Chicken/Poultry Archives

Skip The White Meat, Braise The Dark Meat and Your Turkey Will Never Be Dry

Here’s the thing about turkey. If I were making it for my family, this year, I’d go the Gina DePalma route (click that link for her excellent essay on how to keep it simple): a whole roasted bird, some butter, some stuffing, the end. But, as it happens, I’m not cooking for my family this year (we’re going out! “It’s just easier”) so last week I made a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving for some friends and threw tradition out the window. The first thing to go? The white meat. Sure, you can monitor the temperature and hope that it doesn’t taste like sandpaper when you roast it in the oven, but why bother when the dark meat–legs and thighs–are so much better? (Note: if you must have white meat, slow-roasting the breast is best.) Best of all, if you braise them, you can do everything the day before and it will only taste better. Let me repeat that. You can have all the turkey cooked the day before and don’t have to stress on Thanksgiving Day. That’s worthy of a parade right there.

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Turkey Leg Confit (Fancy Dinner, Cheap Ingredient)

America’s obsession with breasts goes far beyond the pages of Maxim magazine; it’s readily apparent in the poultry section. A large chicken breast for two now costs as much as a whole chicken. And a turkey breast can run as much as $15. America: stop your obsession with cleavage and lower your head a little. See those legs down there? They’re just as meaty, ten times more flavorful and very, very cheap. How cheap? Look how much I paid for these two enormous turkey legs.

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The Ultimate Weeknight Dinner: Braised Chicken Thighs and Cauliflower with Olives and Capers

You’re not going to believe me, but I’m telling you the truth: the dinner you see above? It’s cheap and easy.

Don’t balk! I kid you not. Last Monday, I made this dinner for less than $20 and it was one of the best things that I’ve made in a long time. I didn’t even use a recipe, I just whipped it up based on an idea I had. The idea went something like this: what if I buy chicken thighs and braise them in white wine vinegar with onions, garlic, olives, capers, and cherry tomatoes and serve it all on plain couscous? It seemed like a foolproof plan for deliciousness.

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Kachin Chicken Curry

Confession: if I lead a post with an image that isn’t the finished dish, that’s because the finished dish isn’t very pretty. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t very good. In this case, the dish comes from a book that’s been sitting on my shelf for a long time, a book that my publisher published around the same time my book came out: Burma by Naomi Duguid. As much as I felt like I went on an adventure with my book, this book is The Amazing Race to my Double Dare. What’s so remarkable about Duguid’s work here is how immersive it is: the book isn’t just a cluster of recipes, it’s a beautifully assembled collection of stories, pictures and anecdotes about life in Burma.

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Chicken and Hummus Together On A Plate with Pita

When we had guests staying with us last week, and more friends popped over, I found myself making big dinners for everyone and I loved doing it. The idea was to serve up lots of stuff with more stuff on the side (like I did on Taco Night) and the biggest hit of all was this dinner I made of chicken, hummus, Israeli salad, pita and–on the side–that bright green condiment known as schug. People couldn’t get enough of it including me.

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Chicken Tagine with Preserved Lemons and Olives

British food culture intrigues me. It’s a center-of-the-universe kind of thing; Americans think our food celebrities (everyone from Anne Burrell to Guy Fieri) are universally famous, whereas, across the pond, there exists a whole other universe of equally prominent food figures that most Americans have never heard of. We have Mark Bittman, they have Nigel Slater. We have Rachael Ray, they have Nigella Lawson (though we had her here for a bit with “The Taste”). We have Paula Deen, they have Two Fat Ladies. You get the idea.

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Chicken Gets Frisky When You Give It Whiskey

The other day I Tweeted a recipe and people really dug it. It’s not so much a recipe as it is an idea: “Next time you take a roast chicken out of the pan, pour in a glug of Maker’s Mark and whisk in 3 Tbs butter on high heat. You’re welcome.”

The truth was I’d only done it once before and liked it so much, I wrote that Tweet. Then after writing that Tweet I felt inspired to do it again and take pictures. That’s how this post was born.

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Harvest Roast Chicken with Grapes and Olives

I am so proud of my friend Deb Perelman and her Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, which is taking the world by storm. She’s proving, with her New York Times bestseller status and Amazon-clobbering sales rank, that food bloggers are here to be taken seriously. It’s especially exciting because Deb and I have the same cookbook agent and we sold our books around the same time, toasting our endeavors with a toasted marshmallow milkshake at Stand. And on December 17th, we’ll be sharing the stage at the New York Public Library for a discussion all about our books and food blogging in general. (Details below.)

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