Braised chicken with balsamic vinegar

I had to wait a little whle until the painful stupidity of what I did with this had faded a little bit.

I decided to make a braised chicken-and-potatoes dish. It was done entirely on the stovetop, which is nice during the summer when one doesn't want to turn on her oven more than is absolutely necessary.

It serves 4, and there's just one of me. I loaded up all of my leftovers to take with me to work for lunch for the week... and left the container sitting next to my front door. After 9 hours of it sitting out at room temperature, I wasn't taking any chances, so I only had one meal from this. Luckily, it was a very tasty meal.



3 bacon slices, cut crosswise into 1/4" strips
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
1 medium onion, thinly sliced (Vidalia, if you can find one)
1 head garlic, cloves separated and peeled, or 12-15 whole peeled garlic cloves
1 can (14.5 oz) low sodium chicken stock
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 lb waxy potatoes, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/2" wide half-moons (peeling not necessary)

Cook bacon in a deep 12-inch skillet over moderately low heat, stirring, until crisp, about 8 minutes. Transfer the bacon to paper towels to drain, reserving the bacon fat in skillet.

Season chicken with salt and pepper. Brown the chicken (in 2 batches if necessary) in bacon fat over moderately high heat, turning once, about 10 minutes. Transfer the browned chicken to a plate, cover loosely with aluminum foil, and pour off all but 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat from skillet.

Add the potatoes to the skillet and cook over medium heat until starting to brown, 8-10 minutes. Add the sliced onion. Cook, stirring frequently, until the onions are soft and slightly translucent, about 10 minutes.

Add the garlic cloves and chicken broth to the skillet, and bring to a boil for 1 minute.

Return chicken to skillet, nestling the chicken down into the sauce. Gently simmer, covered, until chicken is cooked through and potatoes are tender, about 30 minutes.

Transfer the chicken to a serving dish. Add the balsamic vinegar to the sauce and boil, uncovered, mashing the garlic cloves with the back of a spoon, until the sauce is slightly thickened. Serve chicken and potatoes together, sprinkled with crumbled bacon.

Stout floats

I poke through the new recipes on epicurious.com pretty frequently, and came across one for Guinness-based ice cream floats a couple of weeks ago. I love Guinness, I love vanilla ice cream... sure, I'll give that a try. There's even a pretty picture accompanying the recipe to suck me in further.

There was a bad review... I wrote it off as someone who likes beer but maybe isn't used to drinking Guinness. I got a weird face from someone at work when I told her I was thinking about making this... still, I believed that this was going to be delightful.

Epicurious does me wrong SO VERY RARELY, and I want to make that clear. I love them. I urge all bacon lovers to try out their Sweet and Spicy Bacon recipe, which is like heaven on earth. It takes the basic idea behind dipping bacon in maple syrup and takes it to the next logical step. I can't keep a batch around for longer than 24 hours (which is part of why I try not to make it often, because I have this notion that eating a pound of bacon in a day isn't all that healthy).

The stout floats didn't come out so well. And here's the problem. Ice cream floats should be sweet. Guinness is very bitter, coming in between 45-60 on the IBU scale. Guinness works in something like a chocolate stout cake, where there's some flavor complexity to offset the bitterness. It does NOT work when the only sweetness in the dessert is coming from vanilla ice cream, even premium vanilla ice cream. You just end up with ice cream that tastes bitter. Bleh. Lesson learned.

However, now I'm wondering if a combo of a hefeweizen and lemon sorbet or ice cream would work...

Cinnamon Raisin Loaf

I've been wanting to bake something to bring into work, and decided to make the Cinnamon Raisin Loaf from The Bread Bible (minus the raisins). It struck me as something that would be nice to have early on a Monday morning as we're getting ready for another week of lost library cards and weird altercations in the parking lot.

And if you can't tell, yes, I'm more-or-less baking my way through this book. "More or less" because I'm allergic to nuts, and there are a few nut-heavy recipes in there.

This bread, again, starts out with a dough sponge. Even though yesterday wasn't especially humid, I ended up needing to add a CUP more flour than the recipe calls for just to get it from "thick batter" to "kneadable dough" status. This isn't one of the recipes with listed errors, but 1 3/4 cups of water plus about 4 cups of flour seems off to me. However, seeing that I was supposed to have a "soft dough", I just added flour 1/4 cup at a time until I had something that felt like the right texture.

Once the dough has risen, it goes into the refrigerator to firm up so that it can be flattened into a rectangle. The dough is then coated with an egg wash and a cinnamon-sugar mixture, rolled up, left to rise again, and then baked.

Finished loaf cooling:


Yes, that's some cinnamon leakage on the side:


Sliced, showing actual SPIRALS!


The finished bread is moist and dense; I can't wait to try toasting up a slice or two. It's not too sweet, and makes a perfect breakfast treat.

"Levy's" Real Jewish Rye Bread

Today was the day, folks. It was finally time to branch out beyond wheat-based flours. I am enough of a dork that I'm excited by that. :)

I decided to finally make use of some of the rye flour that I got a few weeks ago. This called for rye bread. Specifically, a loaf of "Levy's" Real Jewish Rye Bread out of The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum.

My initial impression after reading the recipe? "Wow... that's all the rye flour that's used?" I naively had been expecting a rye bread to be mostly rye flour, but this particular one is mostly bread flour, with just 3/4 cup of rye flour.

This book hasn't let me down yet, so I went with it. I gathered up my ingredients: Arrowhead Mills Organic Rye Flour, Pillsbury bread flour, bulk instant yeast from the natural market, generic honey, sugar, and salt. The recipes calls for caraway seeds, which I didn't have, so I used sesame seeds instead. "Sesame Rye" had a nice ring to it.

Like many of the recipes in TBB, this bread starts with a sponge that ferments from 1 to 4 hours. I usually jump on my sponges after barely an hour, out of sheer impatience. This one, though, I allowed to sit for almost the full 4 hours. It was very perky by the end of the 4 hours, ready to be mixed and kneaded and left to proof.



I was very pleasantly surprised to see a tan dough, with lots of rye speckles... so much for my worries that there wasn't enough rye flour. The dough doubled in about 1.5 hours, got a gentle punching down via the "letter fold" method, and then doubled again.

Shaping time. I wanted this bread for sandwiches, so I eschewed the freeform loaf called for in the recipe in favor of a loaf pan. One last 45 minute rising, and then into the oven with some ice cubes for a nice chewy crust. It baked for 45 minutes, and came out like so:



And I know bakers want to get a gander at the inside:




The crumb is dense, moist, chewy... I love this bread. It's absolutely going into my standard rotation. And since rye flour is a whole grain flour, it has all of those whole grain health benefits--excellent! :)

Lemon Vinaigrette Roasted Chicken with Gorgonzola Mashed Potatoes

So, every month when I get the mailing from the cookbook club I'm in, there's a recipe printed inside the envelope. Usually, I forget about this entirely and throw it out. Luckily, I grabbed this one for Lemon Vinaigrette Roasted Chicken with Gorgonzola Mashed Potatoes, which is from No-Fuss Dinners by Caroline Marson.



It wasn't exactly "no-fuss", I'll admit. However, it was an acceptable amount of fuss, especially considering the rather tasty result. The lemon and Gorgonzola complement each other very nicely.

Lemon Vinaigrette Roasted Chicken with Gorgonzola Mashed Potatoes
2 unwaxed lemons
1 medium onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, halved
6 boneless chicken breasts, with skin (about 6 oz. each)
handful fresh thyme sprigs
2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp. cider or sherry vinegar
4 tbsp. honey
2/3 cup olive oil
sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
wilted spinach and steamed or sautéed green beans, to serve

Gorgonzola mash:
3 lb. baking potatoes, peeled & cut into 8 pieces
3 fresh rosemary sprigs (optional)
1 cup milk, warmed
5 tbsp. unsalted butter
4 oz. Gorgonzola cheese, cubed
sea salt

small roasting pan

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Grate zest and squeeze juice from 1 lemon and set aside. Thinly slice remaining lemon. Scatter lemon slices, onion, and garlic over the base of the roasting pan. Place chicken on slices. Season well with salt and pepper, and sprinkle with thyme sprigs.

Whisk together the reserved lemon zest and juice, vinegars, honey, and olive oil in a bowl. Pour vinaigrette over chicken and cook in preheated oven for 25-30 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through.

Meanwhile make the Gorgonzola mash. Rinse potatoes and cook in a large pan of boiling salted water with rosemary (if using) for 12-15 minutes. Drain and mash. Put potatoes back into the pan, and stir briefly over low heat to remove excess moisture.

Beat in warm milk and butter and season well. Stir thoroughly until you have a smooth paste and a peaking consistency—add extra milk if necessary. Gently fold in the Gorgonzola just before you’re about to serve.

Remove chicken from the oven and then from the pan; set aside in a warm place. Place pan over a medium heat and bubble juices until syrupy.

To serve, place a large spoonful of mashed potatoes on each warmed plate and put a chicken breast on the top. Spoon over the lemon juices and accompany with wilted spinach and green beans. Serves 6.