Recipe Tryouts #2: Rosemary Chicken

[cjsmith]

Recipe from erisian_fields. Mmmm, rosemary!

Lesson Number One: It is much easier to separate a chicken breast from the little pantiliner it sits on when it's not frozen. Often I repack such things, but this time I had the space and wouldn't have them in there long. Oops.

I put a big pile of chicken breasts in the crock pot. Then it said to sprinkle with salt, pepper, and rosemary. Oh, maybe I should have sprinkled each layer? But the meat had started to fuse. It had been in the freezer only overnight in a big stack and thus some wasn't fully frozen. I pried the layers apart to do the sprinkling. The rosemary smelled so good!

Liquids in -- and all the stuff I'd sprinkled on the topmost piece washed off. Duh! As the hours went on I stirred the top ones under.

Many hours later I pulled the meat out and tried for sauce. I strained some of the fat off, the stuff that wasn't liquid at crock temperatures. There was an awful lot of that floating around and I probably halved it. I poured all the rest (rosemary and all) into a pot on the stove. I stirred a couple tablespoons of cornstarch into cool water until it was smooth, then poured that in the pot too. I boiled it, and boiled it, and boiled it, and boiled it... and then gave up 'cause guests were coming! I poured the still-very-thin "sauce" onto my single-portion bits of meat and popped them all in the freezer for the future.

This morning I took one portion out, opened the lid a crack for heating, and mmmmmmmmm did it smell good. Even frozen! I adore rosemary, have I mentioned? I noticed the sauce did have little spots that looked like they had tried to become thick. I made some rice with that broth/sauce.

The kitties followed my every move. BOY were they interested.

It was good! Rice with the broth was a good idea. Next time, a tinch less lemon (I kinda went on the high side for that) and a bit more rosemary and pepper. The chicken breast was falling apart at a touch, and was a tad dry, so maybe also cook it less long?? And if I want a sauce, maybe more cornstarch.

Comments

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

Looks like you're getting into the progressive refinement thing in cooking. If you make large batches, you can do two or three things a week and cover most of your entree needs. We often do 12 chicken breasts at a time, marinating then grilling outside, and use that for half our dinners for a week. When you have a repertoire of 6-8 main courses you can do without thinking, you're suddenly considered a good cook. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I definitely like the progressive refinement concept. Any recipe I get I futz with. (When I'm particularly clever, I futz with it only after I've already tried it once.)

I've easily got six to eight main courses I can do without thinking -- they're just all really basic. Well, basic to ME. Meatloaf, fondue, lasagne... The problem is when I do something, anything, ELSE. ;-) I don't have breadth of knowledge. My readers have certainly seen that this weekend!

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

Yes, more cornstarch. If you boil it for 60 seconds and it isn't thick enough, add more in small amounts. I generally start with a 1/3 cup of cornstarch with almost equal amounts of water (I like it to pour out easily). Add in small amounts (a couple of tablespoons at a time)and let boil for a bit in between. You don't want to add too much or else it will seize on you. And then you ruin thanksgiving. (long story)

Dry chicken prob: either cook for less time OR buy chicken with skin & bones. They help keep moisture in the meat in. Also nice trick is to stuff your lemon & rosemary under the skin & then brown ckicken, skin side down, for a few minutes in seperate pan till skin is brown, then add to crockpot with accumulated juices. Helps flavor even if it adds a few more minutes work.

Also keeping rosemary in to make sauce is cool, but I would strain it before I served. But that's just me. I love rosemary flavor. but I don't like chewing on it.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Oh no! Someone in your family added a big batch of cornstarch and turned a gravy into a rock? Sounds like something I'd do. Patience is... um... something I'm working on, yeah, that's it.

I was trying to be real lazy, thus the boneless skinless. Maybe if I seared it first or something... oh, who am I kidding? Then it would be "a complicated recipe" and I probably wouldn't start it.

Ah. I don't mind chewing on it. Mmmmm rosemary. :-) But I'll keep in mind that other people may not like it that way!

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

The first thanksgiving after we got married we spent at a friends house. Who regaled us with the tale of a thanksgiving years past, when, after someone did in fact make gravy jello. Where upon the resident 8 y.o. piped up "oh no! You've ruined Thanksgiving!"

Fast forward 2 hours, Ron (whom you've met) was making the gravy, added too much cornstarch and made gravy jello. He tells us what he did and the entire room calls out "oh no! You've ruined Thanksgiving!"

And we've never let him live it down.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

*snicker* *giggle*

As with all comedic effect, timing and delivery are everything. Ron NAILED it.

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

I could say something really, really rude. But I'm not that mean...


Yes I am!

Its one of the few things he nailed!

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

*groan*

If Jello is the only thing you can nail, you may as well. *innocent look*

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

Man, I am so glad he doesn't read our blogs. =)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

In two years these comments may come back to bite us on the butt. O'course, there's some security through obscurity: there's SO MUCH CRAP in this journal that no one who found it now would go back to wade through it all!

[aelfie.livejournal.com]

too true!

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm...butt biting...drool...

Sorry. Perhaps I'm oversharing.

On LJ. Bwah-hah-hah-hah-hah!

[gdmusumeci.livejournal.com]

A little more cornstarch will thicken things up nicely as far as your sauce goes. It's a delicate balance between too much and not enough, in my experience. I have a recipe for Sicilian breaded veal that involves rosemary -- I'll have to make it for lunch. I shall pass it along if it works out and if you're interested. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm interested... if it's really really simple. It sounds delicious! Problem is, I am not only intimidated by recipes with lots of steps, I'm lazy. :-/

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

I avoid cooking chicken in a crockpot if I want it to cook all day (such as while I'm at work). I like it best if it's been in there only four to six hours because of that dryness problem. Some people don't mind it, but you see, I'm not a big fan of chicken to start with so it has to be perfect because I'll like it even a little.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Ah. Mine had been in for... six, maybe seven hours. When you say four to six, do you mean on high or on low? (Durn these crockpots with settings. Makes everything all complisticated.

[therobbergirl.livejournal.com]

Four hours on high, six hours on low.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'll try that next time.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

)

[tytso.livejournal.com]

Unlike using flour as a thickening agent (which is much tougher and something I've never gotten the hang of doing, having not done the french sauce cooking thing), cornstarch is pretty fast-acting; after adding cornstarch to the liquid, and stiring to distribute the cornstarch evenly across the mixture, once the mixture comes back to a boil, it should thicken right up within 15-30 seconds. You don't need to wait for a long time; if it isn't thick enough, just add more cornstarch. In fact, if you boil a corn-starch thickened sauce for more than about 3 minutes, it will likely thin out again. What I usually will do is mix some cornstarch with white wine or cream sherry, and then stir it until smooth, and then poor that in a bit at a time; it adds more flavor, and since you're adding it at the end of the cooking you don't have to sorry about as much of the aromatics in the wine getting driven off by the heat. I'll do this particularly when doing stirfry; although since there's a lot less liquid involved, usually I only need two teaspoons of corn starch mixed with about a quarter cup of white wine and/or sherry, and sometimes I won't use all of it, depending on how much liquid is in it.

I will often use tapioca starch instead of corn starch; there is a good article here that explains some of the tradeoffs between different kinds of thickeners (and there is a lot more than just corn starch).

I'm glad you're having fun experimenting with how to cook! It really isn't all that hard, and I find that even with the need to clean up, it can be faster than going out to eat at a restaurant, and since I enjoy futzing about in the kitchen, that's an additional bonus.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

The directions on the cornstarch package said to boil it for a specific time, something very short if I remember correctly -- one minute or perhaps two. When it wasn't thick enough at that point I knew I either needed more cornstarch or I simply needed to boil all the water off. I thought I'd used the right amount of cornstarch per amount of liquid I had (though I was by no means certain), and since I know what too much cornstarch acts like ;-) I opted for trying to boil all the water off. Obviously that takes longer than I had! In retrospect it's clear I didn't have enough cornstarch.

I like the idea of using white wine. I wasn't too sanguine about mixing wine and lemon juice (otherwise I might've done it in the crock), but maybe in a recipe that has wine to begin with I'll mix the cornstarch with some more wine rather than with water, before pouring it into the hot liquid.

Hmm, tapioca. Interesting. (Yeah, I stole the link from your comment pre-edit.) Thanks for the info!

I go through periods of experimentation. Most of them involve baking and are delicious. This one, well... :-)

Sadly, I find that even WITHOUT the need to clean up, a well-chosen restaurant is faster and tastier and cheaper. I have this discussion with Persons Who Cook sometimes. Cooking is cheaper if you're good at it and you do it a lot, or you have multiple mouths to feed, or "restaurant" means a fancy place. If enough of those things aren't true spoilage and mistakes will dominate the curve. With the proliferation of cheap and fast ethnic restaurants around here, the savings even after the learning curve aren't sufficient for me to commit to the lifestyle change required to get me there. Restaurants will always cook tastier food than I will.

But hey, I can afford some wastage while pretending to learn something. :-)

[tytso.livejournal.com]

It's probably also cheaper if you make bigger batches (so that one cooking session makes enough for 2-3 meals; usually I'll use leftovers for lunch or as part of a secondary disk for the next day's dinner. Also, sometimes I'll have leftovers for breakfast as well. Another thing is once you have a well-stocked pantry, it helps a lot since you're not having to buy new bottles of spices, sauces, etc. just for one dish. So a lot of it is about improving scalability when you do cook.

At least in the Boston area, if Stacey and I go out for dinner, it's usually a minimum of $25-$30 dollars for the two of us, and in contrast, as an extreme example, I can take a package of frozen spinach ($3 bucks), defrosted in the microwave and then sprinkle on shredded cheese (say one quarter of a package of pre-shredded cheese, $3) and fresh ground pepper (and salt to taste) and melt in the microwave, get 3-4 filets of Tilapia ($5) and steam for 11 minutes, and after it comes out of the steamer, sprinkle on chopped green onions, pulverized ginger suspended in wine which you can get in Chinatown, a dash of soy sauce, and about 1/4 cup of oil heated to just under the smoke point ($2 tops, of standard ingredients which are always in my pantry that I use for much of my cooking repreotory) and so this works out to less than half of what it costs when Stacey and I go out to eat a restaurant. (And this doesn't even include the really fancy places where main dishes are $20 each and when we normally get a bottle of wine marked up by a factor of 3, as opposed to using wines from my wine cellar.)

As far as time is concerned, since the spinach and cheese defrosts and later cooks in the microwave in parallel with the fish is steaming in the steamer (and I heat the oil during the last 2 minutes of the cooking time of the fish), the total cooking time is about 15-25 minutes, depending on how busy/distracted I am and how efficient I can be at parallizing tasks. And usually even when things are fully parallized, I still have some dead time where I can be washing dishes or otherwise cleaning the kitchen while I'm waiting for the microwave and steamer to finish. And since I do the cooking, usually Stacey will do the dishes afterwards. When you consider the time to drive to a restaurant and drive back, and then wait for the server to take the order and for the kitchen to actually cook the food, at least for some dishes I can definitely put a meal on the table faster than a local restaurant. (Of course, other dishes it will definitely take longer, and some dishes will cost more, for example if I'm using more expensive ingredients, like filet mignon--- but then again, a meal at a premium steak house would probably cost a lot more.)

But I guess if you're only cooking for yourself (unless you're making mashed potatos and/or french fries for you and Rob :-), it may be harder to make the cost and time numbers work out.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I did the rosemary chicken for six. (Now I'm out of Tupperware until I'm in the mood for rosemary chicken five more times.) Cooking for one tweaks the numbers a bit, even if only in things like freezer space.

It's also harder to make the cost and time numbers work out when I happen to *really enjoy* the takeout Thai place at $5.35 a plate and 5 minutes in line. There's no way I'm beating that for time AND money AND taste. No possible way.

If I cook it will have to be because I like to. I wish more folk would admit that. :-(

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Sorry, "admit" is too strongly worded. I guess I want some way to convey it, so that people see where I'm coming from when I claim this is the way it works out for me.

I suspect it's the choice of restaurant that makes a big difference.

[tytso.livejournal.com]

Thta's a good point. Anna's Taqueria in Boston does fall into that category ($5-6 bucks for really good tacos, burritos and quesadillas). And to be honest, on a programmer's salary saving $10 or $20 is not a major consideration (although if I ate out every night it would add up). The main reason why I cook is time (it still takes me 10 minutes each way to drive from Medford to Davis Square, and if I've been cooking there generally is some leftovers that I can nuke in a microwave for a very fast lunch/dinner), and because I do enjoy cooking.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

*nod* I have shorter drives to restaurants, so yeah, that adds up as well. (I get leftovers from many restaurants, too! Handy, that!)

[tytso.livejournal.com]

... but of course, one can't live on Anna Taqueria alone, and when one's fiance perfers nice restaurants like EVOO (two people, with appetizers, main dish, dessert, and wine will generally run us a little under $100), it can be quite a bit cheaper to cook at home, and whip out the candles and wine from the wine center for a nice romantic dinner. (And getting to a couch or bed for some postprandial cuddling is more convenient when you eat at home. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Another big advantage of having a romantic meal at home is that you don't have to wait until you've sobered up to head back! :-) O'course, you know how many romantic dinners I've had in the last twenty years. Heh. Fine dining, with Rob, is ihop.

Me, if I go to a really fancy $50/person restaurant, it's because the food and the ambiance and probably the twilight view over the Bay are all better there than anything I can create at home. (I suppose if I had a house with a stunning view and beautiful candlelit bay windows and and and, I probably wouldn't care about the price of the restaurant and would go just so I didn't have to do dishes.)

[tytso.livejournal.com]

For me at least, $50/person restaurants are in the "nice" category, but not necessarily in the "really fancy" category. If you're ever in New York City, I would heartily recommend the restaurant Acquavit (restaurant review here (http://www.newyorkmetro.com/pages/details/2270.htm)). Marcus Samuelsson is a really imaginative chef, and I strongly recommend the $125/person mutltiple (usually 15+) course tasting menu. The flavors are truly amazing, and the presentation of each bite-sized tidbit is always imaginative. Good stuff, but including wine, it's easily $150/person. And of course, with the waterfall located in a multi-story high dining room lined with black marble inside a skyscraper in midtown Manhatten, it has a very nice ambiance as well. A good place for fancy anniversary celebration (at least if your partner is into such things).

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

For me "really fancy" tops out before a place starts having "this menu" and "that menu". Probably $80 a head? See, there are things I can't/won't eat, and I've heard that some places with Menus (or even some places with Chefs) get seriously aggravated when their customers have individual issues. I have chosen to simplify my life by not going to places that would feed me (or charge me for) fish or seafood without giving me a choice about it.

I also tend to avoid crowded high-traffic snarly city situations with no place to park and long walks (particularly with the feet now). And then, well, there's Rob. So... I'm sure some of the things presented would be truly wonderful, and I do have a tinge of regret that I'll miss them, but I think maybe you can have my share of Acquavit's delights! :-)