An Ode to Julia

In sticking with our French theme lately, we decided to pair our French onion soup with a traditional coq au vin, a la Julia Child.  This dish has multiple components, and takes some time, but it's a hearty, delicious dish, perfect for these cold winter nights.

There are two components you can prepare in advance; the mushrooms and the pearl onions.  Let's start with the mushrooms.  Just saute your sliced mushrooms in some butter and oil.  They'll first absorb the liquids in the pan, and then release them.  Once they release the liquids and start to brown, you can season with salt and pepper.  Remove them from the heat, toss in some sliced green onions, and saute for a couple more minutes.  Then you can just set them aside while you prepare the rest of the meal.

Next, let's tackle the pearl onions.  Make sure you peel off the skins, and keep them whole.  Toss them into a hot pan with some melted butter and oil.  Roll them around every few minutes so they brown as evenly as possible.

While your onions are browning, you can make your satchel of herbs.  In a piece of cheesecloth, wrap up some parsley, thyme, and a bay leaf.  Wrap it up and tie it with some twine.

Once your onions have browned, you'll add in your liquids.  The recipe calls for stock or wine, but we decided to use a combination of the two.  We went with 1/4 cup beef stock and 1/4 cup red wine.  You'll also toss in you herb satchel, and season with salt and pepper.  Then just let them saute until the onions are tender and the liquid evaporates.   Once the liquid has evaporated and absorbed into the onions, you can set them aside.

Now, on to the main event!  Start by rendering down some sliced bacon in your dutch oven.  Once they've browned slightly, remove them from the pot and throw in your chickens to brown.

We opted to use chicken thighs this time around, but you can use whatever pieces you like.  Really let them settle into the bacon fat and get a nice, golden brown.

Once your chicken is browned on both sides, add your chicken back to the pot.  At this point, you can add some cognac and flame off the alcohol.  Since we didn't have any cognac on hand, we used some of the chocolate stout that we'd used in our French onion soup.

You'll also add in the red wine, enough stock to cover your chicken, a smidge of tomato paste, some garlic, a bay leaf, and a couple sprigs of thyme.  Then just cover your pot and let it simmer until your chickens are cooked through.  If you didn't cook your mushrooms and onions in advance, this is a great time to prepare them.

When your chickens have cooked through, remove them from the pot, and get ready to prepare your gravy.  Your chickens will look purplish since they've absorbed the wine, so don't be concerned when you pull them out.

You'll want to skim some of the fat off your liquid.  No one wants a greasy gravy!  You'll also want to fish out the bay leaf and sprigs of thyme.  Let this reduce down so you have a little more than 2 cups of liquid.  You'll also want to prepare a little gravy thickener.  In this case, it's 2 parts butter, 1 part flour.

Once your little slurry is combined and your sauce has reduced, whisk your butter-flour mixture into the braising liquids.  Let it simmer and thicken to your liking.

When you're just about ready to serve, add your chickens back into the pot, along with your mushrooms and onions.  Baste your chickens in the sauce for a few minutes so they heat through again.

We whipped up some mashed potatoes to go along with our chickens.  They were a great accompaniment to the chicken and the delicious gravy.

This is the type of hearty meal that warms you from the inside, perfect for these frigid days we've been having.

Oui Love Soup!

In honor of it being National Soup Month, we rounded up a list of the soups that we've featured on the blog thus far.  So if you're experiencing some frigid weather like we are, you can opt for the warm soups.  And if you're lucky enough to be in a warmer climate, you can go for the cold soups.  Something for everyone!

Hot soups to warm you up...

* Butternut Squash Soup

* Tomato Soup

* Sizzling Rice Soup

Cold soups to cool you down...

* Chilled Pea Soup

* Gazpacho

And if those aren't enough, we're coming at ya with a hearty French onion soup to get through these winter months.  This recipe came from our friends at WellFed Hospitality Group when we attended their first Feastly dinner, a meal paying homage to Julia Child. (you can read about another Feastly meal here)

You'll want to start by thinly slicing 10 onions.  Our onions were quite large, so we only used 8.

While you're slicing your onions, you can crisp up about 1/4 cup of bacon.  Once they've crisped up, add your onions to the pot, along with about half a stick of butter.

As you can see, our stock pot was overflowing with onions.  From this stage, it will take a good 45 minutes for your onions to cook down and caramelize.  As best you can, try to toss your onions around so they all get coated in butter, and cook through.  As they cook down, they'll release a lot of water, which needs to evaporate before your onions can really caramelize.

As you can see, they cook down quite a bit, and turn a nice golden brown color.  At this point you can deglaze your pot.  The recipe calls for a splash of brandy and some white wine, but we didn't have any on hand.  Instead, we used some Boatswain Chocolate Stout that we had on hand.  The beauty of this beer is that for just $1.99, you get a 22oz. bottle of pretty decent beer.

Once you've deglazed your pot, add in 2 quarts of beef stock and some thyme.  To help give it a richer flavor, we also used some veal demi glace.  Let this simmer and reduce for about 20 minutes.

One of my favorite things about French onion soup is the bubbly covering of cheese that covers the bowl.  Since we don't own any of the little crocks like restaurants have, we had to improvise.  We picked up a nice loaf of French bread and toasted some slices, each topped with a little pile of gruyere cheese.  Once the cheese had melted, they were nice little croutons to float on top of our soups.  We also sprinkled some cheese directly into the soup and let it melt in.

Although caramelizing onions takes a while, the end product is well worth it.  You're entire house/apartment will end up smelling like caramelized onions (even my bath towel picked up the scent!), but it's a delicious, hearty soup that will get you through the cold winter months.

Quack & Vac

We didn't wait very long to break the vacuum sealer and immersion circulator out of their packaging to give them a whirl.  It was just too hard to resist!

We picked up a couple duck breasts for our initial test drive.  This was perfect for our test run because we've made this dish pretty successfully in the past (despite the occasional duck fat spill from substandard bags breaking).  We started by scoring the skin, and seasoning them with salt and pepper.  We also threw a couple sprigs of thyme and rosemary into the bag for additional flavor.  

Once everything was in the bag, we sealed it up.  I don't know why we waited so long to get a vacuum sealer, because this little machine is so magical.  Just slide the bag's open end into the machine, close and lock the lid, press a button, and in less than 10 seconds, you have a vacuum sealed pouch.  It couldn't be simpler! Not only will it come in handy for sous vide cooking, but it will help us better preserve our various ingredients.

We clamped out immersion circulator to the side of our stock pot, which was filled with water, and placed our ducks into the pot.  Several sources online recommended cooking duck breasts at 135 degrees for 2 hours, so that's what we went with.  We programmed our circulator, and within 5 minutes, it was up to temperature.  We popped in our duck and covered it with some aluminium foil and we were good to go.

After 2 hours, the alarm sounded, and it was time to pull out our duck breasts.  We wanted to crisp up the skins, so we took them out of the pouch, and placed them skin-side down in a hot pan.  The fat rendered out even more, and the skin was perfectly crisp.

We pulled them out of the pan, and let them rest for about 5 minutes.  You don't want to lose all those juices when you slice into it!

Cherries are a popular compliment to duck, but we didn't have any on hand.  What we did have was some extra cranberry sauce.  We just added a little butter and brown sugar, and we had a slightly tart and slightly sweet sauce!  As a side dish, we whipped up one of our favorites, the kale-sunchoke farro hash.

Sous vide is such an easy technique that leaves you with perfectly cooked meat every time.  With our new toys, it's going to be so much easier to play around with different meats, root veggies, and even eggs.

Doggone Good Treats!

As you know, we aren't really bakers, but we thought we'd try our hand at making some homemade dog treats for a few special pups.  A quick search of the interwebs, and we found this recipe to use as our guide. We both love peanut butter and bacon, and we were sure our canine friends would go wild for this combination too.

Start by mixing your wet ingredients; peanut butter, milk, and an egg.  Whisk it all together until is is nice and smooth.

In the meantime, cut your bacon into little bits, and start crisping it up.

Once your wet ingredients are well mixed, start adding in your whole wheat flour, and baking powder.  The dough will be fairly dry and pretty heavy, so it's easiest to turn the dough out on the counter to finish combining all of the ingredients.  We did add in a little bacon fat to help incorporate all of the flour, and we omitted the oats.  Once your dough is together, toss in your bacon bits.

Once everything is incorporated, roll out your dough.  We had some bone-shaped cookie cutters that we used for our treats, but you can use whatever shapes you'd like...pups are sure to scarf down on these snacks regardless of the shape.  Place the treats on parchment paper on a baking sheet, and then just pop them into a 325 degree oven for about 20 minutes.  You'll give them a flip, and bake for another 10 minutes.

They were super easy to do, and they are made of healthy, all natural ingredients.  It's safe to say the treats were a big hit with Bruiser and Millie!

If Aunt Jemima & Col. Sanders Went On a Date...

...they'd probably eat chicken and waffles.  What better combination of salty and sweet could you ask for?  We drew inspiration from Edward Lee's recipe for adobo chicken and waffles in his latest cookbook, Smoke & Pickles.  We took a few shortcuts from his version because it was a chilly night in the Capitol and we wanted some comfort food in a hurry.  I wanted something green to accompany our chicken and waffles, so we braised some mustard greens, making a homey, southern comfort dinner.

We had some chicken breasts on hand, so we trimmed the fat, and pounded them into slightly thinner cutlets.  This helped reduce the cook time, and keep them moist.  Lee's recipe calls for an adobo marinade, but since we didn't really plan ahead, we just let the chicken soak in some buttermilk while we got the rest of the meal started.

While the chicken soaked, we got to work on the greens.  Originally, we wanted to cook up some collard greens, but our grocery store didn't have them, so we settled for the mustard greens.  For the greens, we used Lee's recipe for kimchi collards as our guide.  We started by crisping up some bacon.  To that, we added a sliced shallot, and a big clove of garlic.

Once the shallot and garlic had some time cook down, we added in our mustard greens.  We got this huge bunch for less than $1.  You can't beat that!

I gave them a quick spin in the salad spinner to get any grit off of them, and then gave them a rough chop.  Then just toss them into your dutch oven with the bacon, shallots, and garlic.  As they started to wilt down, we added in a pat of butter, chicken stock, a splash of soy sauce, and a splash of apple cider vinegar.  Since we didn't have any kimchi on hand, we added in a bit of sriracha sauce for spice.  Give everything a good toss, so all the liquids combine, your butter melts, and the greens are tossed in the liquid.  Then we just put a lid on it, and let it simmer for about 30 minutes.

Now back to the chicken.  For the breading, we used a combination of flour and panko, and added some adobo spice to replace the adobo marinade that we didn't use, paprika, salt, pepper, and a bit of our homemade bbq rub.  Once your chickens are breaded, just drop them into the oil to fry up.

While Justin took care of frying the chickens, I handled the waffles.  You can use any waffle batter recipe you like.  Ours used buttermilk, for some tang, as well as some paprika and black pepper, to make them a little more savory.

As our waffles and chickens finished up, we placed them on a wire rack and popped them into the oven to keep them warm and crispy.  If you put them directly onto the baking sheet, the bottoms will get soggy.  Putting them on the rack allows the air to circulate around them, keeping all sides crispy.  Plus, putting the chicken on the rack allows the excess oil to drip off.

Once all of your waffles are made and chickens are fried, it's time to eat!  We topped ours with some maple syrup.  We also had some leftover chipotle yogurt sauce, so we used that as a dipping sauce, to add a little smokiness and balance out the sweet syrup.

While we took a few shortcuts and used breast meat, the end result held up in the taste department.  The chicken was perfectly seasoned, and tender on the inside while nice and crispy on the outside.  The waffles had a perfect balance of flavor from the buttermilk and spice, and came out crisp with a light and soft interior.  This was some definite southern comfort with an Asian twist that was perfect for a cold night.