How the French do rustic: Chicken Chasseur (Hunter’s Chicken)

Chicken, mushrooms and tomatoes are at the heart of this rustic, one-pot dinner, traditionally cooked by French hunters. Recipe below.

Chicken Chasseur

[su_dropcap style=”flat”]L[/su_dropcap]ast week’s recipe, Marion’s Polish Hunter’s Stew, came about because John over at Kitchen Riffs shared a recipe for an Italian hunter’s dish, Chicken Cacciatore. When I saw it, I realized Marion had never made bigos for the blog and put in a request. (We’ll share a link to John’s recipe in the Kitchen Notes below.) So when I saw a French hunter’s dish somewhere else, I of course had to make it. Continue reading “How the French do rustic: Chicken Chasseur (Hunter’s Chicken)”

Not weeknight quick, but company worthy: Pan-roasted Chicken with Cranberries

The signature tartness of fresh cranberries turns pan-roasted chicken, potatoes, shallots and herbs into a complex, company-ready meal. Recipe below.

Pan-roasted Chicken with Cranberries

Somewhere in our stash of vintage advertising ephemera is a cardboard novelty sign that probably hung behind a bar somewhere in the fifties, or maybe the forties: “I’m not a slow bartender. I’m not a fast bartender. I’m a half fast bartender.” That pretty much describes my cooking style. Continue reading “Not weeknight quick, but company worthy: Pan-roasted Chicken with Cranberries”

Oregano dials up the savory in one-pot Braised Chicken Thighs with Potatoes and Peas

Dried oregano, garlic and onions create an aromatic base for a weeknight quick one-pot dinner of chicken, potatoes and peas. Recipe (and thoughts on dried herbs) below.

Braised Chicken with Potatoes and Peas

I go through phases with herbs. For a long time, herbes de Provence showed up in everything (I even added it to scrambled eggs for a while). More recently, it was tarragon—fresh from our yard up through the fall, then dried. Now I seem to be cooking with oregano a lot. Continue reading “Oregano dials up the savory in one-pot Braised Chicken Thighs with Potatoes and Peas”

Simply inspired: Roast Chicken with Potatoes, Lemons and Capers

Roast Chicken with Potatoes, Lemons and Capers makes a flavorful, beautiful one-pot meal when paired with a salad. Recipe below.

roast-chicken-potatoes

Recipe ideas can come from just about anywhere. This one began with a comment by Laura over at What I Like on last week’s Meyer Lemon Pizza with Goat Cheese and Bacon recipe. She said, in part, “I love roasted lemons.” I’d never thought of roasting lemons before, but suddenly synapses were firing, and I was picturing roasting little red potatoes with lemons and rosemary. Then I remembered the whole chicken lurking uncooked in the fridge, and things just kind of snowballed.

I love this kind of cooking. As much as I also love poring over cookbooks, magazines and the daily bombardment of Internet food for inspiration, there’s something exciting about starting with the simplest idea (roasted lemons, in this case) and turning it into a meal. Continue reading “Simply inspired: Roast Chicken with Potatoes, Lemons and Capers”

Rustic but no plain Jane: One-skillet Chicken with Black-eyed Peas and Cherry Tomatoes

Fresh black-eyed peas, green beans and cherry tomatoes combine with wine, thyme and bacon to make this one-skillet meal complex, layered and delicious. Recipe below.

skillet-chicken

I love Mark Bittman dearly. And I’ve grown even fonder of him since he backed off his edict against canned beans. Sort of. Recently on his blog, he did a recipe with canned chickpeas [I’ll wait for the gasps to die down] and grudgingly admitted that canned beans were sometimes acceptable, but that dried beans were still better.

I don’t know about you, but for us, canned beans are one of the greatest cooking conveniences known to mankind. Yes, when we have the foresight and luxury of soaking beans overnight, we’ll sometimes do so. But honestly, the outcome is far from certain for me when I do. So naturally, when I had the chance to one up Mr. Bittman by skipping his dried legumes and cooking fresh black-eyed peas, I had to do it.

Not being a southerner myself but being surrounded by southern relatives pretty much from birth on, black-eyed peas have never not been a part of my life. I’m sure some relatives cooked them fresh, but when my mother was in the kitchen, they always came from a can. So I took up that practice on the rare occasions I cooked with them—my Curried Steaks with Black-eyed Pea Salsa, for instance.

Still, more than one person has told me that fresh black-eyed peas were better than canned. Continue reading “Rustic but no plain Jane: One-skillet Chicken with Black-eyed Peas and Cherry Tomatoes”