Mediterranean chicken

This recipe, which I've used successfully for years, is tasty enough to serve over white rice for company, and can be made more authentic by using thighs instead of breasts and serving over couscous. Earlier this week, I used chicken tenders, which cut the cooking time by more than half. I also used a spice I picked up in Old City Jerusalem, za'atar, instead of cumin, and it was even more delicious, if that's possible. If you don't have apricot halves, use prunes (also known as dried plums). And if you have an olive tapenade open, substitute 4 tablespoons of that for the dozen olives.

The photo of the za'atar pyramid was taken by Jim Richardson last summer in Israel.


Mediterranean Chicken Breasts
Serves 6

Ingredients
6 boneless chicken breast halves
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 1/2 cup dried apricots, plumped for 30 minutes and drained
1 1/2 cup dry white wine or unsalted chicken broth
12 brine cured, pitted green olives

Instructions
Season chicken with salt, pepper and cumin. Heat olive oil in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Add chicken and cook until browned, turning chicken over every 2 minutes. Remove chicken and place on plate. Cover with foil to keep warm. Add garlic to skillet and cook for 30 seconds. Add apricots, wine, broth and olives to skillet and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium high and simmer until sauce is thickened, about four minutes. Add chicken back to skillet and cook until sauce is thickened and chicken is cooked through, 20-30 minutes. Divide chicken breasts onto plates and spoon sauce over chicken.

Weeknight nage for busy gourmets

The recipe I posted earlier this week is good but complicated. 

It took Jim a whole afternoon to prepare this wonderful dinner: 

Sautéed Maine Scallops on Garlic Mashed Potatoes with Chanterelle Mushrooms and Parsley Nage in "Terra: Cooking from the Heart of Napa Valley" (Ten Speed Press, 2000, 256 pages) by Hiro Sone and Lissa Doumani.

What follows is my simplified version for two people. It takes about 30 minutes to fix, and is a good way to flavor up chicken breasts. It also looks impressive. If you don't care for cilantro, use flat-leaf parsley instead.

Lori K's Chicken Breasts in Rustic Nage

Serves 2

Recipe ©2012  Lori Korleski Richardson

Ingredients

For the nage

1 small minced shallot

3 tablespoons dry white wine

1/4 cup heavy cream

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1 small bunch cilantro, stemmed

1/4 cup packed spinach leaves

1/3 cup chicken stock

1 clove garlic, smashed

1 tablespoon olive oil

4 ounces white or brown mushrooms, sliced

For the rest

2 small chicken breasts

Sea salt and freshly ground white pepper

Spray olive oil

8 baby carrots

4 spears asparagus

1/2 yellow bell pepper

2 cups boiling water

1 pack (4.1 ounce) Idahoan Baby Reds instant mashed potatoes

4 sprigs cilantro, for garnish

Instructions

To start the nage, combine the minced shallot and wine in a small, heavy, nonreactive saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook until reduced to 1 tablespoon. Add the cream and return just to a boil. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Set aside and keep warm.

Put the cilantro and spinach in freezer zip bag and partially close. Microwave until just wilted. Seal the bag and throw the bag into the freezer to chill. Put the stock and garlic into a blender, along with a little salt and pepper. Take the bag out of the freezer, drain the greens, squeeze out any excess water and add to the stock and garlic. Process until smooth. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Put 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a medium skillet over high heat, add the mushrooms and sauté for 4 minutes. Set aside.

Using the microwave, cook the baby carrots in a bowl with a little water until tender, about 4 minutes. Snap off the tough ends of the asparagus, then put them in a freezer zip bag and partially close; cook about 2 minutes or until bright green. Cut the ribs and seeds off the yellow bell pepper and cut into 8 strips. Cook in a freezer zip bag until just well heated. Drain all these, season with a little salt and pepper and keep warm.

Pound the chicken breasts until they are about a 1/4-inch thick. Season with salt and pepper and spray with olive oil. Heat a cast-iron shallow skillet to hot over high heat. Sauté the breasts on one side until they are very white around the edges. Flip and cook about a minute less on the other side. Remove the pan from the heat and let the breasts rest in the pan for 1 minute.

As you do this, boil the water for the potatoes. Add the pouch of potatoes all at once and stir well to moisten. Cover and let stand for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, finish preparing the nage: Reheat the cream mixture, and add the cilantro-spinach purée and the mushrooms. Bring just to a boil, then remove from the heat. Taste and adjust seasoning. Set aside and keep warm.

To serve, put 1/2 cup mashed potatoes in the center of each of 2 warmed shallow bowls. Spoon the  nage evenly around the potatoes, then place one chicken breast on top of each serving of mashed potatoes. Arrange the vegetables on and around the chicken. Garnish with cilantro springs.

An oasis in Dulles Airport

After a long flight from Sacramento to D.C., we weren't so much famished as weary as we hit the corridors of Dulles. We passed bars with bar food, several sit-down restaurants with way too many fried entrees.

Then we spied Vino Volo near gate C4. Behind faux wooden shutters lay a quiet, well-lighted corner wine bar with relaxed seating for about 21 at tables and a half dozen at the bar. It had flights of white, red and rose, and extremely friendly waiters and waitresses who weren't too overbearing.

We ordered the salmon rolls, which featured rolls of smoked salmon atop a bruschetta of crab salad, perched on a bed of baby lettuces and sprinkled with caper berries, and a small salad, which had dried cranberries, feta and a nice vinaigrette. With the flight of roses - a Chateau Suau from Bordeaux, a cave from Conde de Subirats and Avondale from South Africa - it made for a light late lunch and really hit the spot for the two of us.

By the time we were leaving around 4, the place was totally crowded, we were sated and ready for our next leg - home to Charlottesville.

Photo of Vino Volo by Lori Korleski Richardson

A fair proposal

Sacramento readers, take note: The Wine Garden at the 2009 State Fair (Aug. 21 at 10 a.m.-Labor Day at 10 p.m.) is looking for volunteers to pour the award-winning wines (and a lot of non-award-winning white zinfandel, as well) throughout the run of the fair.

If you'd like to do this, go at 6 p.m. Aug. 6 (a Thursday night) to the Wine Garden at Cal Expo (located between buildings A/B and C). Enter the grounds through parking lot D. You'll need a picture ID and will need to fill out some forms. Then you pick as many shifts as you'd like and sign up. You usually get two tickets and a parking pass for each shift, but that may vary.

It's a lot of fun and you get to talk about wine with a wide variety of people. I did it for the last 20 years and learned a lot from it.
For more information: www.thebestcaliforniawine.com or contact Kem Pence at (916) 263-3159.

Back in CA

We made it to SFO after 3 hours on the tarmac due to lightning storms, making it seem like a trans-Atlantic flight. So forgive me if bleariness creeps into this post and the next.

The meal aboard Virgin America was a bit better than similar ones offered by United and American; with the hummus and chips pack, there were two pieces of raw broccoli, 1 cauliflower floret, two blanched pea pods, some red pepper and carrot strips, a bit of radicchio and leaf lettuce, and a scoop of baba ghanoush. (Just so you don’t think I’m a total health nut, I ordered the chocolate bar – a 65% cocao with nibs.)

Jim had the Mandarin chicken wrap, which was slightly sweet, but good.

The wine was Wente chard and cab – so-so. But I was happy they offered seltzer (which has no sodium) rather than just club soda (which does).

Another time-saving prep tip

Love mushrooms? Love shallots? Those are two great tastes that taste great together. When you have a little time, here's a medley that freezes well. For single servings, freeze in ice cube trays and then pop out and store in a freezer bag; reheat a cube or two as a topping for steak, pork chops, chicken breasts, scallops or pressed fried tofu, or a stuffing for a tart or crepe.

Brush off the debris from a pound of mushrooms and slice them thinly. Thinly slice a half-pound of shallots. Saute the shallots first, then add the mushrooms, in 2-4 tablespoons of olive oil, butter or a mixture of the two. Do not use light butter or margarine; they have too much liquid whipped into them and won't freeze as well. Cook over low heat until almost a paste, seasoning with salt, pepper, chopped parsley and thyme as desired. For extra flavor, add a cup of white wine or chicken broth and continue cooking until all the liquid has evaporated. Cool, pack in small containers or the above-mentioned ice cube trays, and freeze. 

Why did I think of this today? Maybe it's the foodie in me, but when I see Dulles, I think duxelles, pronounced dook-SEHL, the French name for this dish.

To wine, to life

From an undisclosed iPhone deep in the Upper West Side comes this bit of cheery news:

Half a glass of wine a day may add five years to your life, a new study suggests. Drink beer, and you’ll live only 2 1/2 years longer.

Dutch researchers followed 1,373 men for more than four decades, noting their eating and drinking habits. Men who had about 20 grams of alcohol daily -- equivalent to a half a glass of wine -- had 2 1/2 years added to their life expectancy at age 50, compared with men who didn’t drink at all, according to the research published today in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Men who consumed only wine had twice as much added longevity.

Light alcohol intake was linked to lower cardiovascular, cerebrovascular and overall mortality in the study. Researchers had known that moderate drinking is tied to a lower risk of heart disease, possibly because of an increase in high density lipoprotein or so-called good cholesterol as well as a reduction in platelet clumping, making it more unlikely for clots to form. It is the first study to show that one kind of alcohol is superior to others in prolonging life, the researchers said.

“In this study, 70 percent of all wine consumed was red wine,” the researchers, led by Marinette Streppel of the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, said in the paper. “This suggests that the cardioprotective effect of wine could be due to a protective effect of polyphenol compounds in red wine, but other explanations cannot be ruled out.”

Polyphenols are chemical substances found in plants such as tannins and flavonoids.

The research, dubbed Zutphen Study after the Dutch town from which the participants were recruited, followed men born between 1900 and 1920 and examined them several times between 1960 and 2000.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eva von Schaper in Munich at evonschaper@bloomberg.net.

To which I add: Salud!

A New Orleans breakfast

Brennan's in New Orleans serves an incredible brunch, and it has been one that I have used as a benchmark for all others. It was three courses, beginning with a rich, sherried turtle soup, followed by eggs Hussard, followed by bananas Foster, and accompanied by milk punch. I don't think I can get away with serving turtle soup in California, but I'm going to do my eggs Hussard for a crowd (the real thing requires poaching eggs; fine for a party of six but for more than a dozen, I prefer a strata base). I may substitute thick hot cocoa for the milk punch, unless someone wakes up needing the hair of the dog.

Eggs Hussard for 14

Plain Strata for Eggs Hussard
6 whole eggs and 1 dozen egg whites
4 cups milk
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 loaf of dry bread, torn up and crusts removed
Butter to butter pan with

Mix eggs, milk and salt well. Pour over bread. Soak overnight. Put in a buttered 9x13 pan.
Bake at 375 about 45 minutes until puffy and golden.
Top with 2 cups of marchand de vin sauce and 2-2/3 cups holandaise

MARCHAND DE VIN SAUCE
1/3 cup butter
3/8 cup onion
2 scallions
1 clove minced garlic
1/2 cup minced ham
1/2 cup chopped mushrooms
1/3 cup flour
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 cups beef stock
1/2 cup red wine
2 teaspoons thyme leaves
1 bay leaf
1/4 cup parsley, chopped
Salt and pepper

Melt butter in a large saucepan and sauté the onion, garlic, scallions and ham for 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms, reduce the heat to medium and cook for 2 minutes.
Blend in the flour and cook for 4 minutes, then add everything but the parsley. Simmer until the sauce thickens, about an hour. Remove bay leaves and put in fridge.

Reheat sauce slowly. Add parley before serving and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Blender Hollandaise
1 lb butter, melted
1 dozen egg yolks
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Blend the yolks, juice and pepper slightly in the blender or food processor. Turn the blender on high, then slowly add the melted butter. Cover, then pulse on for 60 seconds, off for 30 seconds, until the sauce thickens to the point that it does not drip down readily from a spoon. Do not reheat.