simple chicken

Yikes! It's been nearly a week since my last post. Doesn't mean I haven't been eating though, that's for sure. Life has been a little hectic lately, and I've turned to simple food prep.

Case in point was last night. It'd been a busy day, and I opted to get in a workout late in the afternoon. By that time, Jennifer had gotten called away for work, and neither of us had given dinner a thought. Martha to the rescue. Actually, the rescuer was that little magazine called Everyday Food published by MSL. It's really a nice compilation of quick and yummy recipes. I grabbed a pack of chicken breasts on the way home from the gym and prepped the recipe for cayenne-spiced chicken with avocado salsa. When Jennifer called to let me know she'd be home in 20 min, I threw on the chicken, prepared a small salad, and dinner was on the table when she came in the door. And the spice rub is so simple - 1 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper, 1/4 tsp cayenne, that's it.

The addition of a spice rub or an herb can transform something ordinary into a dish that really offers lots of taste. It's a matter of having it on hand.

Sage

It's restaurant week here in Boston, so for my birthday this past Monday I wanted to dine at Sage. I've eaten there a few times and have never had a bad meal. Usually we eat at the bar and split an appetizer and entry. But this time we had a real table, as we had 5 others joining us in the celebration.

I learned of Sage's special restaurant week menu in the local paper and was pysched to give it a try. We started the meal with a cocktail. I figured, hey, it's my birthday, I'm having champagne so I ordered a very tasty kir royal. We then ordered a round or arancini - risotto balls - for the table. The coating was nice and crispy and the risotto inside was warm, still sticky. They were huge, too! One was definitely enough per person.

For my first course I had a mushroom and buffala mozzarella tart. The presentation was more like a Sicilian pizza - square crust with toppings. Doesn't matter what the term is, the tart was fantastic. I was very happy with my choice. And it went well with the wine selection. Jennifer ordered a bottle of tempranillo. Red, not too sweet, bold but not overpowering, with a bit of a bite to it. another good choice.

My second course was a greatly anticipated pork shank, with rabe and a slow-roasted tomato. The pork shank is what had sold me on choosing Sage when I had read the menu in the paper the week before. I am a big fan of pork. And I had an incredibly tasty pork shank at Jacob Wirth about 2 years ago and I still think about it whenever I pass by. And I was greatly disappointed with the shank at Sage. Very little meat. I have this thing I do when I eat: I eat the rest of the stuff on my plate and save my favorite for last. I had eaten a bit or two of pork that had fallen from the main shank, and then proceeded to eat the rabe and the tomato. Both were excellent, by the way, especially the tomato. Then I dug into my shank. What looked like a nice hunk of meat was a big glob of grissle. There was a bit of meat on it, but for the size of the shank, I'd say it was 80% grissle. It just was poor meat selection on their part and a huge disappointment for me. My friend who ordered the steak was also disappointed. And a friend who ate at Sage a while ago also had a poor selection of meat. My advice - stick to the pastas or meat dishes that are more processed. Their butcher isn't very good.

I had the three canoli (with a candle and a rendition of happy birthday!) for dessert. Each canoli was filled with a different filling - I couldn't tell you what they were right now, but they were fabulous. The shells were about 1/2 in in diameter, about 3 inches long, so not they typical big-fat-cigar type canoli. The pasty held its crispness and the filling wasn't gushy, nor tastelessly thick. I also had a bite of a chocolate timbale which was very dense and rich. A perfect chocolate treat. Even though the timabale was quite small, it's richness made it difficult for my friend to finish the whole treat. Yes, that much chocolate.

In the end, I was very pleased with the evening. I'm incredibly blessed that I have such good friends so close by. The meal was terrific. Next time, though, I'll order the gnocchi.

Ginza

It's been a busy week. Yes, we have been cooking and eating, but much of it has been old standbys. Jennifer made a scampi that was terrific, and I made a yummy tortilla soup. Both are so great we'll definitely make them again and I'll write about those again.

Jennifer and I attended a Pink Martini concert at the Opera House last night. Music for the discriminating, I'm tellin' you. They've got that classic 20's-30's style with a bit of kitchy 60s B-movie sound all wrapped up in some great international beats. The concert was absolutely fabulous. They were on stage a full 2.5 hours. And by the time we got out onto the street, we were starving.

Being so close to - actually in - Chinatown, we decided to grab a quick sushi snack, so we headed to Ginza. The sushi chefs were still going at it behind the counter close to 11, and other folks had had the same idea as us. I'm not very knowledgeable about "sushi" and all it's incarnations. But I do know I like the little bits rolled up in rice. And I guess that's called maki. My usual order is the spicy tuna maki. The waitress did the up-sell on us and we got something similar to the spicy tuna with a tempura something inside for what we learned was an additional $5. Tasty, but I would have stuck with the spicy tuna. Jennifer ordered a bowl of soup. I was a bit put off by the clam floating in broth, but the broth was very flavorful. We also ordered our standby seaweed salad and avocado salad. The presentation for the latter was really nice - it was formed to actually look like an avocado. And it's always a favorite item for us. We also ordered the caterpillar maki, which was formed to look like a creepy crawler. Nice flavor, but the rice was a bit dry. Oh, and stay away from the soy sauce on the table. It's way way too salty.

The best thing was the speed of the service. Being so late, customers don't want to spend time waiting for food or the check. We were out of there in 20 min. Good meal, not the best sushi I've ever had, but a nice way to top off an evening.

chicken over pasta, broccoli, and ice cream sandwiches

I haven't been blogging but I have been eating. And eating pretty well from scratch. Case in point: chicken over pasta. A couple of years ago Jamie Oliver appeared on the Today Show and cooked up this very simple dish. What I like about Jamie is his recipes are so incredibly easy to remember. I've never ever written down this recipe - it's that simple.

We went away this past weekend to our friend's ski house in Vermont and met up with about 8 friends. If you've ever been skiing, you know that apre-ski is all about snacks and a big meal. Jennifer and I took on the meal duties Saturday evening, after a great day of skiing at Stratton - 10 inches of fresh powder! But, I'm getting off track. Here's the dish (I doubled for 8):
about 1.5-2 lbs chicken thighs, legs or drumsticks, skin on, season with salt and pepper, set aside

• In a bowl combine 2 medium/large tomatoes; quartered & two handfuls grape/cherry tomatoes; a bunch of basil, stem ends removed, and roughly chopped. Drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper
• Combine the chicken and tomato/basil mixture in a large skillet or dutch oven - use your hands to mix it all together, getting the chicken nice and oiled. Arrange the chicken so it sits on top of the tomatoes, skin side up.
• To this add one whole head of garlic, placing individual cloves - unpeeled - snuggled into crevices. Count them, because you'll need to remove them later on and it's nice to know how many you started with!
• Put this into a 400 degree oven for 1 hour. Take a look now and then. You may find you want to baste the skin a bit.
• Put on some pasta water and boil up whatever type of pasta you like, about a pound. I use linguine or angel hair. Time the pasta to be done about 2 minutes after the chicken.
• Remove the garlic cloves and let them cool off for about a minute.
• Remove the skillet from the oven after 1 hour. Place the chicken pieces on a plate and tent with foil.
• When nearly cool enough to touch, squeeze the roasted garlic from its peel into the tomato basil mixture still in the skillet. Break up the cloves a bit with a fork and give it a good stir.
• You've cooked your pasta meanwhile, and you've taken it out (not drained) and placed it into a big serving bowl. Add the juicy tomato basil mixture to the pasta and a touch of the pasta water.

You'll totally enjoy it!

For a side, Jennifer made Tyler Florence's roasted broccoli. Did I link to that earlier? It can go into the oven for the chicken's last 20 minutes. Again, an easy dish to prepare. And very tasty.

For dessert, homemade ice cream sandwiches! Nearly homemade, anyway. I use the Nestle Toll house pre-made cookie dough packages where you just break off little squares. It makes 24 cookies. The pre-cut squares ensure the cookies come out all about the same size. Once the cookies are cool, I scoop about a 1/4 cup semi-hard ice-cream (chocolate chip is a good combination) and put between two cookies. Get them in the freezer fast! Let them harden for several hours. I made these the day before the meal.

Enjoy!