I come from the land of potlucks, so when I saw a new release entitled "Potluck," naturally I wanted to check it out. Turns out there are different definitions of potluck out there.
Braised chicken thighs with marinated artichoke hearts
Adapted from “Potluck,” from the Food & Wine test kitchen
Ingredients
8 chicken thighs, skin-on, bone-in
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 (7.5-ounce) jars marinated artichoke hearts, including ¼ cup
brine from the jars
1 cup Castelvetrano olives
1 head of garlic, separated but not peeled
1 lemon, thinly sliced
6 thyme sprigs
1 cup chicken broth
½ cup dry sherry
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 teaspoon salt
Method
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Sprinkle chicken with salt
and pepper. Heat oil in a large skillet and sear thighs, skin-side down. You’ll
probably want to do this in batches to get each piece browned and crisp.
Transfer skin side up to a large baking dish.
Scatter olives, garlic cloves, thyme springs and lemon
slices among the chicken pieces.
Drain fat from the skillet. Heat broth, sherry, artichoke heart brine and fish sauce to
boiling. Add 1 teaspoon salt and pour mixture over chicken.
Cover baking dish
with foil and bake for 1 hour. Uncover, raise heat to 400 and roast for another
15 minutes to recrisp the skin. (Note: if I was to make this again, I would
pour off most of the liquid into a skillet after the hour of baking and reduce
it on the stovetop over high heat while the chicken browns in the oven. That would make an actual sauce and give the
chicken a better shot at browning.)
Rating: I think this dish is one extra step (outlined above) away from being quite good. As it is, it's fine enough, but the chicken would have a much better shot at being truly crispy if it wasn't swimming in excess liquid, and that tasty liquid would be much more useful as a concentrated sauce. So I'm willing to give it another shot.
But. (A pause, for Rant Mode On.) The idea that this is a potluck dish is quite an odd one. Unless you modify it, there's way too much liquid to transport well, and it's a non-starter unless you're talking about an evening supper club type scenario where your friends don't live too far away and don't spend too much time gabbing/appetizer noshing/cocktail swilling before dinner. I've got an insulated carrier with a sleeve for a hot pack insert, but I can't imagine crispy skin is going to stay crispy under tin foil in the carrier for too long. And that much liquid will have inevitably sloshed inside the carrier making a hot mess that doesn't meet presentation standards and will be annoying to clean.
That doesn't mean it isn't a reasonable low-effort dinner party dish, since you can get it started well before guests arrive. The subtitle of the book is "Food and Drinks to Share with Friends and Family," and so long as the family comes to your house, it would work just fine.
Aside from two short generalized paragraphs in the back of the book that don't really offer much wisdom, you're on your own for transport guidance.(In fairness to the book's editors, they probably aren't thinking of how to transport a dish when it's say, 9 below F. You know, just to pick a random number like today.)
Some of the recipes look like they'd work just fine as potluck fodder, like the appetizers and salads. And many of the main dishes are reasonable candidates for the church basement potluck scenario that applies to a dwindling number of people. Just don't expect many main dish options that address the standard potluck we are confronted with in the Midwest, the dreaded workplace potluck, where the criteria involve a dish that can be transported awkwardly via public transit, crammed it into an overcrowded office frig and then presented artistically over the noon hour with no oven available for reheating. So as long as you adjust your expectations of what this book offers, it has some reasonably tasty looking recipes that would work well at home. And maybe we just need to get invited to a different kind of potluck where these dishes could work. (Rant Mode Off.)
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