Pesto-stuffed grilled chicken

Pesto-rubbed chicken

From “Saveur: The New Classics Cookbook,” an instant classic if there ever was one. From the first appetizer recipe for baked feta to the last, there are enough prospects in this one to keep me busy for quite some time. I let my subscription lapse a few years ago amid the need to cut back, but I do like me a good Saveur recipe now and again.

Ingredients

2 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts

5 tablespoons pesto, divided

Method

Loosen skin on one side of each breast. Spread 1½ tablespoons pesto under the skin of each half. Sprinkle all sides with salt and pepper. Place on a hot grill, skin-side down. Grill, covered, for about 25 minutes or until done, flipping once. Spread a tablespoon of remaining pesto over each breast and cook for another 5 minutes.

Rating: Super simple, but super tasty. The pesto keeps the chicken breasts moist.

Braised kale with Parmesan and crushed red pepper

Cacio e pepe-style braised kale
From Food & Wine, Dec. 2014
This is supposed to be a take on the cheese and pepper pasta flavors only coming to the rescue of kale.

Ingredients
1 pound kale leaves, torn into bite-size pieces
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons oil
2 cups chicken broth
crushed red pepper
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Method
Melt butter and oil in a large deep pot. Add kale in batches, stirring until wilted. Add broth and bring to a simmer. Cook until kale is tender and broth is mostly absorbed, about 20 minutes. Season to taste with salt and crushed red pepper flakes. Top with cheese.

Rating: Fine enough. Could work with other sturdy greens as well.

And a place where you will never see kale on the menu just won a James Beard award in the America's Classics category: Archie’s Waeside, Le Mars, Iowa, was a running joke when I was growing up. Hasn't changed, apparently, although they now have their menu online, where you can see one of the a la carte selections is listed as simply "Jello." The America's Classics winners are selected for being a classic of their type and reflecting their region. Ouch.

Roast chicken with grapes, olives and rosemary

Harvest roast chicken with grapes, olives and rosemary

From “Smitten Kitchen Cookbook” by Deb Perelman

Ingredients

Eight pieces of chicken, bone-in and skin on

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup seedless grapes

1 cup pitted Kalamata olives

2 small shallots, thinly sliced

½ cup white wine

½ cup chicken broth

1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary

Method

Preheat oven to 450. In a stove-burner safe roasting pan (or oven-safe skillet), heat oil over medium high heat. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper and cook until nicely golden brown, skin side down, before flipping over to brown the other side. Add grapes, olives and shallots. Cook in oven for about 20 minutes until done.

Remove chicken to serving platter. Put pan back on stove top. Add wine, broth and rosemary and cook over high heat until it’s reduced into a slightly thickened sauce.

Rating: Quite reasonably tasty, and the grape-olive combination works. I don’t give it a CR (company rating) because it’s not really particularly attractive and the sauce is a tad oily, but otherwise it’s repeatable. It’s quite similar to a recipe I’ve made previously from Martha Stewart Living Everyday Food  using cut up chicken instead of Cornish hens. That version is slightly prettier and lacks the olives. Both are a pretty good way to use up grapes that come in rather overly large packages for small families. So this appeals to my non-food-wasting sensibilities. 

Or if you're in the market for really low-brow food, there's this option.

Fish with garlic-almond-caper sauce

Sole with garlic-almond-caper sauce

From Eating Well

Ingredients

¼ cup flour

4 tablespoons sliced almonds, divided

1 egg white plus 1 tablespoon water

2 fillets of sole or flounder

1 tablespoon canola oil

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon thinly sliced garlic

½ tablespoon capers, rinsed

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Method

Combine flour and 2 tablespoons almonds in a food processor until almonds are finely chopped. Season with salt and pepper. Place on a large plate.

Heat canola oil in large skillet until hot over medium high heat. Dip fish fillets in egg white wash. Dredge in almond flour mixture. Cook the fish about 4 minutes a side until golden brown and flaky. (This is the only cooking it gets, so cook it until it’s done). Remove to serving plate.

Add olive oil to skillet. Saute garlic and remaining almonds and cook on retained heat until fragrant. Add capers and lemon juice. Season with pepper. Serve sauce over fish.

Rating: Fine fast way to serve fish, with a nice sauce. The almonds give the fish some texture. Dave was highly in favor.

Blueberry bran muffins, no waiting

The original recipe was accompanied with a photo of pints of blueberries. I can kind of see why. They aren't the lookiest.

I found this recipe after originally intending to bake another. I’d bought wheat bran and fresh blueberries to make a recipe in the paper, only to read it more carefully and then bounce off. It was going to take up to 45 minutes of baking time for muffins (?!), and muffins that were reduced-sugar and bran-filled at that. I’ll wait 45 minutes in the morning only for something super delicious and decadent. But since I had an entire package of bran to use, I turned to the Internet, and the ever-reliable Ina Garten for this recipe, which bakes in a normal amount of time for muffins.

Blueberry bran muffins

Adapted from the Barefoot Contessa

Ingredients

1 cup flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon cinnamon

7 ounces Greek yogurt (I used a 5.3 ounce container of vanilla Greek yogurt and a heaping tablespoon of sour cream to make up the difference)

½ cup sugar

½ cup baking oil

½ cup honey

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla

2½ cup wheat bran

1½ cups fresh blueberries

Method

Preheat oven to 350. Line muffin tins with paper liners or butter the cups.

Mix dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Mix yogurt, sugar, oil, honey, eggs and vanilla in a large bowl. Stir in dry ingredients until just incorporated, then do the same with the wheat bran. Fold in blueberries.

Scoop batter into prepared muffin tin. (The recipe called for using a rounded 2¼ inch ice cream scoop, which I do not own. I can tell you that if you divide the batter evenly among 12 muffin cups, you will have muffin cups filled pretty much to the brim or a bit beyond, whichever measuring device you use.) Bake for 22 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean and the muffins are golden brown (although really, they’re bran muffins; they start out life golden brown). Let stand for 5 minutes before serving.

Rating: Definitely a good Sunday morning breakfast candidate. Eminently inhaleable, despite being bran muffins, and well worth waiting the limited amount of time for. While possibly more healthful than some other varieties, they don’t have that dry health-food taste. Dave scarfed four of them, which possibly defeats the healthy nature of them, but he’ll run it off. They’re fast to fix, and as an added bonus for the brain geeks out there, the recipe is super easy to remember with four dry ingredients that use a ½ teaspoon and two that go into the wet that use a ½ cup. I’ve got an apple-oatmeal coffeecake recipe like that; memorable recipes appeal to those of us who want to go on autopilot on a Sunday morning and not be slowed down by having to check a recipe. 

I appreciated something warm at breakfast, because we lost our spring overnight after a string of nice days. But I know spring is on the way sometime, and so are the birds. Check out this map of migrating humming birds.

Chicken with red-wine mushroom sauce and barley risotto

These recipes started life joined at the hip at the instigation of the cookbook. I suggest they be served separately with greater happiness. Certainly it was the best barley dish I'd ever tasted, and it shouldn't be buried under the red-wine sauce.

Chicken stewed with red wine and mushrooms

Adapted from “The Athlete’s Palate Cookbook,” in which a bunch of chefs come up with comparatively healthful meals designed to fuel athletes. I say relatively, because the stuff athletes can burn off is a different standard than I aspire to. Note that the chicken dish is a two-day affair.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons sugar

1/8 teaspoon ground ginger

1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ground coriander

1/8 teaspoon ground salt

1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

pinch of ground cloves

pinch of ground nutmeg

8 chicken thighs

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 small onion, diced

1 leek, white part only, sliced

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 cups wild mushrooms, sliced

2 cups red wine

2 tablespoons tomato paste

1 cup canned diced tomatoes

2 bay leaves

 ½ cups chicken stock

¼ cup chopped fresh parsley, divided

 

Method

Mix sugar, ginger, cinnamon, coriander, salt, pepper, cloves and nutmeg together. Rub into the chicken mixture. Refrigerate overnight.

Bring chicken to room temperature. Heat oil in a large deep skillet over medium heat until brown on both sides. Remove and set aside. Add onion, leek, garlic and mushrooms to the pot. Cook until vegetables are softened. Deglaze the pan with the wine, scrapping up the brown bits. Add tomato paste, tomatoes and bay leaves. Simmer until mixture has reduced by a quarter. Add chicken back to pot and pour in broth. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, for 45 minutes. Remove lid and raise heat to medium high, cooking for another 15 minutes or until liquid has reduced to a sauce. Add half of the parsley to the sauce. Serve chicken with sauce and sprinkle with remaining parsley.

Rating: Tasty. The sugar-spice mixture treatment is intriguing, and has future possibilities.This is a Sunday night type of supper, given the lead time it takes from start to finish. I'd suggest serving it with polenta, unless you care about the health quotient, in which case quinoa or brown rice would do the trick. It needs something absorbent that's not too assertive.

Barley risotto

Adapted from “The Athlete’s Palate Cookbook”

 Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 small carrot, diced

1 celery stalk, diced

2 tablespoons chopped onion

1 ¼ cups pearl barley

½ teaspoon chopped fresh sage

½ teaspoon chopped fresh thyme

½ teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary

½ teaspoon chopped fresh chives, plus 1 teaspoon for garnish, divided

4 to 5 cups chicken or vegetable stock

¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 tablespoon butter

Method

Heat olive oil in saucepan. Add carrot, celery and onion. Saute over medium heat until softened. Stir in barley to coat. Add herbs. Heat 4 cups of broth and add enough to cover the barley. Stir frequently. Continue adding broth to cover when liquid is nearly absorbed, and continue frequent stirring. This can take quite some time, much longer than for regular risotto, about 45 to 50 minutes. Add additional broth if needed until barley is tender and creamy. Stir in Parmesan and butter. Serve topped with the fresh chives.

Rating:This was surprisingly tasty. I say surprisingly because I had kind of a bad attitude about this recipe going into it. I'd figured out from another barley risotto recipe I'd seen recently that we were looking at a fairly sizable time commitment, to which this recipe didn't allude. Plus, it called for stirring the risotto constantly, and really, if you're stirring one dish constantly for most of an hour, it better be the main dish, not the side dish. But it certainly didn't merit that kind of attention and turned out wonderfully creamy despite being barley and not being stirred relentlessly. I'd be willing to make it again, just keeping in mind that it's not a fast, fuss-free side dish.