Easy Crispy Skinned Chicken a l'Orange and Parisian Style Crispy Potatoes

I have so missed not being able to blog recipes as often as I would like. In fact, I made this wonderful and E-A-S-Y dinner last Sunday. This recipe, is definitely a keeper for several reasons. It's economical, it's so simple and it's very good.

This is the second episode from Food Network's Melissa d'Arabian that I've watched. Her show is called $10.00 dinners and I have to say that I am enjoying her show. I can relate with her, since I consider myself to be a home cook, with no formal culinary training. Did I make this meal for $10.00? If you don't include the cost of many of the pantry items, I could. Well, let me show you:

Here are the simple ingredients: Orange juice concentrate, chicken breasts--bone in, skin on, honey and salt & pepper. Three chicken breasts cost about $8.25. I admit that I'm a little picky about using frozen concentrate, so I paid about $2.75 for this version, that doesn't contain high fructose corn syrup. The honey cost $6.00, from a local bee keeper right down the street where I live. I'm a little over budget, but I only used 1/2 cup of the orange juice and the rest is in the freezer for another time. I only used 4 Tablespoons of honey, so I guess you could say I was within budget of how much of the ingredients I used... now, for the sauce.

Roll up your sleeves. In a pot, pour 1/2 cup of frozen orange juice concentrate (no need to thaw), 4 Tablespoons honey, some salt and pepper. Yes, that's it! You won't even break a sweat.
TIP: I poured olive oil in my measuring cup and poured the oil into the skillet I was going to use. Next, I pour in the honey into the same measuring cup-- the honey slides right out!

Bring the sauce to a boil, for three minutes, turn off the heat and set aside.

Season the chicken with kosher salt & fresh cracked pepper. Always be careful when working with raw chicken, of course. These chicken breasts are resting on a silicone cutting sheet, on top of my wooden board. That way, I don't cross-contaminate and I wash the plastic mat in the dishwasher. You want the chicken to come to room temperature-- 15-30 minutes, tops.
TIP: Melissa reminds us that we should buy chicken on sale and freeze it. To quick thaw frozen chicken I never use the microwave. I soak chicken (I use a Food Saver bag) in a bowl of water. Within 30 minutes, it's safely thawed.

Preheat the oven to 375F. Heat an oven-proof skillet with 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil (you can use olive oil, but when I am searing I prefer vegetable oil because it has a higher smoke point). The idea is to sear the chicken and get that beautiful crispy skin. The secret? Be sure that you chicken is bone dry...pat, pat, pat with towels to get all moisture off. Bring the oil hot enough to where it ripples, but it's not smoking. Put the chicken in, skin down, and sear the meat for 3 minutes (not moving it around). Flip the chicken over and glaze the chicken with a brush-- don't POUR the sauce on (or the skin can become soggy).

Put the oven-proof skillet into the oven and bake/roast for about 15-20 minutes. We want an internal temperature between 160F-170F. Halfway through I carefully (remember, the handle is hot) removed pulled out the skillet and glazed the chicken again.

I'd say the chicken is cooked. Look at the pan sauce! Remove the skillet, and set the chicken onto a carving board and cover with foil-- let is rest for about 10 minutes.

What I like about this recipe, is that there is nothing to deglaze and no sauce to reduce. It's already passing my "test" that when I ran a spatula through it, it separated. This really is a tasty sauce.

I'm still working on my "removing bones from chicken skills"-- but I managed to cut out the breast bone and then I sliced the chicken breasts. Melissa was right-- I had four generous portions.

I plated this with Melissa's Perfect Crisp Potatoes and Haricot Vert with a compound butter of tarragon and herbs. The entire meal took less than an hour, from start to dining room table.

Melissa, you did it! The chicken was really moist, and the sauce... mmm-mmm-mmm. My son does not like chicken breast meat at all. He ate this dinner and said it was incredibly delicious.

One last thing about this recipe-- buying chicken breasts with bone-in and skin on is more economical, and I do believe that the bone keeps the meat juicier. I have a confession to make, though-- can you guess? I don't like chicken skin. Still, I loved the recipe-- I ate every single bite...except for the skin.

...and, I really loved this recipe, too! These potatoes are so easy to make, non-greasy and very Parisian. I'm going to tease you, and post how to make these on a separate post.

I'm officially a fan of Melissa d'Arabian. I made both of these recipes in under an hour. Truthfully, I would serve this dinner to company. I also think that the sauce would be delicious with pork tenderloin-- and I definitely plan to test that theory.

Enjoy!

The Tomato Basil Soup that almost wasn't...

This is my first entry, of what I hope will be many for "Souper Sundays" with Deb at Kahakai Kitchen.

Last week, I posted photos of our tomatoes that are fully ripe and more than ready for picking. No problem, I thought! I taught myself how to can five different flavors of homemade jam. I felt as though I'd earned my stripes as a "blanch and peel" pro to remove peach and apricot skins. I figured it would be super easy for me to make a tomato basil soup, from scratch...from our garden.

With great anticipation , I picked tomatoes and I admired my basketful of these beauties. I looked at what I hadn't picked, and I didn't even make a dent. I have a lot of tomatoes left to be picked.

I searched for a recipe, but many of them listed canned tomatoes as an ingredient. Now, why would I want to used canned tomatoes, when I have a glut of these red and juicy orbs just waiting to fill a soup bowl? I have been told that one of my signature dishes is my homemade soups. I think homemade soup is so easy to make-- and I've blogged about a few from last winter and spring. I decided I could make up my own recipe by following a basic "cream of ...." soup.

So, I selected a bowlful of Early Girls (lamenting that I didn't have any romas) and I decided I could make up my own recipe.
But first-- I started a pot of water boiling and blanched the tomatoes for one minute. Then, I shocked them in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking. Just as I had hoped, the skin had cracked and I could just slip it off...wrong! I forgot to core them!! It wasn't easy, mind you. I admit it-- I want to find shortcuts and I was not in the mood to cut stems out of blanched tomatoes. Fine. I'll use one of my many kitchen gadgets!

I have touted the virtues of my beloved OXO food mill several times on this blog. It makes perfect mashed potatoes and I recently discovered that it removed the majority of seeds when I made homemade raspberry jam. So, I figured that tomatoes would be no problem for the food mill to pulverize and I'd be on my way to making soup in no time at all.

Wrong! I ended up with juice and a lot of clumpy tomatoes. This was not going very well...

Next, I dragged out my trusty Cuisinart to break up the tomatoes a bit. Just a few pulses, and I'm liking what I see.

It worked! I put the chopped up tomatoes back into the food mill, and I was left with skins and seeds and it yielded 5 cups of crushed tomatoes. Whew! My kitchen, however, was a disaster area and I was breaking into a sweat. Mark my words-- I have no intention of doing this again. I mean it. While homemade marinara sauce, from garden tomatoes sounds heavenly... it's not for me. This was far too much work!

Now that I had the tomatoes, it was time to make the soup. This was Easy Street, I'll tell you.

In a large pot, I simply sauteed chopped onion with a little olive oil, salt & pepper and I cut fresh herbs from my garden-- thyme, parsley & oregano.
TIP: I save the rubber bands that comes with fresh asparagus or celery and use these tie my "bouquet garni". These are safe to boil.
I also grabbed a box of chicken stock and I was good to go.

I was going to add fresh garlic, but then I realized... I had frozen some basil pesto that I had made a couple of weeks ago, so removed a cube of that from the freezer. Brilliant!

I added the 5 cups of crushed tomatoes, one box of chicken stock, the herbs and about 2 Tablespoons of basil pesto, and about 1 tsp of sugar. I let that simmer, on low, for about 30 minutes.

I fished out the herbs and tossed them. I could have used an immersion blender to make the tomatoes really smooth, but I kind of wanted a rustic chunky texture (or, was I being lazy?)

I turned off the heat and added some heavy cream-- about 1/4 cup...not too much. Served with a dollop of creme fraiche, this was very good. Way too much work, but still it was a great tribute to my husband's dedication in growing our tomatoes. I'm going to try this again, but I'm going to see if roasting tomatoes is going to be a whole lot easier.

This recipe made 8 bowls. I froze half of this for the first day that we get rain. After our unseasonably hot weather, I'm ready!

Fall is on the way!

Raspberry Palmiers-- Easy Peasy and Ooey Gooey

I love caramel! I love the flavor of caramelized sugar and a nice chewy texture.

I recently been blogging about overcoming my fear of puff pastry, so I decided to graduate from making simple turnovers to making "Palmiers" (otherwise known as Elephant Ears). What are Palmiers?

palmier
[pahlm-YAY]
Also called palm leaves , this crispy delicacy is PUFF PASTRY dough that is sprinkled with granulated sugar, folded and rolled several times, then cut into thin strips. After baking, these golden brown, caramelized pastries are served with coffee or tea or as a dessert accompaniment.

© Copyright Barron's Educational Services, Inc. 1995 based on THE FOOD LOVER'S COMPANION, 2nd edition, by Sharon Tyler Herbst.

I try to make as many recipes as I can "from scratch" but I admit that puff pastry is far too complicated for me to attempt making-- too much folding and making sure to keep the butter nice and cold. Thank you, Pepperidge Farm, for being reasonably priced and making this step one that I don't have to worry about. Trader Joe's sells a great puff pastry, but only at Christmas. Whole Foods does, too, but it's a bit pricey. 'Nuff said.

I'm a very visual person, so I decided to pay YouTube.com a visit. Sure enough, there were plenty of folks willing to show how to make palmiers and how to fold them. I searched around for a few recipes (by the way, Palmiers can also be made savory). I rolled up my sleeves and decided to give this a go-- my virgin attempt at making Palmiers.

You will need: Puffy pastry, parchment paper (I have a Silpat but I'll explain, later, why I'm glad I chose parchment), a baking sheet, a rolling pin, and sugar. I was trying to use up leftover seedless raspberry jam (because I made homemade raspberry jam and I need refrigerator space), so I decided to add this as well.

If I plan to use puff pastry in advance, I thaw it in the refrigerator overnight. Today, this recipe was a total "whim" so I did a quick thaw.

I removed one sheet of puff pastry (Pepperide Farm comes in two's). I set the puff pastry on top of my parchment paper-- a trick I learned the hard way. You see, frozen puff pastry will thaw in about 30 minutes (unless you live in Siberia and it's winter). Once, I thawed the pastry on my cutting board and it was hard to handle. After about 5 minutes of thawing, I carefully unfolded the puff pastry. Don't worry about lines or if it's torn. Thawed pastry repairs very easily.

I have a tile counter (how I dream of a granite counter), so I used a marble pastry board. Sprinkle the board, generously, with sugar. How much? I don't measure... about this much.

Now, lift the parchment paper with the thawed pastry and flip it onto the sugared pastry board (or your counter). I use a bench scraper to shape the dough after the first roll, and I repair any cracks.

Now, sprinkle more sugar on top, and gently roll in order to press the sugar into the pastry. You also want to roll the dough to be thinner. I apologize, I can't give you a specific measurement of thinness. Just a bit, if that makes sense.

I used about 1/4 cup of seedless raspberry jam (you can skip this, if you want)...

...and spread the jam, leaving at least a 2- inch border. I figured that by the time I folded the dough, and pressed it some more, it would really spread.

Now, it's time to fold. Each side is rolled in about 1-1/2 inches. Eyeball it. I added a little more sugar and used the rolling pin to flatten it-- this was tricky, because of the jam.

Once more, I rolled each side in, until they met. Roll it flat again. Last, the two ends meet and are rolled one on top of another, then flatted with the rolling pin.

The jam oozed out of one end. Hmmmm, maybe a little less jam next time, but I'm not quitting now! Into the freezer, the first batch went, for 15 minutes. In the meantime, I put the second batch into the fridge. Both techniques worked fine, by the way. Remove from the fridge/freezer and...

...with a sharp knife, cut the dough in uniform sizes-- eyeball it. I'm guessing 3/8-in sizes. The first few slices didn't have jam in them, but that's okay. It gave me a chance to see if I like them better plain or with jam. Each sheet of puff pastry should yield 18 slices.

At first, a video showed that I should brush each piece with a little water and then dip into sugar.I decided that I could skip that, only because the jam was sticky enough. It worked like a charm.

As you can see, I set these on parchment paper. I was forewarned, by one recipe, that the puff pastry has a tendency to unfold, so to be sure to really press the dough together. I tried to figure it out... so we shall see what happens. I decided to experiment, since some recipes say to chill these between 15-30 minutes. The first set of cookies (12 of them) went into the freezer for 15 minutes. Then, I popped them into a 375F degree oven, on the middle rack. The "secret" to puff pastry are all the multiple layers of butter that expands when baked.

NOTE: At this point, you can freeze the palmiers to bake at a later time.

These smell out of this world! My husband walked into the house, sniffing and commenting that I was making something really good.

These are pretty! Some of them did, indeed, unfold a bit. C'est la vie.

Take note of all that caramelized sugar! Parchment paper is my friend, on this occassion. The one on the right reminds me of a mushroom.

I flipped some over and look at that beautiful caramelized sugar! I could hardly wait to try one, but they are very hot. Be careful!

Oh yeah, look at that caramelize sugar! I dare you to not eat one!

Onto a cooling rack...

Eaten warm, they are crunchy, chewy and incredibly good. A nice cup of tea would go well with these, for sure. Cooled, they are equally good.

You can do many variations-- cinnamon sugar, pumpkin spice, vanilla sugar-- have fun with this!

Baked with love,