Without Further Delay... Sauteed Chicken with Tarragon, Garlic Mashed Potatoes

I hate excuses, so I won't bother offering any for the delay in posting. I'm trying to be better, but I can't make any guarantees over the next two months or so. I am behind in posting at least two others dishes - they are completed (oxtail and short ribs - they were good and great, in that order) but I have not found the time to post. Maybe I can make headway this weekend.

Let's get back on task - I made the sauteed chicken breasts with tarragon sauce last night - check it out:

The breasts are rubbed with a half curry/half paprika mixture you see on the left in the photo below and they are placed in the refrigerator to marinate for two hours.

Keller suggests a number of side dishes with the chicken, I wanted something hearty to go along with the two feet of snow that just fell outside, so I selected the garlic mashed potatoes.

A quick aside - I have to spell check every time I spell the word potatoes thanks to Dan Quayle. This one incident singlehandedly makes me anxious every time I spell it.

The recipe calls for potatoes (anxiety) that are two inches in diameter - mine were about four inches in diameter, so I had to cut them in half to cook in a reasonable amount of time. Keller says to boil them gently as to disintegrate the outer layer - since I exposed the flesh by cutting them int eh fist place, I tried to monitor the boil a little more closely to keep the starch from getting too beat up. The potatoes were simmered for about 20 minutes before they were drained and allowed to dry - then peeled and pureed. Keller notes that the potatoes, once cooked and pureed, can sit at room temperature for a number of hours; thus, I was able to have the potatoes nearly complete while waiting for the chicken to finish marinating.

Included in the puree is butter and garlic confit. The garlic confit is slowly simmered in oil for 40 or so minutes until the garlic is meltingly tender. You can see that in action (inaction?) here.

I pureed the potatoes in three batches through my food mill. You will notice that the peeled potatoes are in smaller pieces - my food mill sometimes goes on strike from working so I had to make them nice and small so my mill wouldn't complain and revolt. THe butter and garlic confit are passed through the mill as well.

The resulting texture is uniform and quite smooth but not gluey. The mill does not overwork the potatoes and the medium-sized blade still leaves just enough texture.

Two Hours Later...

Here is the mise for the pan sauce - from the top: white wine (sauvignon blanc), chicken stock (homemade using the Ruhlman method), tarragon, minced shallot.

Chicken is taken out of the fridge, pounded to a uniform thickness (about 1/4") and salted.

Once browned, the chicken is flipped for a kiss of heat on the other side then held in a 200 deg. oven. Look at the beautiful color the spices give the chicken - and the smell at this point? Oh my.

Excess oil now drained from the pan, it's sauce time. The shallots are softened with a little butter, then the wine is added and allowed to reduce followed by the stock. The fresh herbs are added at the end as are a few tablespoons of butter to enrich the sauce.

The final result:

The potatoes were finished by whipping in warm cream over a low flame to heat everything thoroughly. I didn't have chives (probably would have been a bit better) but I did have green onion to finish the dish:

Tasting Notes:

At first thought I anticipated the curry would overpower the dish but I was wrong. The curry offers a nice aromatic spice note to the chicken that is complemented by the paprika. I was particularly impressed by the way the flavors all work so well together; I thought the curry and tarragon would be competing flavors but they were rather complementary. This is most certainly a dish that will be added to the rotation - the preparation was very, very simple; the flavors were complex and interesting and the dish was not heavy or overpowering. This dish is also versatile - depending on the side dish, this could be a great meal for any season. I might grow some tarragon in the garden this year to motivate me to make this dish again and again.

I also think this dish is a nice introduction to the flavor of curry. I happen to love curry in almost any form but I have a number of friends that steer clear of the stuff. My guess is that they don't really know whether or not they like curry - they just think they won't like it and thus avoid it. The curry in this dish is a bit of a secret or surprise ingredient. The tarragon sits first chair, but the aroma and flavor of the chicken adds an additional component to the taste. I also think the spices give the dish a beautiful presentation. The chicken is strikingly beautiful against the fresh green tarragon in the sauce.

Beyond all the flavorful reasons to make this, it is quick and easy. The chicken takes less than five minutes to cook, the sauce about five minutes and the potatoes can be pureed in advance. This may have been the easiest dish that I have made thus far and it is certainly not short on taste.

Sources:

Chicken from Wegmans

Spices from The Spice House

Potatoes, shallot, green onion from Wegmans

Pan-Roasted Chicken with Sweet Sausage and Peppers

Sausage and peppers - that's a gimme - I'm not sure that I have ever disliked any sausage and pepper dish. But, I can honestly say that I've only had sausage and peppers slapped on a bun watching some sporting event, wishing I had extra napkins as the sausage and pepper juice is causing structural failure of the bun and I am paralyzed because I have sausage and pepper juice running down my face, hands and arms.

What I'm saying is sausage and peppers with a fork and knife is not exactly part of my food vernacular.

This recipe combines the pan-roasted chicken and sausage with the recipe for peperonata rustica. Let's get going with the chicken:

I started with breaking down a small chicken into the eight piece cut that is very well illustrated in the book and placing the pieces in a brine. This is the famous Keller lemon chicken brine that has made many a foodie swoon over his fried chicken dish. The brine contains salt, honey, garlic, lemon, bay leaf, peppercorns and parsley and made far more than I needed for this recipe so I put the extra brine (non-chicken-y) in a freezer bag and into the chest freezer for use at a later date.

While that was brining, I got to work on the peperonata rustica - a cooked pepper dish that contains several fresh peppers and some dried peppers as well. The peppers cook in a chicken stock base and since I was running low on chicken stock I made the recipe from the book.

Chicken stock, for the longest time, was an ingredient that I used to never make at home (I was a Swanson low sodium box broth guy) but after discovering Michael Ruhlman's technique for making stock, I now exclusively use homemade. I keep a bag of chicken bones in the freezer and once the bag gets full, I make stock. The AHaH version is a very light (in color and flavor) stock that I would probably not replicate for my everyday stock uses. I like to make darker stock from roasted bones rather than a lighter stock like this one. Keller concedes that this is a light stock by design and he offers suggestions for making the stock stronger, but this technique is much more complicated than the Ruhlman way to which I have become accustomed.

Maybe complicated is the wrong word, perhaps intricate or labor intensive would be more accurate. The Keller way has one rinse the bones, simmer the stock slightly off the burner (to create a convection that naturally gathers the impurities - a great tip), pour ice into the stock to congeal the fat and make it easier to remove, add the veggies (carrots, leeks, onions), simmer, skim, skim, skim, ladle gently through a conical strainer, and chill rapidly. That's a lot different and a lot more attention than roast bones, cover with water, put in low oven for howeverlong add veggies in the last hour, strain, chill.

Now, all the steps in Keller's version will result in a clean, clear stock, trust me - but I'm just not that picky in general. I would use such a technique for a special recipe or occasion (or if I was having a all-you-can-cook kind of weekend) but not on a consistent basis.

Onto the peppers. They are tossed with oil, salt and pepper and roasted in a 375 oven. They are removed, peeled and torn into strips.

After the red and yellow peppers are roasted, peeled and torn they are combined with piquillo peppers (if you haven't had these little guys, you are missing out; they are like a jacked-up steroid injected roasted red pepper in a tiny little package), soffritto, the chicken stock from above and piment d'Espelette.

The piquillo peppers

Onions for soffritto

Frying the tomato for the soffritto

The mixture is combined and simmered for thirty minutes to soften the peppers and also to allow the flavors to meld. Back to the chicken. The chicken is patted dry and sauteed. The book suggests a saute time of between thirteen and fifteen minutes - I found this to be way too long based on the sugar content of the brine. As you can see from the picture below, I was getting some deep color on the chicken and these were turned after about seven minutes. Clearly all cook tops vary - so one can't strictly adhere to the recipe; had I done that, I would have had what looked like Kingsford briquettes for dinner. However, if a nice representative from Wolf or Viking would like to contact me about trying out their product for the next thirty years or so because I have a glass top range that I hate, hate, hate - drop me an email and we'll chat because I loathe my range.

Whoooo. I feel better. Back to the chicken... Dry it:

Saute it and add the sausages (I got some great sweet sausages without fennel seeds from Giacomo's):

Mix in the peppers and put in the oven to finish cooking the chicken:

Plate and eat:

The verdict? Damn good. The porky richness goes great with the juicy, briny chicken and the peperonata rustica had it's own sweet, tart note that rounded out the dish perfectly. It was a very satisfying, almost light dish. There is no heavy sauce, nothing that sits heavy in the stomach. I would say that I was surprised that this combination worked so well - I didn't know that the chicken would work with the sausage and pepper classic combination. Hell, I didn't know if I would be able to eat sausage and peppers with a fork and knife. But I did, and it was good. I mean, look at these plates! It looks like a pack of wolves ate dinner at my house:

The other nice part about this dish? Left over peperonata rustica to make Eggs Flamenco (in the book at the end of the peperonata rustic recipe).

Cook the eggs in the peperonata with a little extra stock to moisten the mixture and re-warm the sausages:

And serve (and eat with same pack-of-wolves voracity):

Sources:

Air-chilled chicken from Wegmans

Sweet Sausage from Giacomo's (Easton, PA)

Piment d'Espelette from Savory Spice (although it is available again from Market Hall)

Eggs from Happy Farm