The geese and the Goose are back

It's baaaack! Our long winter of deprivation is over.

It's officially spring: Schell's seasonal Goosetown is back on shelves and in taps. Last year was the first time we'd had a gose style, and while I give Sam Adams' Verloren the edge, this one is local and comes in a much more convenient size for occasional beer drinkers like me. (Which means I drink half and Dave gets one and a half, which he finds very convenient.) My only problem with either brew is that they both make me ravenous for onion rings.

At least this year we know we have to stock up while it's in season. It was a long winter in so many ways.

Chicken Provencal

I put the bean/tomato/olive mixture in the foreground, because it's really the showstopping part of this number.

Chicken Provencal

Adapted from “Two Dudes, One Pan” by dudes Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo. The gimmick of this book is food cooked in one pan using the method appropriate to each, from the nonstick skillet to Dutch oven to roasting pan. The premise is you don’t need a lot of equipment to cook good food. The food porn is enough to make me overlook the table of contents typography train wreck.

Ingredients:

¼ cup flour mixed with ½ teaspoon salt

4 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts

¼ cup canola oil

6 tablespoons butter, divided

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

6 tablespoons white wine

3 large tomatoes, chopped

½ cup chopped green olives

1 anchovy fillet, finely chopped

1 15-ounce can butter beans, drained and rinsed

6 basil leaves, torn

Method:

Heat oil in large skillet. Dredge chicken in flour mixture. Brown chicken on both sides. Remove from pan and set aside.

Drain off fat. Add half the butter to the skillet. Brown garlic in butter for 1 minute. Add wine, tomatoes, olives, anchovy and cook until sauce thickens. Add butter beans and remaining butter. Return chicken to pan, cook until chicken is cooked through, 10-15 minutes.

Serve chicken and butter bean mixture topped with torn basil leaves.

Rating: Yum. The chicken is fine, but the butter bean/olive/tomato mixture is mouthwateringly mouthwatering, to quote “A Year in Provence,” which seems fitting in this case. The anchovy is a subtle background hint, so anchovy-phobes needn’t shudder.

Sides: Endive, orange and Roquefort salad, yet another new recipe from "Barefoot Contessa Foolproof." This is the first one I've tried that wasn't. With a vinaigrette of fresh orange juice and zest, olive oil and white wine vinegar over Belgian endive, toasted walnuts, chopped red apple, and orange and arugula you would think it could hardly fail. But it just didn't seem to come together as a salad; everything but the arugula mushed together and the dressing seemed too runny to coat the arugula. Since I wasn't impressed, I won't repeat the recipe, but if you're interested in trying to improve upon it, the original recipe is here.

Quick coq au vin

Quick coq au vin

Adapted from “365 Great 20-Minute Meals,” by Beverly Cox, a screaming deal at less than $6 on the discount shelf. Did it take 20 minutes? Oh, hell to the no. The amount of liquid involved takes up to 15 minutes to reduce, not the 5 suggested by the original recipe, with results varying on your stovetop. But it does eventually reduce to a glossy, thick bacon-flavored sauce, and in the grand scheme of coq au vin dishes, qualifies as quick au vin.

Ingredients:

6 slices of bacon, cut into ½-inch pieces

¼ cup flour mixed with ¼ teaspoon pepper

6 boneless, skinless thighs

2 cups sliced mushrooms

1½ cup red wine

1 cup chicken broth

1 10-ounce package pearl onions, peeled

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

This much liquid takes time to boil down,
but the concentrated results are tasty.

Method:

Cook bacon in large skillet until crisp. Remove from pan and drain.

Add olive oil to bacon drippings if needed to make 3 tablespoons. Dredge chicken in flour-pepper mixture. Brown chicken on both sides, then remove from pan and set aside.

Add mushrooms and pearl onions to pan and cooked until mushrooms soften and onions pick up color, about 5 minutes. Add broth, red wine, thyme leaves and chicken to pan. Raise heat to high and cook until sauce is reduced. Scatter bacon over chicken and serve.

Rating: Not as fast as billed, and obviously it doesn’t have the time to develop the nuanced flavors of traditional coq au vin, but it saves you hours and or days of prep time, while imparting the same general overall flavors. A hearty, flavorful weeknight supper.

Roasted cauliflower pasta

Pasta with roasted cauliflower, olives, capers and bread crumbs

Adapted from “Olives & Oranges” by Sara Jenkins and Mindy Fox, a book with Mediterranean roots that divides recipes in to a slow-cook or quick-cook method. This one falls into the slow-cook method, but we’re not talking hours-long cooking, just a number of steps, some of which can be done ahead. I’ve made a number of recipes from this cookbook, and so far none have disappointed, despite the fact that they often called for an oddball combination of ingredients that made me wonder about whether it would be sublime or subpar.

Yummy green olives from Bill's Imported Foods

Ingredients:

2 medium heads of cauliflower, broken into florets

6 tablespoons olive oil, divided

2 tablespoons butter

1 garlic clove, minced

½ cup green olives

2 tablespoons capers

1 dried chili pepper

2 anchovy fillets

1 pound cooked pasta; penne worked fine

1 cup grated Parmesan

1/3 cup chopped parsley

Toasted bread crumbs

Crumb ingredients:

¼ cup olive oil

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/3 cup chopped fresh parsley

2 dried red chilis, crumbled

3 cups fresh bread crumbs cut into 1-inch cubes

Method:

Toss cauliflower with 2 tablespoons oil, coarse salt and pepper. Roast at 400 until tender and browned, turning a few times, about 45 minutes, but possibly less; best to watch carefully. Set aside.

Toast bread crumbs on baking sheet for 20 minutes at 325. When cool enough to handle, put into a plastic bag and pound into substantial crumbs. Heat ¼ cup olive oil in large skillet. Add chilis and the 2 cloves chopped garlic and cook until just starting to brown. Add parsley and bread crumbs, cooking until oil is absorbed. Set aside. Note: bread crumbs and/or mixture can be made ahead. Refrigerate mixture if doing so.

Heat ¼ cup oil and butter in large deep pan. Add 1 clove minced garlic and cook about a minute until browned. Add olives, capers and chili; cook for a few minutes. Stir in anchovies and cook 1 minute. Stir in cauliflower. Add half the cheese and all the parsley. Add remaining cheese, bread crumbs, toss and serve.

Rating: The combination of starch on starch works really surprisingly well. A quite pleasant meal. The anchovies and olives make a nice background flavor without being too assertive.

Potato soup with bacon and Havarti

Basically any recipe that includes the phrase "with bacon" stands a fighting chance.

Cold Weather Potato Chowder with Caraway Cheese

Adapted from “Sunday Soups” by Betty Rosbottom, a book with a year’s worth of potential Sunday evening soups. Or lunches, which is what this turned into.

Ingredients:

4 slices bacon, chopped into ½-inch pieces

½ cup chopped onion

½ cup chopped celery

1 pound red-skin potatoes, unpeeled, cut into ½-inch pieces

1 tablespoon minced garlic

2 cups chicken stock

2 cups whole milk

1 teaspoon caraway

1 cup grated Havarti cheese

1 tablespoon butter, softened

1 tablespoon flour

Chives for garnish

Method:

Cook bacon in large heavy pot until crisp. Remove from pan and set aside. Add olive oil to drippings as needed to make up 2 tablespoons. Add onions and celery and sauté until softened. Add potatoes and cook for 4 minutes. Add garlic and cook for one minute.

Stir in broth, milk and caraway seeds. Cook at low temperature to avoid boiling and curdling for 20-30 minutes or until potatoes are tender.

Add cheese to soup a handful at a time, stirring to melt. Mix softened butter and flour in a small bowl to make a paste. Stir in some of the soup liquid a bit at a time until blended, then stir mixture into soup. Return bacon to pan. Serve topped with snipped fresh chives.

The rating: Fine. Hard to go wrong with those flavors.

Make-ahead tip: The original recipe calls for cooking the soup through the stage where the potatoes are tender, then reheating to add the cheese and roux. However, this worked well enough as fully made soup as leftovers.

Sides: I tried a new recipe for beer biscuits from “The Soup & Bread Cookbook” by Beatrice Ojakangas as reprinted in the Taste section. They were slightly darker than regular biscuits and a perfectly adequate carrier for butter, but I don’t feel compelled to make the recipe again so I won’t share it here.

Why I love the Twin Cities, Take 1

Provisioning: Saturday morning is usually grocery shopping time at our house, and one-stop shopping is just not our style. Since it’s not yet May, the loop isn’t quite complete with farmers market, but Saturday was warm enough we returned to some of our seasonal haunts to stock up after a winter of avoiding the snow-jammed streets of Uptown. 

So off we went to Penzey’s for refills on tarragon, mustard, cinnamon sticks and sea salt; Bill’s Imported Foods for a fresh jug of olive oil, hunks of pancetta and coppa, and baggies filled with deli goodies like kalamatas, green olives, capers and Greek feta. Great products at reasonable prices, plus, there's always entertainment value.

At home the olives and cheese get stored in glass jars with brine.

Next it was on to Northern Brewer for a German alt kit, followed by a full grocery run at Kowalski’s.

Then back home, where miraculously we stuffed it all into the refrigerator and pantry nooks and crannies.

(But clearly we need to get out more. How on earth did I miss the opening of the FLOR store last year? I so covet some for the basement.)

And that's why I have to live in Minneapolis. No single chain grocery store can deliver the goods, the good values and good times that specialty stores pack in alongside their quirks; all within a short hop from our home.

P.S.: Happy birthday to my food diary, which turned 21 on April 1. What was for dinner 21 years ago today? Cashew chicken stir fry, which come to think of it I haven't made in the longest time. And yes, I've been obsessed with food for that long. Why else would I schlep all over the city in search of the best food?