Slow cooker Moroccan chicken

 

So many slow cooker recipes don't apply to my life. I'm not just talking about the kind that use canned soup as binders. I'm talking about the cooking time so many of them use. Clearly these recipes were not developed for those of us who work away from home all day and have to commute to get there.

But now that I'm temporarily commuting 14 steps to my home office, I thought it would open up some opportunities to try new recipes. Many are still not perfect for those trying to work set schedules from home, but with some advance prep work, I managed to pull this off on a weekday.

Moroccan chicken with apricots and almonds

From “The French Slow Cooker” by Michele Scicolone

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 large onions, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 tablespoons flour

2 teaspoons paprika

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 cups chicken broth

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 tablespoons honey

1 cup dried apricot halves, quartered

8 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves

2 tablespoons sliced almonds, toasted

Chopped fresh cilantro for garnish

Method

Heat oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add onions and garlic and cook until onions are golden, stirring often. Mix in spices and flour and cook for 1 minute. Add broth, lemon juice and honey. Bring to a simmer and cook until slightly thickened. Stir in apricots. (Make ahead tip: At this point you can cool the sauce mixture and refrigerate it until ready to proceed. Warm briefly before proceeding.)

Pour half the sauce into a large slow cooker. Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper and place in the cooker, overlapping slightly as needed. Pour remaining sauce over the top. Cover and cook on low for 2½ to 3 hours.

Taste sauce and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper as needed. Serve sprinkled with almonds and cilantro. 

Rating: A quite decent sauce. I think I let the chicken breasts go a tad too long since I tried to sneak out for a walk in between work and supper. I'd err toward the shorter cooking time depending on the thickness of your chicken breasts, since skinless chicken tends to dry out in the slow cooker even when bathed in sauce. Next time I might up the cumin component just  a bit and see how that goes. It serves 8, and it held up to reheating.

But really, my main take away is that I could make that sauce in advance, heat it up and quickly roast or pan-fry some chicken breasts and get better results with not much more investment of prep time. Which defeats the purpose of the slow cooker meal, I realize. I'd be ready to give up on chicken in the slow cooker, but then I remember a few gems like chicken bacon ragu and chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. Or one of my favorites, Corsican chicken with sun-dried tomatoes. All of these feature bone-in chicken, which takes to a slow cooker treatment much more readily.

Baked buttered crackers

These are great crackers for our current lives, when we're pantry-challenged. They make a fine all-in-one appetizer; no need for cheese or dip to make these palatable. And it's a way to perk up a slightly old pack of crackers.

Somehow I had escaped the phenomenon of hot buttered crackers all my life, although apparently they are ubiquitous. I ran across a reference to them in Mary Laura Philpott's "I Miss You When I Blink," which I recommend almost as much as the crackers. These are not highfalutin, but not everything has to be. They'd be fine snuck into any appetizer buffet.

 

Hot buttered crackers

Adapted from Southern Living. They used 4 tablespoons butter and 9 ounces of oyster crackers, which I'm sure would be cute as well.

Ingredients

5 tablespoons melted butter

2 tablespoons dry ranch salad dressing mix

1½ teaspoons dried dill

1½ teaspoons lemon pepper seasoning

½ teaspoon garlic powder

½ tablespoon onion powder

1 (11-ounce) container saltines (the minis work great and are super cute)

Method

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Whisk together melted butter, dressing mix, dill, lemon pepper, garlic powder and onion powder.

Put crackers in a large bowl. Drizzle in butter mixture, stirring in as you go. Stir to coat evenly. Distribute crackers on baking sheet or sheets; you’ll probably need two sheets if they’re 13-by-9s or you can get by with one half-sheet pan. You want to be able to spread them out so they aren’t stacked.

Bake for 10 minutes. Flip crackers over and bake for another 10 minutes until golden. You can cool these and store at room temperature, if any of them last that long.

Rating: Pretty much crack in cracker form. Super great hot from the oven, but perfectly fine at room temperature, and they'll keep stored at room temperature for a week, if you can avoid scarfing them all.

My googling for hot buttered crackers also yielded this recipe, which looked worth a try.

 

Baked seasoned crackers

Adapted from Half Baked Harvest blog

Ingredients

2 sleeves Ritz crackers from a 13.7-ounce package

4 tablespoons butter, melted

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon pepper

½ teaspoon seasoned salt (I used Penzeys)

½ teaspoon garlic powder

¼ teaspoon onion powder

¼ teaspoon cayenne powder

Method

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. In a large bowl, melt butter and add Worcestershire sauce, pepper, seasoned salt, garlic and onion powders and cayenne. Toss to coat evenly. Spread on baking sheet. (I could fit this all on one large baking sheet, but you’d likely need two sheets if you either don’t have a half sheet or don’t have an oven big enough for one.)

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, flipping over once half way through. Crackers will be browned, but not crisp at this point. Resist the natural inclination to try to eat them while they’re warm. They really aren’t nearly as good until they’ve dried and are crisp again.

Rating: These were described as tasting like Chex Mix. They do not taste like any Chex Mix I have ever tasted, but once they’ve dried, they are indeed tasty. But then again, so are Ritz crackers anyway. They don’t really need as much help as saltines.

Parmesan rosemary madeleines

These fall into my favorite category of appetizer: Supremely tasty, reasonably elegant but super fast to make. These come together in a snap and use ingredients I tend to have on hand.

I made these for one of the last get-togethers with friends before that became ill-advised. And then I made them again for us as comfort food in lockdown. If you have to shelter in place, it's great to own a rosemary plant or two.

Parmesan-rosemary madeleines

From Lemons & Anchovies, by blogger Jean, maker of many tasty-looking recipes

Ingredients

⅓ cup flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon sea salt

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1/3 cup plain yogurt (Greek works too)

¼ grated Parmesan cheese (or Gruyere)

1 tablespoon minced rosemary leaves

Method

Preheat oven to 425. Grease madeleine tin. (This makes 12 regular size madeleines or 24 mini madeleines if you have one of those cut little tins that Jean does. They're just adorable and bite-size.)

In food processor, combine flour, baking powder, salt, egg and yogurt. Blend well. Add cheese and rosemary and process just to combine. Spoon by small spoonfuls into madeleine tin, about ⅔ full.

Bake about 10 to 12 minutes (slightly less if you’re using the mini tins) until firm and golden. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Rating: These are totally snarfable. They’re unbelievably good warm from the oven and perfectly tasty at room temperature. They don’t keep particularly well, but why would you?

Barley buttermilk soup

Swedish lunch cleaning is how Dave refers to my latest "decluttering" of the pantry, refrigerator and freezer.

Sometimes it works better than others. The freezer yielded chicken broth, cooked beans, roasted vegetables from after a farmers market trip last fall, and some pesto from (oops) 2018. That was a pretty tasty lunch. 

Another winner in the pantry-clearing category involves two cups of cooked beans, 11 ounces of salsa, a half cup of broth, 1 tablespoon chili powder and 1 teaspoon ground cumin. Heat it through about 20 minutes. The recipe is sort of half of a Washington Post recipe for mock chili fries.

But strange times lead to strange recipes. It hadn't occurred to me to put buttermilk in soup, but apparently in the region of Italy from whence this recipe springs, they've got a lot of it on hand.

What's on hand drove this recipe selection on my part. I found myself with buttermilk in need of using, so when I ran across this recipe and realized I had nearly all of the ingredients in the house, it seemed like a sign. I wasn't sure I had enough barley, since it's something I haven't ever gotten in the habit of using. Turns out that due to bad inventory control, I had a copious amount.

The only thing I didn't have was anything that approximated a ham shank, but the recipe noted that in some areas speck was used so I got rid of the end of a package of bacon and used bacon fat to cook the veggies in. 

 Barley buttermilk soup

(Adapted from Barley Mountain Soup from“The Italian Country Table" by Lynne Rossetto Kasper)

Ingredients

2 medium onions, chopped, divided

2 medium carrots, chopped, divided

¼ cup fresh parsley leaves, chopped, divided

2 large garlic cloves, chopped, divided

4 medium red-skinned potatoes, peeled, quartered and thinly sliced

1 cup barley

2 rashers of bacon (original recipe calls for ½ pound ham shank or hocks)

3 rosemary sprigs, divided

1 quart buttermilk

4 quarts water

2 tablespoons bacon fat or olive oil

Method

In a large pot, add half the onions, half the carrots, half the parsley and half of the garlic. Add potatoes, barley, meat and 2 rosemary sprigs, buttermilk and milk. Simmer for 50 minutes until the barley is almost tender.

Heat fat or oil over medium low heat. Saute remaining onions, carrots and garlic. Add to mixture in pot and cook another 30 to 40 minutes. Remove meat shank, if using, and remove meat from the shank and add it back to the pan to heat through. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Garnish with remaining herbs (chop up the leaves of the last sprig of rosemary).

Rating: Odd, but not unlikable. From the looks of it, I thought it might turn out to have the texture of glue, but it's really just creamy. It's very hearty, even without much meat to toss in, and it makes a ton. I'd be curious to try it again with an actual ham shank, because the bacon flavor was overshadowed by the buttermilk. The broth seems like rosemary-infused watered-down buttermilk. That description doesn't sound good, but it actually works OK.  

It does look pretty pale, so it qualifies as Swedish lunch cleaning even if it's Italian.

Vegetarian cassoulet

 

Traditional cassoulet recipes feature a wide array of meats in the bean-heavy dish, with the actual meats varying by region. This recipe attempts to build up those layers of flavors without the meat. Fair warning: You need to start on this one the night before, and there's a certain elapsed time commitment.

Vegetarian Cassoulet (Cassoulet de Legumes)

From "The Vegetarian Bistro" by Marlena Spieler (Chronicle Books). This 1997 tome now costs a fair amount in paperback. I scored it on the closeout shelf in 1998 for $3.98, so the cost per recipe (250 of them) has been pretty low.

Ingredients

1 pound dried white beans

1 bay leaf

Fresh thyme sprig, optional

2 small onions, peeled and quartered, optional

1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced

2 heads of garlic, separated into cloves and peeled

1 carrot, peeled and diced

1 potato, peeled and diced

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 teaspoon herbes de Provence, crushed

¼ teaspoon dried thyme

1½ cups dry red wine

2 cups tomatoes, fresh or canned

1½ cups vegetable stock

1 cup fresh bread crumbs

3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley

Method

Soak beans overnight in enough water to cover them. Drain. Place beans in a large pan and add enough water to cover by an inch. Add 1 teaspoon salt, bay leaf, thyme sprig and onions. (The thyme and onions are optional additions I made and I think they're worth it, because the beans are mainstays of this dish.) Place lid on top and bring to a simmer. Partially uncover and cook for 1 ½ to 2 hours until just tender, adding more warm water if needed. (Older beans take longer to cook, but watch that you’re not cooking them to mush since you’ll be giving them a further long cooking time later in the recipe.) Alternatively, place the beans, water, salt, bay leaf, thyme and onions in a slow cooker and cook for 4 to 6 hours.

When beans are cooked, remove onion, thyme sprig and bay leaf and drain beans. (If you've used the onion and thyme sprig, you can use that strained cooking liquid as your broth later on in the recipe.) Place in a greased large, deep baking dish. Season with salt and pepper.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. 

Set aside 5 garlic cloves. In a large deep skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Cook remaining whole garlic cloves, red pepper, carrot and potato until lightly browned.  Sprinkle with herbes de Provence and dried thyme, and salt and pepper. Place on top of beans in casserole dish.

Pour red wine over top of the veggies in the casserole dish. Top with tomatoes and sprinkle lightly with salt and pepper. Pour stock over the top.

Cover casserole tightly with lid or foil. Bake for 1 to 1½ hours, adding more liquid if needed. (It’s actually more likely to be slightly soupy at the end, and that’s what you’re after.)

Meanwhile, mince remaining 5 garlic cloves. Combine with bread crumbs, parsley and remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil.

Remove the casserole from the oven and increase heat to 400. Remove lid and spread a third of the crumb mixture on the top. Bake, uncovered, for 15 minutes until a golden crust forms.

Break the crust and stir it into the cassoulet, which helps thicken it a bit. Add another third of the crumb mixture on top and bake for another 15 minutes. Stir in the crust and top with final crumb topping and bake for another 15 minutes until golden. It makes a ton, but it reheats pretty well.

Rating: Flavor and texture-wise, it's a perfectly fine meatless main dish. Effort to flavor-wise, however, it doesn't make the cut into the keeper pile for me. Having spent that much elapsed time fussing with it on and off, I'd been hoping it was to die for. If I'd only spent a couple of hours fussing with it, I might feel differently. But if you're a vegetarian or need a company-level vegetarian offering that seems like you really put in some effort, this is a viable option.