Provencal Sunshine

For dinner, I made this tastiness:

Sort of a Provençal chicken dish, with thyme and super-bright lemon flavor. With green beans on the side, and a glass of red wine.

It was loosely based on this recipe, which is itself a loose approximation of an Ina Garten recipe, and which I discovered via Jenna Sauers' excellent twitter feed.

We all know how lazy I am. Baste? Oy. And whatever casserole dishes we may own are still stowed away in a box somewhere. So I decided to braise everything in my huge dutch oven instead.

I omitted: the fresh thyme, because it was exactly the same price as a cheap bottle of wine (I got the wine instead); the bacon, at the last minute, because I was curious to see what it would taste like without all that smoky richness; and a few other ingredients. I dusted a little dried, ground thyme into the pot, but would probably spring for fresh thyme next time.

The results were fabulous, as promised. The lemon flavors were so huge and sunny and bright; it would be an awesome mid-winter dish. Instant happiness. Omit the thyme, make some rice, and it sort of becomes Moroccan. Or add some salt-cured olives. Regardless of what you do, the broth makes an amazing sauce. It would work great on fish. Or anything. Jon was actually dipping pita chips into the puddle of sauce on my plate as I destroyed the wannabe leftovers.

If you want to make it my way:

Lightly coat the bottom of a large dutch oven with oil. Cook the chicken thighs in the oil for a few minutes. Then toss the onion, carrots, and lemons on top, very coarsely chopped, along with the garlic cloves. Dust some thyme on top, and plop on pats of butter (I used 3-4T), and some salt. Cover, place in your pre-heated 400-degree oven for 30 min. At that point, I actually lowered a steamer basket full of green beans into the top, lowered the heat to 350, and cooked, still covered, for another 20 minutes. I then removed the chicken with tongs, lightly dusted with smoked paprika, and broiled for 3 minutes or so, just to dry them off a little. At the same time, I reduced the liquid over high heat on the stovetop, and fished out the lemon chunks.

The $2.77 bottle of wine? Questionable, but not horrid. My quick test for how much a cheap bottle of wine is going to suck is to look at the ABV. The higher it is, the worse the wine. 14% or higher is a dealbreaker. This, the Oak Leaf Vineyard Merlot (rule #2: cheap Merlot is way better than cheap Cab), is 13%. It's pretty oaky, a little spicy, and not very complex, but at least not treacly. Maybe a step below Whole Foods' Three Wishes Merlot, and way above Chuck Shaw. Both of which are at similar price points.

Chinese Food at Home

For dinner, I had some sweet-and-sour chicken, with brown rice and a glass of white (gasp!) wine.

It all came from Trader Joe's (hello again, delicious corporate overlords). The chicken is from their freezer section. Made with thigh meat, it comes breaded and fried, with a side of peculiar sauce. The first time I tried it, I hesitantly sampled a few drops of the sauce alone. It was awful- vinegary and acrid. But somehow it magically turns gingery and fragrant when tossed with the chicken. It's not the best thing in the world, but it's about as good as decent Chinese takeout, and less trouble.

We made a side of brown rice to go with it, in our new rice cooker. Sadly, the old one died a few months back. I made the mistake of replacing it with a smaller one, thinking it would take up less space. It does, but it also completely sucks. I failed to account for the surface area issue, so it takes FOR.EV.ER. to heat up. Other lesson learned? Don't overfill it. Especially not with sticky things that stain. Yes, it's still covered with blobs of fuchsia from the time I tried to make cranberry sauce and it exploded everywhere. In any case, the rice turned out nicely nutty and chewy.

The big surprise tonight was the wine. It's Terrenal label from Spain, made with an equal mix of Chardonnay and Macabeo grapes. It's also kosher, and $4.99. I bought it because I'm always curious to try unusual grapes, especially ones from Spain. The TJ's wine guy gave me a dubious look and warned me to "chill it...a lot!", even though he'd never actually tried it. Duly warned, I was surprised to discover how interesting it is.

The caveat is that I never drink white wines, and never Chardonnay. So maybe I've just forgotten what they're like. But this one is fascinating- it has sort of a ripe-nearly-to-rotting cantaloupe meets green apple aroma, with licorice, honey, and maybe a little violet as it warms up, plus the richness of Chardonnay. I think the sign said it was unoaked, and I don't taste any. I had another glass before dinner with some aged Parmigiano-Reggiano, and it was equally fabulous; next time, I'd probably pair it with a rich fish, or maybe mac n'cheese, and not funky Chinese food.

Bosnian in Bevo Mill

For dinner, I had goulash, chicken livers with polenta, Slovenian beer, a bite of cheesecake, and a cappuccino.

Sorry for bad photo quality, but it was dark. I don't usually even like taking photos of my food in public, but, well, there was something else I wanted to photograph for the blog so it was ok. More on that in a minute...


We went to Laganini, my favorite local Bosnian restaurant. St. Louis is the home of 30,000+ Bosnian refugees, so there is a great neighborhood here called Bevo Mills, that is full of Bosnian deliciousness. Laganini supposedly also has some of the best pizza in our (pizza parlor-saturated) town, but the rest of their menu is so interesting I haven't managed to try any of it yet. When I do, their intriguing-sounding tuna fish pizza is first on my list.

In any case, their goulash is simple but tasty. The chicken livers were kind of ill-conceived on my part- as I get older, things I used to eat without thinking about I now think about, and get grossed out by. I'll still try anything, but certain odd meat products are less and less appetizing. Maybe I could've managed it without the goulash, but it was just too rich and I gave up. The polenta, which I generally don't like, was really nice, with a little more texture than I'm used to and some underlying complex flavors (perhaps onion and schmaltz?). The beer was Lasko, which actually has a caron (thank you, Wikipedia) over the "s", and is thus pronounced "lahshko", was pretty good. A friend described it as Heineken with more hops, which is apt. I had a bite of someone else's cheesecake, which was delicious (and homemade). The cappuccino was nice, too, but could've used a little more foam.

Beyond the really good food, the good prices, the pretty decor, the great (and yes, dudes in my group, very pretty) waitress, there is the best thing of all. Something worth taking photos of.



Singing! On Saturday nights, the owner and a friend break out a guitar, a keyboard, and various computer synthesizer thingies and go to town. It is awesome. We had a great time drinking our coffee and listening to Balkan synth-folk.

Marsala Madness in St. Louis

For dinner, I had chicken marsala, with snow peas and a glass of viognier.

The chicken marsala came from Trader Joe's prepared foods area. Considering our complete apathy toward cooking lately, this was a godsend. And it wasn't bad, exactly. It was just sort of sub-par.

Chicken marsala is not very hard to make. I actually make a mean chicken marsala, and my father-in-law makes an equally delicious, albeit completely different, chicken marsala. Maybe that's the problem; I have an image of chicken marsala in my head: basic, immutable elements of chicken marsala, regardless of specific ingredients, and TJ's just didn't meet it. In my world, it involves Maillard. Theirs reminded me of a very soupy schnitzel, especially the egg-heavy batter that separated from the meat. Jon thought the chicken breasts still had skin on them, the crust was so bizarre and thick. It was edible, but not anything I'd call marsala. I'm surprised they don't at least try to get a little caramelization on their chicken, or reduce their sauce further and compartmentalize it separately from the chicken. They also sell a balsamic-glazed chicken prepared meal, and it somehow manages to have a little sear and a good, not-soupy texture. Maybe TJ's likes soupy chicken marsala. Next time, I'll make my own.

Guinea Pig Weekend

No, I did not eat cuy this weekend- Jon would never forgive me...

Our friend Charlie bought a smoker, and wanted to get the hang of using it by experimenting with different meats and smoking chips. We were very, very happy guinea pigs all weekend long.

Friday night, he smoked chicken breasts, bratwurst, and some sort of spicy crawfish sausage, all from Pete's Fine Meats. I've always noticed the shop, but never checked it out. My mistake. It all took about two hours to cook in the smoker with some relatively light chips (peach and pecanwood, I think), and turned out great. We supplemented it with beans, potato salad, and a wide variety of Mexican and American beers.

Charlie's Saturday project was baby back ribs. He rubbed them with a pretty typical spice blend- brown sugar, salt, chili powder, and some other stuff- then let them smoke for hours on end in mesquite and hickory. He finished them with some honey bbq sauce at the end. Best ribs EVER. They were nice and crispy-sweet, with incredibly tender meat inside. I could hardly stop myself from eating the bones.

That dinner was accompanied by the same sides, more beer, and some ice cream I made. It was loosely based on this recipe for brown sugar & sour cream ice cream. I really wanted to make creme fraiche ice cream, but creme fraiche was super-pricey, and I mistakenly thought I could make it with sour cream. Turns out, creme fraiche is buttermilk + cream, NOT buttermilk + sour cream. Hence, the weird ice cream. I added a pound's worth of pureed and strained strawberries to the recipe, along with a little corn syrup. I froze the blend in my ice cream maker, then left it in the freezer for almost three hours. Happily, it didn't over-freeze (the sour cream probably helped; more fat=softer ice cream). It was refreshing and delicious, but tasted like frozen yogurt because of the tangy sour cream.

My biggest mistake of the weekend was not bringing my camera- we had a lot of fun, and it was so very Texas. I'm sad I don't have photos of Charlie, in his "Keep Austin Weird" t-shirt and UT hat, tending the smoker. Maybe next time. I like being a food guinea pig...

Smorgasboard for Lunch

Today for lunch, I had a little bit of everything- some steak, some quasi-chicken picatta, green beans, scalloped potato casserole, a roll, a brownie, and some iced tea.

All this culinary excitement was caused by a CLE (continuing lawyer education) course at school. Turns out, lawyers demand better food than the pizza-or-Chipolte conundrum faced by student organizations. I was very surprised at the good quality of food, particularly the steak and the potato casserole. The steak was a perfect medium rare and tender, individually hand-sliced by some poor catering guy. The potatoes tasted like some little old Southern lady's home cooking. The potato flavor was prominent and woodsy, with perhaps six pounds of butter and cheese melted in between the layers...I could eat that for weeks. Everything else was just ok; the chicken picatta was pretty sad, although I was impressed they actually put capers in it (and red pepper? weird). The brownies were clearly not from Chick-Fil-A, but tasted like they were. It was a nice meal, and an interesting afternoon diversion, mortgage crisis lecture notwithstanding.

Boring Chicken at Home

For dinner, I had parmesan-crusted chicken and roasted kabocha squash from Whole Foods, with a glass of Cotes du Rhone.

The chicken was awful! I wish I'd chosen the pecan chicken instead. The crust was crumby rather than cheesy, and got progressively mushier as the baking time went on. Most of the bottom crust became irreversibly stuck to my baking sheet, and the rest remained a pallid, spongy white. The flavor was of mush, not parmesan, with little clusters of parsley and maybe some onion powder.

The kabocha was interesting. I'd never had japanese pumpkin before, so I selected it over the acorn squash, mostly for the novelty and its adorably ugly shape and color. It's similar to sweet potato, with a slight pumpkin flavor. I also roasted the seeds while the squash was baking, and then snacked on these while the chicken was finishing in the oven. Freshly toasted seeds are tasty! Everything I read suggested scraping off all the pulp and leaving them to dry for a day, but I threw them in a well-oiled pan with some pulp remanants, and they turned out fine.

The Cotes du Rhone was pretty good, it was Les Violettes. Just a typical, nondescript
wine that was a little too light. It would be nice with a salad.