Recipes – Page 3 – mccormicky

Neglected Drunken Chicken

Here is my recipe for a luck of the draw chicken dinner.I made it up on the spot.

You will need:

Chicken. For this recipe I used 3 large chicken legs with back portions. Kosher chicken tastes better so I used Empire chicken.

3 garlic cloves

1 large shallot

fresh coarse ground black pepper

salt

paprika(the normal kind, not smoked or hot)

1 bay leaf

a quarter can of low sodium chicken broth. Chicken broth and boullion cubes are packed with sodium.We are trying to cut down on salt — we have been ossifying our organs and bones with salt for decades.We are old now and care about these things. But the truth is that tasty cooking needs salt.The trick is to allow all the flavors to meld for long enough in the oven or pan so that you won’t even want to add even more salt when at the dinner table.

drizzles of olive oil(on second thought the fat from the chicken is probably enough.So if you are concerned about fat calories leave the olive oil out–olive oil has the good fat–you just have to weight the pros and cons of good fat over caloric intake.

a liberal splash of red wine. We had a leftover bottle of 8 buck cab my cheapass roommate bought. It is marginally drinkable (I found it on the sweet and thin side) but it is still drinkable. I think you should only cook with wine that you could actually swallow. And when I say liberal we are coming close to a cup 🙂

baby carrots-about a bag’s worth

a deep baking dish, think Pyrex 9 by 11

aluminum foil

a preheated oven.

We have a toaster oven. All our meals are prepared in a toaster oven because we don’t have a real oven.

If you are fortunate enough to have an oven (which is most of you) set your oven to 450. If you use a toaster oven think about whether or not it runs hot or cool . Ours runs cool. So I set it to 480 (the highest setting) on bake.

But this is Neglected Drunken Chicken so fussing over oven temps isn’t all that vital.

Preparation:

rinse and pat dry the chicken,place in baking dish.

drizzle chicken with olive oil.

grind pepper over chicken.

sprinkle chicken with salt and a lot of paprika. The paprika will give the chicken a wonderful color.

chop garlic. I sprinkled one chopped garlic clove over each piece of chicken.

chop shallot. I sprinkled equal amounts of chopped shallot over each piece of chicken.

pour the chicken broth into the baking dish around the sides of the chicken. Repeat the same for the red wine.

arrange the baby carrots in the baking dish around the sides of the chicken.

put the bay leaf in the liquid.

put a sheet of tin foil over the dish (tent-don’t seal) and then put the dish in the oven.

Here comes the fun part:

Continue reading Neglected Drunken Chicken

Canned Tomatoes

I used to use very cheap canned tomatoes for sauce because I didn’t think it made a difference which brand I used since I was cutting corners anyway.Later I found out that not only do some cooks think canned are better anyway but that it does matter which brand.
Any reasonable supermarket will carry San Marzano. I am not lucky enough to live near a reasonable supermarket,though and most of the time end up using Del Monte. Once I’ve added a splash of Cabernet even Prego tastes better. I’m not that picky when it comes to tomato sauce and I wish I could tell you I could taste the difference between a can of San Marzano and San Luigi.

Foie Gras

I love foie gras
I never eat it,though.What I eat instead is pate champignon…the poor woman’s version-I guess.
Speaking of cheaper alternatives, I absolutely can’t stand that stuff they call mousse, as in pate mousse or whatever.It usually can be found in the higher end markets right next to the pate in a little tub with a seal of aspic covering it.
Call me immature but that really grosses me out!
The best foie gras I ever ate was at Le Cirque…the portion I received probably cost 25 dollars.I wasn’t paying and so I chowed down.

Second best was at Cafe des Artistes .My grandma and her late husband Charlie took me as a celebration for graduating SVA art school(college).
It is thanks to my grandmother that I know anything at all about fine food,though she is also obsessed with people being too heavy–so the two interests clash from time to time and mostly over the size of my ass.She is a fineboned bird-like creature.I am the spawn of Irish and Russian(erEastern European) peasant stock.And when I say peasant do you picture me laboring in the fields?I don’t do that anymore! But still, I am nobody’s little flower.
I also owe my dad some credit-for teaching me the value of cooking for yourself.
When I used to work with my dad we spent many hours talking about our shopping for good food ingredients and recipes.My father is a very good cook and I wish he would include in his books more of his recipes-or at least write a book based on his recipes alone.
I think it would go over really well.

I love you,Ham

I may be the worst person to write a food review.

Not only can I not remember the name of the store I am about to reccommend, I can’t even tell you the exact location!

I’m talking about this Polish deli on Bedford street in Williamsburg around north 5th street maybe north 6th–anyway it’s a block away from the Salvation Army store.So if you know Bedford street at all you probably already know the deli I’m talking about..It’s actually right next to another Polish deli–in fact the 2 stores are so alike that it doesn’t really matter which one you go to. All you need to remember is the ham rocks.

When it comes to pork these people know what they are doing.

Here you may purchase an entire pound of the best tasting ham you ever had; salty and smoky and just the right amount of sweetness, for six tiny dollars.There,in the cold case are two hams to choose from.One is smokier than the other and it’s texture is a little less fine as the one I’m raving about.The one to get is smoky enough but has a much better texture.

At six dollars a pound-I’m pretty sure an entire ham would be within anyone’s price range.

Dean and Deluca,Garden of Eden and other such high fallutin vendors of fine food would gasp at that 6 dollar a pound pricing.Not only does this polish ham taste a hundred times better than any I have ever purchased from those snobstores–you also don’t have to deal with snippy or zombified clerks at the register because the same person who slices your ham for you is the one who rings it up.Nice and homey and that is hard to find around town these days.