Video Lesson 1, Roasted Chicken with Herbed Compound Butter

Dinner with Sid & Mandy

Yesterday I was really in a mood to cook a big meal (yes, I know that may shock some of you). I sent an email out to the usual suspects and learned that by going to our friends Sid & Mandy's house to cook dinner I would not only be satisfying my urge to cook but also rescuing Mandy from a dinner of hot dogs. Don't get me wrong, I love hot dogs, but it sounded like Mandy was not at all in a mood for Coneys. I had no idea what I wanted to cook, so I went to the market with an open mind. I stared at the fish counter for a while and didn't see anything that struck my fancy, so I meandered over to the meat section. Pork? Nah, I practiced that MasterChef pork dish for a whole week and got burned out on swine. Beef? Just not feelin' it. Lamb? Interesting, but no. Veal? Again, just not feelin' the love. Chicken? Maybe...I just don't know. 

Feeling a bit lackluster about the proteins (I honestly do think like this. Should I go to some kind of meeting?) I wandered over to the produce section and spotted a mountain of Acorn Squash. Now the wheels started turning! Roasted squash...yes. Chicken roasted with rosemary...yes. Mushroom rice...yes. Brussels Sprouts with Roasted Almonds...yes, yes, yes! With a menu in mind and new shoes on my feet, I tore through the store, grabbing up what I needed and even found that whole chickens were on sale for $0.98/pound. That was a sign of good Karma.


Earlier in the week, one of my lobbying clients brought me a load of great beer and a picked a few monster bottles of Abita Andygator to go with the chicken dinner. Kitty get herself all dolled up and fixed her wig just right and we headed out to the wilds of Northeast Jackson.


When we arrived, Sid had whipped up some kind of yummy tapenade to go with the Calmata Olives and bruschetta he had set out for us. We cracked a bottle of Andygator for us boys and a bottle of Parados Malbec for the girls and whipped up a feast. The only thing better than the food was the company and the entertainment provided by 4-year-old Walker, who demonstrated some pretty amazing skill with a light saber. During dinner, we learned that our good friend Monte had won about twenty or so Addy awards that night and naturally celebrated by popping the cork on more Andygator and Parados. I have a feeling that we'll be doing this again quite soon.
Bon Appetit!
~Tom
Chicken Roasted with Rosemary

1 Whole Chicken

½ Stick Unsalted Butter

2 Tbsp. Fresh Rosemary

2 Cloves Garlic

1 tsp. Sea Salt

½ tsp. Black Pepper

2 tsp. Ivy & Devine Poultry Seasoning

1 Lemon

½ Bunch Parsley

Prep

Remove giblets from cavity of chicken and pat dry. Finely chop parsley, rosemary, and garlic. Add rosemary, garlic, black pepper and ¼ tsp. salt to butter and mix thoroughly. Take a spoonful of butter and slide it between the skin and the breast of the chicken. Repeat this process until all of the butter is under the chicken skin. Slightly press the chicken skin so that the butter spreads evenly. Truss the chicken tightly with kitchen twine. Rub in remaining sea salt and Ivy & Devine Poultry Seasoning. Preheat oven to 400°.

Cook

Place the trussed chicken in a roasting dish, preferably with a rack insert. Roast in the oven, uncovered until an instant-read thermometer, inserted into the thigh, reads 160° and the juices run clear (usually 1 ½ hours for a medium sized chicken).

Plate

Allow the chicken to rest for at least 15 minutes. Carve chicken and place on a warm plate. Top with pan sauce and squeeze lemon juice over chicken. Sprinkle with parsley to garnish.

(serves 6)

Pan Sauce

Pan drippings from chicken

Red wine

3 Tbsp. unsalted butter, cut into pats

Pour the liquids from the roasting pan into a saucepan, along with any of the browned bits you can scrape from the roasting pan. Combine with an equal part of red wine and cook over medium heat until reduced to 1/4 of its original volume. Remove from heat and mount the sauce with cold butter, swirling the sauce until the butter is fully incorporated.

Brussels Sprouts with Toasted Almonds

24 fresh Brussels Sprouts

¼ cup salted toasted almonds

¼ stick butter

Sea salt

½ tsp. black pepper

Paprika

Prep

Trim the bottom of the Brussels Sprouts and remove the first couple of leaves. Slice sprouts in half from top to bottom. Finely chop almonds.

Cook

Blanch the sprouts in boiling water for 2 minutes and immediately shock with cold water to stop the cooking. Drain the sprouts in a colander and pat dry with a towel. Heat a large sauté pan over medium heat and add butter. When the butter melts and begins to brown and foam, add almonds and cook for one minute. Add sprouts and season with black pepper. Cook until just tender and the sprouts are slightly colored. Check for saltiness and add sea salt if necessary.

Plate

Serve hot and garnish with a small amount of paprika.

(Serves 6)

Roasted Acorn Squash

2 whole acorn squash

¼ cup olive oil

1 Tbsp. fresh rosemary

Sea Salt

Black pepper

Prep

Finely chop fresh rosemary. Slice squash in half, through the equator, not from top to bottom. Scoop out seeds and cut into rings. Cut rings in half so that you now have crescent shaped pieces of squash. In a large mixing bowl, toss squash with oil and season with rosemary, salt and pepper. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.

Cook

Arrange squash on a sheet pan so that they are all lying flat and not crowding the pan. Roast for 30 minutes or until fork tender.

Plate

Serve hot.

(Serves 6)

Mushroom Rice Pilaf

1 ½  cups basmati rice

3 cups chicken stock

1 cup fresh mushrooms

1 medium shallot

4 cloves garlic

½ tsp. thyme

2 Tbsp. butter

½ bunch parsley

½ tsp.

Sea Salt

Prep

Thinly slice mushrooms and shallot. Finely chop parsley and garlic. Reserve one sliced mushroom for garnish.

Cook

Heat a large saucepan over medium heat and add butter. When the butter melts and begins to foam, add garlic and shallots and cook until garlic is slightly colored. Add rice and stir until each grain is coated with butter. Add thyme and black pepper and stir until evenly distributed. Add enough chicken stock to cover the rice and stir frequently. Continue adding chicken stock, a small amount at a time until is all absorbed by the rice and the rice is fully cooked. Taste and add salt accordingly.

Plate

Serve hot and garnish with sliced mushroom and parsley.

Dinner with Friends

Tonight, Kitty and I were lucky enough to be invited to dine with Mandy, Sid, Amy and Monte at Mandy and Sid's home. Monte and Amy brought a fantastic salad prepared from our good friends at Broad Street Baking Company. Sid and Amy picked up ice cream and Kitty and I brought v1.0 of a new soup that I am working to develop. The recipe below is v1.2, but the pictures are of the prototype. See if you can figure out the changes. If you can get them right, I'll award yo with a sample of my new Ivy & Devine Seafood Seasoning Blend, which is yet to hit the shelves.
The nexus of this soup derives from that last bite of steak on your plate at Char or Tico's or Shappley's. You know the one...when you use the one remaining sliver of beef to Zamboni around your plate and pick up the last smear of mashed potatoes, the last leaves of creamed spinach and the last drops of mushroom sauce. In one perfect morsel on the end of your fork you get the melding of the entire steakhouse experience.
Since I've been messing around with deconstructions lately, I wanted to see if I could create a dish that gave the diner this exact experience over and over again. The only thing I could come up with was soup. so give it a try and let me know if it lives up to the mark.

The dessert was featured in today's Jackson Free Press. They were doing a story on the Muppets' creator, Jim Henson (a fine Mississippi boy from Leland, way up in the Delta) and asked me for an appropriate dish. What I came up with was Ice Cream Sandwiches for Grover. You can get the recipe here, or wait a week and come back to this blog (publishing rights and what-not). At our dinner gathering, Amy, who had read the article today, kiddingly asked if we were having this dish for dessert. After a quick survey of Sid and Mandy's kitchen, the answer was YES (with only one short trip to McDade's).
Bon Appetit!
~Tom
Steakhouse Soup

2 large yellow onions

2 whole garlic pods

2 leeks

6 large Yukon gold potatoes

1 6 oz. bag fresh spinach

1 flatiron steak

1 tsp. Ivy & Devine Creole Seasoning Blend

2 Tbsp. mushroom base*

4 Tbsp. Dales Steak Seasoning

1 qt. heavy cream

2 qt. beef stock

1 bunch green onions

1 bunch parsley

4 Tbsp. olive oil

½ stick butter

1 baguette French bread

Salt

Pepper

Prep

Roughly chop onions and leek bottoms. Cut potatoes into 1” cubes. Chiffonade spinach. Finely chop parsley. Season steak liberally with Ivy & Devine Creole Seasoning Blend. Slice through the tops of the garlic (about ¼ inch cut), drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and butter, then wrap individually in foil. Slice Baguette into ½ in crostini. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cook

Toast crostini in hot oven until gold around the edges. Remove and set aside. Place foil wrapped garlic pods in hot oven. Heat a large stock pot over medium heat and then add 2 Tbsp. olive oil. Allow the oil to heat and then add onions and leeks. Cook until onions are translucent. Add 1 qt. beef stock and simmer. Remove garlic from foil and squeeze out the roasted cloves into the stock pot. Heat a large iron skillet and add olive oil. When the oil is hot, add steak and cook until medium rare (approximately 5 minutes per side). Remove steak and deglaze with equal parts water and Dales Seasoning. Allow meat to rest and add deglazing liquid to the stock pot. Add spinach, mushroom base and remaining beef stock. In a separate large pot combine potatoes with enough water to cover. Add 1 tsp. salt to the water and bring to a hard boil. Reduce heat to a light boil and cook for ten minutes. Drain water and mash potatoes with ½ stick of butter. Finish potatoes by whipping with an immersion blender until creamy and completely free of lumps. Add potatoes to stock pot. When meat is fully rested, cut into cubes and set aside. Add any liquids remaining on cutting board to the soup mixture. Add cream and allow mixture to come to a simmer. Remove from heat and add steak and green onions. Salt and pepper to taste.

Plate

Serve immediately in a large, shallow bowl. Top with toasted crostini and garnish with chopped parsley.

(Serves 8-10)

*I recommend a brand called Better than Bouillon.