Chicken potato herbed hot pot

The calendar says it’s spring, both meteorologically and astronomically. But here in Minnesota, it’s still clearly gastronomical winter. Those store displays of spindly spears of asparagus sourced from Mexico aside, when you wake up to snow in the morning, it’s clearly still time for warming comfort foods.

Plan on starting this dish about 3½ hours ahead of when you plan to eat. It will take about an hour of dawdling preparation since the onions take some time to cook, but you’ll have plenty of time to chop the next layer of ingredients while you go, and then have 2½ hours essentially hands-off. All you need is a green salad to make a lovely meal, finished off with a touch of cheese.

Herbaceous hot pot

From Better Homes & Gardens, September 2004. It's a riff on the lamb-potato hot pot of Lancashire, England. Now idea how authentic it is, but holy cow, look at those views.

Ingredients

2 onions, peeled and thickly sliced

1 large garlic clove, chopped

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 pound mushrooms, sliced

1 tablespoon fresh rosemary leaves

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

3 large red potatoes, sliced about ¼-inch thick (about 3 cups)

5 to 8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, depending on size

¼ cup dry white wine.

1 tablespoon salted butter

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Heat olive oil in a large skillet. Add onion and garlic and cook over medium low heat until golden. You want them very tender, but not at all crispy, so this is going to take up to a half hour or so. Remove from skillet and set aside.

In same skillet, saute mushrooms until tender. Drain off excess liquid.

In a 4-ish quart Dutch oven (I used a Le Creuset #24), place one-third of the onions in a layer across the bottom. Sprinkle with half the fresh herbs.

Top with one third of the mushrooms. Top with one third of the potatoes. Sprinkle with coarse salt and pepper.

Place chicken thighs in a layer on top of potatoes. How many you can fit will depend on the size of the pieces and the diameter of your pan. You will only have room to have them on a single layer so wedge in as many as fit. Pour wine over the top. Working in layers, top chicken with remaining onions, then remaining herbs, another sprinkle of salt and pepper, remaining mushrooms, and finish with remaining potatoes. Dot potatoes with butter.

Cover with lid and bake for 2 hours. Then uncover and bake until potatoes are golden brown and starting to crisp up, about 25 to 35 minutes.

Rating: A really excellent Sunday supper. The chicken is very tender, the mushrooms are redolent of rosemary and those onions at the bottom have caramelized in schmaltz. The layering really works its magic in this otherwise simple dish of average ingredients, with the onions dripping down to flavor the chicken, potatoes and mushrooms below, taking herbal notes along. You get two different potato textures: the softer ones below and the crispy ones on top. Definitely be making this again.

I’d say this serves 4 quite generously, since it’s so satisfying. The chicken is falling apart, so you won’t be dishing up an identifiably whole piece of chicken for anyone. I only managed to fit five thighs in a pan much more capacious than called for, but they were on the larger side.

Tagliatelle with mushroom sauce

 

Sometimes (mainly in winter) you want a nice hearty pasta dish. Most of the time that means adding meat, but in this recipe plenty of chunky mushrooms and touch of tomato paste make a substantial, satisfying sauce that still doesn't weigh you, or the noodles, down too much. Dried mushrooms add that earthy depth.

Tagliatelle with mushroom sauce

Adapted from “Italian Kitchen” by Anna Del Conte

Ingredients

1 ounces dried porcini

1 pound mixed fresh mushrooms, sliced

5 tablespoons butter, divided

4 shallots, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

1 tablespoon chopped fresh marjoram

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 tablespoons flour

1 cup stock

2/3 cup dry white wine

¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg

1 pound tagliatelle

Grated Parmesan for garnish

Method

Cover dried porcini with very hot water and let soak for 30 minutes. Remove from liquid and rinse if they are still gritty. Chop and set aside. Strain reserved mushroom soaking liquid through a fine sieve.

Start heating pasta water.

Heat 2½ tablespoons butter over medium heat in a deep skillet. Add shallots and a pinch of salt, and cook until soft. Add garlic and herbs and cook another minute. Add tomato paste and stir in well. Add dried porcini and cook for about 5 minutes. Add fresh mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper, lower the heat and cook for another 5 minutes, adding a bit of reserved mushroom liquid if the mixture becomes dry.

Meanwhile, melt remaining 2 ½ tablespoons of butter in a sauce pan. Whisk in flour and cook for a minute to make a roux. Add broth and cook and stir until well blended. Add the wine, nutmeg and a bit of the reserved mushroom liquid to give it the flavor. Cook over medium low heat for about 15 minutes.

Stir sauce into mushroom mixture and heat through while cooking pasta until almost done. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper as needed. Toss sauce with cooked pasta until al dente. Serve garnished with Parmesan.

Rating: Not bad. The sauce is just the right consistency: not too thick from the flour to be cloying but enough to coat the pasta nicely. Deep mushroom flavors come through.

Slow cooker split pea smoked turkey soup

 

It's still sturdy soup weather, although the grill on the patio has lost its stocking cap of snow, so there's hope.

Slow cooker split pea soup with smoked turkey

A Sunset recipe from myrecipes.com

Ingredients

1 medium onion, chopped

2 large carrots, peeled and sliced ¼-inch thick

2 celery ribs, chopped

1 small smoked turkey leg or ham hock

2 bay leaves

1 tablespoons fresh thyme leaves

½ teaspoon kosher salt

½ teaspoon pepper

1 pound dried split peas (t called for green peas, but I found only yellow peas in by cupboard)

6 cups broth

Chives for garnish

Method

Combine everything but chives in a slow cooker. Cover and cook on low until peas are tender, 7 to 8 hours.

Remove turkey leg and bay leaves. Remove meat from turkey leg, discarding bones and skin. Shred meat and stir meat into soup. Serve soup garnished with chives.

Rating: A reasonably tasty just-us-kids sturdy soup, at least when made with a really nice homemade broth. The texture and color probably don't rise to company-level, but that's not really what this recipe is about. This is a recipe that if you've prechopped your vegetables, you really can throw into the slow cooker in 5 minutes before heading out the door.  The world needs a few recipes like that, or at any rate my world does.

Cranberry orange scones

Thank God for Daylight's Savings Time! And yes, I realize the irony in that statement. I fall emphatically into the camp of DST fans. It brings evening light to my winter-weary world and hope that spring may someday come and cause iceout on Garage Floor Lake.

To celebrate, we started our late morning breakfast with another new scone recipe. Yes, another, after another. You may wonder why I keep trying new ones when I've already made some mighty tasty ones. Why not just keep making the really good ones? This. Is. Why. Nirvana has been achieved.

And if you're one of the unfortunate folk who have the opposite reaction to DST that I do, I'm genuinely sorry that that which so lifts my mood sours yours. Get yourself one of these wondrous scones, ASAP. You'll feel much better.

Cranberry (or lingonberry) orange scones

Adapted from “Secrets of the Pie Place” by Kathy Rice. Grand Marais institution the Pie Place shared their recipes in this book, which I had to try because, well, Grand Marais. The place where thanks to DST and the solstice, you can stretch that last, long lovely evening of your vacation listening to the waves crash along the shore as the fading light melds purple sky into lake blue before going to starry black. 

I had no ready access to lingonberries, but I had some fresh cranberries in need of use, so I went with that variation.

Ingredients

3 cups flour

½ cup sugar plus ¼ cup more for sprinkling

4 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup cold butter, cut into pieces

Zest of 1 orange

1 1/3 cup chopped fresh cranberries (or whole fresh or frozen lingonberries)

½ cup half and half

1 large egg

Method

Preheat oven to 375. Combine dry ingredients. Cut in butter. Add zest and berries. Mix half and half and egg. Add to mixture in bowl and mix to incorporate. You'll have to knead it to bring it together as a dough.

On a very lightly floured board, form dough into a flat circle about 10 inches in diameter. Sprinkle wantonly with sugar; they call for using at least ¼ cup. Cut into 8 wedges. Transfer to a parchment lined baking sheet. These spread out a lot when baking, so leave plenty of room between the scones and use the largest sheet you've got if you're baking all 8 at once. (Note: The recipe says you can freeze the formed scones and bake them straight from the freezer by adding 5 to 7 minutes additional baking time. I am so trying this. These are really large and thick, so you won't need to allocate as many per serving as you do for those little dainty scones.)

Bake at 375 for 20 minutes or until golden brown and not too soft. Let sit a few minutes and then devour warm.

Note: The Pie Place people serve this with a clotted cream recipe, which I didn't try so I can't vouch for it.

Rating:  Oh my, these are so tasty and have a perfectly balanced texture. I've made several lovely scones in my life, but these are possibly the best things I've ever eaten. They enforce mindful eating. I put aside the Sunday comics and just slowly savored each delectable crumb. This is what you need to eat when you've "lost" that hour of sleep.