8:43 AM Offensively Good Broiled Chicken

Last night I was on a mission to satisfy my craving for brown and wild rice with some veggies and chicken.  I didn't have a specific recipe, but I had a basic taste profile in mind. I had purchased everything but the chicken already at a regular grocery store, but since I have pledged to eat as much of my meat and dairy as possible locally produced I stopped by Green Grocer on my way home from work for the chicken.  I was originally planning on using chicken pieces and sauteing the whole dish, but Green Grocer only has whole chickens right now.  They are expecting their chicken suppliers to offer divided chicken meat at some point, but they are not sure when.  Even though I was not looking to cut up a whole chicken myself, after speaking with a very helpful lady who works at Green Grocer about my planned dinner, I decided to go ahead and just get a small whole fryer chicken.

And I sure am glad I changed my mind!  In our discussion about what I was planning for the chicken, the Green Grocer clerk mentioned Julia Child's Broiled Butterflied Chicken recipe and how that would be perfect for what I wanted.  She was Right!  That local grass fed little chicken was obscenely good broiled!  And I didn't even use good butter.  I used Earth Balance margarine because I still have a half a tub left of that to use up.  Also, it cooked surprisingly fast.

The broiled chicken was so moist and flavorful.  My only quibble is that I should have left it in for another 5 minutes.  I'm not very good at gauging whether chicken is cooked through or not and somehow I still don't own a meat thermometer.  Since I once got really sick from under cooked chicken I have a long track record of overcompensating for that and over cooking.  This being the first time to try this broiling method, I'm surprised that I almost got it right without a thermometer.  I was just a hair off.  My chicken was perfect on top, flavorful and juicy, but the bottom was just a tad under cooked.  I probably would have caught that had I used a meat thermometer to check the temperature.

This is what my beautiful chicken dinner looked like once it was completely finished.

I still have some tweaking to do for the veggies to be perfect.  It's missing a spice, probably more worchestershire, or an addition of soy and fresh garlic.  But as a whole this recipe is absolutely a keeper!  It's a healthy meal in under an hour.  And not too bad on the wallet either considering I used local grass fed chicken.  That fryer was around 2 lbs and just under $10.  I'm just cooking for me, so I can eat on this meal for 4-5 days.  Veggies are cheap and I cheated on the rice and used par boiled, which was still pretty cheap.  I normally wouldn't use par boiled, but I didn't have time to make rice ahead at all this weekend and my time is Very limited for cooking after work.

Ingredients:

1 medium yellow squash

1 medium zuchinni

1/2 package sliced mushrooms

1/2 bag fresh green beans

1 2 lb fryer chicken

3 Tbs butter (divided)

3 Tbs olive oil (divided)

1 Tbs worchestershire sauce

2 cups cooked wild rice

2 cups cooked brown rice

poultry seasoning

salt

pepper

Pre-heat broiler and butterfly chicken.  If chicken is wet from washing, pat dry.  If chicken was refrigerated, let it sit out to room temp (from comments on this broiler method, this helps the chicken cook more evenly).

Rub chicken with the 2/3 of the butter and then season with poultry seasoning, salt and pepper.  Follow instructions for Broiled Butterflied Chicken.  If the chicken is lean and there isn't much fat to baste with, drizzle a little bit of olive oil on the skin about halfway through the cooking process and turn the chicken over to smear the olive oil and juices back onto the skin.

About halfway through the chicken broiling, put the veggies in the skillet and saute to desired doneness.  Add in cooked rice and stir until rice is warmed.

Once chicken is done, place on top of veggies and rice and let sit.  Drizzle the juice from the chicken pan over the whole dish.  Serve after chicken has had time to rest.

5:07 PM Chicken and Cabbage Soup

The best thing about cooking soups is that they allow you to experiment with the old school kind of cooking where you just throw things in and hope for the best.  That's the way my Granny cooked.  Though she could do that with pretty much any recipe and it worked.  And she had a "handful" measurement system that seemed to be the norm in old school cooking.  I'm not so sure I trust that my "handful" is the same as someone else's so I prefer actual measurements when it counts.  Soups though?  I'm all about throwing things in and hoping for the best!

This Chicken and Cabbage Soup is inspired by a recipe for Elzekaria soup I found once years back.  I can no longer find the recipe I used, but it was so basic that it was easily committed to memory:

*  soften onions in goose fat at the bottom of a stock pot
*  add minced garlic
*  add whole cored and cubed cabbage
*  stir to coat cabbage with fat
*  add canned or re-hydrated white beans
*  cover cabbage with water and boil
*  simmer until beans are cooked through

I never used goose fat.  If I was feeling vegetarian, I'd use veggie shortening or EVOO.  If I wanted animal fat in the mix, I'd use shortening or I'd cook some bacon in the pot before I put in the onions.  If the bottom of the stock pot got crusty with carmelized onion and bacon, I'd deglaze with a tiny bit of ACV.  Sometimes I'd throw some ACV in there anyways just because I was feeling a little like having a hit of sauerkraut flavor in the soup.  The recipe lended itself easily to alterations like that.

Because it was such a good base soup, it also had plenty of room for major alterations.  And that is where I came up with this experiment.

Chicken and Cabbage Soup

*  2 Tbs EVOO
*  1 small onion, frenched
*  1 package of sliced baby bella mushrooms
*  1 large carrot
*  2 cloves garlic
*  1 Tbs ACV
*  1 Tbs poultry seasoning
*  roughly 1 qt chicken stock (pure stock, no veggies added in)
*  roughly 3 cups shredded chicken
*  water

Heat EVOO in stockpot and add all veggies except garlic.  

Saute until onions and mushrooms begin to carmelize

Deglaze pot with ACV

Add chicken stock

Add water, but not so much that the cabbage won't fit when it is time to add it.

Add white beans

Add poultry seasoning

Bring to a boil and then simmer until beans are aldente.  Then add cabbage  If you used canned beans, you can add the cabbage immediately.

Add more water, or more chicken stock here.  Do what you think tastes best.  The lighter your chicken stock, the less added water you'll likely want.  Bring back to a boil and simmer until beans are completely cooked through.  If you used canned beans, cook until cabbage is cooked.

Also add shredded chicken.  Since the chicken will have already been cooked and you used chicken stock in the base, this will just be to reheat the meat.

Simmer as long as you want.  The longer you simmer all of this together, the better the flavors will be.  Better yet, cook it all to just done, cool it down and set it in the refrigerator overnight.  By the next day the soup will be Perfect!!!

This is what I mean by "how dark your chicken stock is."  This is the rest of my stock from boiling a chicken.  

When you boil a chicken for stock, you put just enough water in the pot to cover the chicken and boil until the meat falls off the bone.  This time I had a small chicken and I put a little more water than I should have in the pot.  Thus, I got a nearly clear broth.  I usually prefer my stock a tad stronger, but this is ok.  It's just not concentrated at all.  

As you can see, the soup base above is much darker than the broth I used.  That would mostly be due to the mushrooms in the stock, but the carrots had something to do with it too.  This is why I preferred to use stock without all the veggies added in for my soup base.  I was adding the veggies in after the fact.

Just look at that beautiful chicken pulled off the bone. 

 I mentioned that this chicken was a little small.  That is because I opted to use an organic, free range, locally sourced chicken.  My area has recently been blessed with a Green Grocer store.  It's a small neighborhood grocery that sources local meats and dairy and produce.  So, like a farmer's market, but they're putting the product on their shelves instead of the farmer having to be present.  Also, it's open 7 days a week at hours that pretty much anyone can find a minute to pop in.  That's my problem with farmers markets.  I'm extremely busy on the weekends and my work hours are the exact same as the one farmer's market I know of that is open on week days.  It is too far of a drive to visit on a lunch hour.  I want to eat local.  I'm DYING to eat local!  But my schedule makes it very hard.  This grocery solves that problem.  I am Ecstatic!