Lake Lure Cottage Kitchen

This is one of those recipes that you can file in your easy and do ahead file. It is time again for Barefoot Blogger Thursday and this week’s recipe was chosen by Todd of A Cooking Dad. Ina Garten’s Indonesian Ginger Chicken requires only prep time at the beginning and then it marinates in the sauce until you are ready to put it in the oven. The honey and soy sauce thicken to coat the chicken and the ginger and garlic impart a flavorful note.

The next time I make this chicken (and there will be a next time) I will make the following changes. I will add another flavor component like pepper flakes or hot sauce. It was a bit too sweet. I will take the skin off of the chicken for a lower fat version. And I will use dark meat only. Although I love chicken breasts, the thighs and legs seemed to absorb the sauce flavors better. I also halved the recipe for just the two of us. Thank you Todd for choosing another Barefoot Contessa winner.

INDONESIAN GINGER CHICKEN

Ingredients:

1 cup honey
3/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup minced garlic (8 to 12 cloves)
1/2 cup peeled and grated ginger root
2 (3 1/2 lb.) chickens, quartered with backs removed

Directions:

Cook the honey, soy sauce, garlic and ginger root in small saucepan over low heat until honey is melted. Arrange the chicken in 1 layer in a shallow baking pan, skin side down, and pour on the sauce. Cover the pan tightly with aluminum foil. Marinate overnight in the refrigerator.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Place the baking pan in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover the pan, turn the chicken skin side up, and raise the temperature to 375 degrees F. Continue baking for 30 minutes or until the juices run clear when you cut between a leg and thigh and the sauce is a rich dark brown.

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It doesn’t seem possible but my blog is one year old tomorrow! Last January I started writing it after spending a year reading other people’s food blogs. I decided that I wanted to be a part of this supportive community of fellow foodies. I haven’t been disappointed. You have all been fun to get to know and I can’t imagine my life without this connection. Even my very first post received a comment from my long ago cooking teacher and inspiration, Irena Chalmers. What a boost that was to my morale. My dear son, Michael, also supported my first efforts and my daughter-in-law Kristen has become a contributor to this space, as she is also an excellent cook.

Another one of my inspirations has always been Julia Child who started the cooking revolution and sparked my interest from the very beginning. So in honor of my bloggiversary I made her Lentilles garnies; lentilles en cassoulet, found in From Julia Child’s Kitchen.

This dish is brilliant. Cassoulets usually take hours to cook and involve many cuts of meat and layering of flavors. This dish can be done in much less time. I used only sausages in the dish. Also, lentils cook much faster than dried white beans. The recipe is brilliant because she extracted so much flavor from it by mellowing it in wine and a mirepoix of vegetables and a reduction of the meat juices. It was hardy and filling on a cold blustery day. David, my in house supporter, fixed his sourdough baguettes on the hearth grill to go along with it.

LENTIL CASSOULET (From Julia Child’s Kitchen)

There is something fundamental about cooking over an open fire. I love the flames, I love the smells, and of course, I love the taste. _ Alice Waters, chef, owner of Chez Panisse.

I received my Christmas present early this year. The fireplace in our kitchen is raised to waist high and I have been contemplating the possiblities of hearth cooking. I originally wanted a pizza oven, but it was both cost prohibitive and impossible to add to a second story chimney. But cooking in a standard fireplace is a tradition that dates back centuries. I started looking into the tools needed to do hearth cooking. As it turns out there are many options. One of the old time ways of cooking and the simplest is done in a cast iron spider, which is basically a frying pan with legs. Spiders usually had lids and were used to make such things as cornbread. The spider was placed in the embers and then embers were scooped over the lid and the heat from all around the vessel would bake the cornbread. But one of the easiest methods of cooking in the fireplace is with a grill. I first saw this done on Napa Style with Michael Chiarello. He has a great hearth grill on his website. I would have gotten that one, but it would not get here by Christmas. This wonderful hearth grill that I ordered from Amazon arrived two days before Christmas.

We were entertaining friends on Christmas Eve and with the cold weather and snow we have been having in the North Carolina mountains, I thought it would be fun to grill steaks in our fireplace. Actually I can’t take credit for how great the steaks came out. David took to grilling in the fireplace like a caveman over an open fire. He built a roaring fire in the afternoon and kept adding logs to it until he had a good bed of smoldering ashes. The grill height is adjustable so you can cook as close or as far away from the heat as you like.

Our meal was memorable and our friends dear to us. I wish all of you as Merry a Christmas as we have had. We will celebrate again with our family on Monday.

Tonight we will be doing spatchcocked Cornish hens. I think next year I would like a rotisserie. Please tell Santa.

“The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook makes me daydream of a long ago summer on a Pawleys Island back porch, the aroma of the marsh and the dinner table mingling with laughter of many generations of families and a few too many glasses of wine. Oh to the magic of being at table together in the South.” –Frank Stitt, author of Frank Stitt’s Southern Table

While browsing in an artists’ co-op in historic downtown Sanford, I found a bookmarked copy of The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook. The book belonged to the group of artists who had just hosted a studio walk and had made recipes from this recently published cookbook; wonderful things like St. Cecilia Punch, cheese straws and spiced pecans. While my husband was looking at the artwork I stayed with the cookbook and found many tantalizing recipes.

The Lee brothers grew up in Charleston, SC but now make New York City their home. They are food writers for the New York Times and have a mail order company for all things southern. On a snowy winter day back in 1994 in a tiny tenement apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhatten the brothers made their first batch of boiled peanuts. They were homesick for this regional favorite. They discovered other expat Southerners who loved the peanuts and needed a fix,and their mail order business was born. In order to expand their line of southern specialties they traveled from Kentucky to Northern Florida finding sources for such esoteric foods as sorgham molasses and fig preserves. They learned what made a good barbecue sauce from the vinegar based Eastern North Carolina sauce to the South Carolina mustard based sauce. Their searches began to be chronicled in such magazines as Food and Wine and Travel and Leisure.

I had to have the cookbook. It is a compilation of recipes from all regions of the south and many from their native Charleston. The first recipe I made from the cookbook was Country Captain. I have been making a version of this for many years. It is a mainstay of Junior League cookbooks all over the south. The port of Charleston saw many products from the orient in the eighteenth and nineteeth centuries. Curry powder was one of them. This dish became very popular during FDR’s presidency when it became his favorite while vacationing in Warm Springs, Georgia. According to the Lee brothers a southern curry is not a fiery thing and it is often softened further by sweet raisins or currants. I find that the curry flavor is not at all pronounced.

The country captain makes a good dish for a buffet. I made it with a combination of chicken thighs and boneless chicken breasts which I added to the liquid after the thighs had cooked for awhile. It is visually lovely with the red tomato sauce, browned almonds, plump cranberries (my substitution) , bacon, and green parsley. Serve the dish over rice.

COUNTRY CAPTAIN (Adapted from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook)

1/2 cup Chicken broth
1/2 cup dried currants, raisins, or cranberries
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste
1/4 pound slab bacon or 4 strips thick-cut bacon, diced
12 chicken thighs ( I used 4 skinless chicken thighs and 3 boneless breasts cut in half)
2 1/2 cups carrots, peeled and sliced 1/4 inch thick
2 cups yellow bell peppers diced (I used green)
2 cups yellow onions, diced (about 2 medium onions)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 28 ounce can crushed tomatoes, with juice
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
4 cups cooked white rice
2/3 cup slivered, toasted almons
1/2 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Pour the broth into a small saucepan and bring to a boil over high heat. Place the currants in a small bowl and pour enough broth over them to cover; let stand. In another small bowl, combine the curry powder, salt, and pepper and reserve.

3. Scatter the bacon in a 3 to 4 quart enameled cast iron pot or Dutch oven over medium high heat. With a slotted spoon, move the pieces around occasionally until the bacon is firm and crisp. With the slotted spoon, transfer to a small bowl lined with paper towel and reserve.

4. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons of fat from the pot, reserving the excess fat in a small bowl. Brown the chicken pieces in batches over medium high heat, taking care not to crowd them in the pot, until they are golden brown, about 5 minutes per side. Add the reserved bacon fat 1 teaspoon at a time if the pot becomes too dry. Remove the chicken and reserve in a medium bowl.

5. Add the carrots, bell peppers, onions and garlic to the pot and cook until slightly softened, about 6 minutes. Add the tomatoes, spice mixture, ginger, and currants and their broth, reduce the heat to medium low, and simmer until the tomatoes have cooked down to a puree and the sauce has thickened around the vegetables, about 8 minutes.

6. Nest the chicken thighs gently in the vegetable sauce. Cover the pot and transfer to oven. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove cover, add the chicken breasts and bake uncovered for an additional 20 minutes.

7. Remove from oven and sprinkle with almonds, bacon and parley. Serve over rice.

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When you get home from a vacation and want something that feels healthy, but kind of eases you back into your normal routine, this is a good choice. We have just returned from a wonderful four days at Disney World with our Granddaughter and our extended family. There was lots of good food to eat and many quick snacks that were not so good, but they all kept us going while we navigated the complex acres that comprise Disney World.

On our way home we made a quick stop at the grocery store and picked up salmon, puff pastry, leeks, and green beans. The recipe for the Salmon Wellington came from one of my favorite magazines, Coastal Living. Whenever we feel we have overindulged, a fish dish always figures into our meal plans. My husband thought the puff pastry was a little rich for a week night meal until he tasted it with the salmon and decided that maybe even a Tuesday night was worthy of being celebrated.

The whole meal can be prepared in 40 minutes according to Coastal Living. The Salmon is served with roasted green beans which are cooked at the same time. With a meal like this, who needs takeout.

SALMON WELLINGTON

2 large leeks, white part only, thinly sliced and cleaned
2 tablespoons butter
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 tsp lemon zest
1/2 tsp salt, divided
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper, divided
1 package frozen puff pastry (2 sheets), thawed
4 (5 to 6 ounce) skinless salmon fillets

Saute leeks in butter in a medium skillet over medium heat about 5 minutes or until softened. Stir in garlic, and cook 1 minute. Add wine; cook 5 minutes or until liquid evaporates. Remove from heat, and stir in lemon zest, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 tsp pepper.

Roll out each pastry sheet on a lightly floured surface into a 12 inch square. Cut each in half, forming 4 (12-x6-inch) rectangles. Spoon 1/4 cup leek mixture lengthwise down the center of each rectangle. Sprinkle fillets evenly with remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and remaining 1/8 teaspoon pepper; place fillets lenghtwise on top of leek mixture. Fold short sides of pastry over fillets. pinch togethet long sides of each pastry to seal. Place Wellingtons, seam side down, on an ungreased baking sheet.

Bake at 425 degrees for 18 to 20 minutes or until pastry is golden brown. Let stand 5 minutes. Cut each pastry diagonally in half using a serrated knife. Makes 4 servings.

Roasted Green Beans

Toss 1 pound trimmed green beans with 2 teaspoons olive oil. Arrange in a single layer in a shallow pan. Bake at 425 degrees, stirring once, 18 to 20 minutes or until lightly browned and crisp-tender. Sprinkle with salt and pepper; toss to combine.

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