberian pigs’ environment
and not surprisingly, what they eat or are fed. The sandwich transformed me
from being interested in good food to becoming passionate about it. For years I
have been saying “life is too short to eat mediocre food” and I mean it. It
started in September, 1989, 40 miles south of Valencia.
When the 1990 recession hit I lost my income because I was
in a sales commission industry and one day the industry was fine and the next
day it was dead. I started freelance writing, pouring beer at a brew pub and
doing neighborhood handyman work and chores to get by. I contacted an editor at
Bon Appetite and pleaded my case to be one of their contributing writers. I
sent proof that I had a degree in journalism (I still have it!). I sent some of
clips, including one that published in the Boulder Daily Camera when I interned
with a features editor on the daily newspaper while earning my degree at CU.
That clip’s headline was called “Taming the Game” and I had done a story on how
local chefs were serving venison, elk, goose and other game on their menus and
how they took the gaminess out of the meat. Now I think, why would you want to
take the genuine flavor out of the meat? But that’s another matter.
I received a very polite rejection slip from the Bon
Appetite editor. But I persisted and sent more clips and another letter. The
phone rang one day and it was the editor, who could not have been sweeter in
telling me why she couldn’t hire me to contribute to her magazine. She spoke in
the same tone as a would-be lover, explaining why she couldn’t give you her
love.
“You seem very capable, Gary, and certainly enthusiastic.
And your clips are solid. But we just can’t publish a person that is unknown to
the food business. It’s just too much of a risk for us,” said the editor in her
sweet tone.
She could have been saying, if I was pining for her, “Ah that’s awfully nice that you feel this way about me and you are a sweet man. And while I like you a great deal and hope we can remain friends, I’m sorry but I just don’t have the same feelings that you have.”
Rejected, and understanding why, I gave up that pursuit and
got a journalism job at a business weekly. Immersed in my new career, I forgot
about food writing, even though I remained serious about cooking. About that time
I took a trip with friends to Santa Fe for a cooking class. I brought home a
new passion for New Mexican food. For several years in the 1990s I barbecued a
turkey for Thanksgiving, which I stuffed with lemons, limes and onions and
rubbed the bird with a delightful spice package with the flavors of New Mexico.
Served with creamy polenta and sautéed poblano peppers, it is a splendid meal.
Which brings me to now. So I am going to start a blog but it won’t just be about some cool dish me or a friend made. It will be some of that but mostly, I am going to talk about other people’s food – Pro and Amateur alike. I’m going to take food pictures. I am going to interview cooks and chefs, and take their pictures. I will write food stories. Some my own, and some other people’s food stories. For example, I will likely write about how we came to love Snake River beef from Idaho and in particular, its New York strip steaks. Look at these!
I may write about the history of food, or how the expression
for corn came to be, “knee high by the 4th of July.” There is plenty
of other food-related lore. I don’t know that I will get political about food
but everything is open game, no pun intended.
You probably get the drift by now. Food stories. With all
the foodies out there today, I think there is a ready-made audience.
Grilled Bourbon Chicken with Strawberry Rhubarb pie for dessert, anyone?
