Surpemes de Volaille Archiduc (Chicken Breasts with Paprika, Onions, and Cream)

Three years ago I had the pleasure of visiting France for the first time. I had the amazing luck of staying in Lyon, the Capital of French Food, for a week. My friends who lived in downtown Lyon took me everywhere and showed me the best Lyon had to offer. Let me tell you, churches were nice, fashion was exquisite, but the best was its heavenly food.

In returning to the US, I bought Julia Child's The 40th Anniversary Edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Last night, I attempted her Chicken Breasts with Paprika, Onions, and Cream recipe. (Pg. 268-269)

"Supreme" in French cooking is the "breast of chicken when it is removed raw from one side of the bird in a

skinless, boneless piece". During the day I had joked with Reneed that the chickens are "Supreme" or heavenly, which she totally agreed because the end result is so heavenly. :-)

Step 1: - Since I made Chicken Cordon Bleu last week, all of the ingredients were already in my fridge. Amazing! I substituted lemon with lime juice and port with vermouth. (Thank god we drink martinis!)

Step 2: - I thawed the chicken and rubbed it with lime juice, salt and pepper.

Step 3: - I blanched the minced onions and cooked it with butter, salt, and paprika, for 10 minutes on low heat, with pan covered.

Step 3 (con'd): - After 10 minutes, the onion should be translucent, but not browned. All the liquid have evaporated by now.

Step 4: - In the bowl I mixed chicken bouillion (instead of the beef bouillon the recipe asked for) and vermouth. In the measuring cup is the heavy whipping cream.

Step 5: - Melt butter in the oven-proof pan and roll the breasts in the butter.

Step 6: - Add the cooked onion and paprika to the pan and lay breasts on top.

Step 7: - Cover the pan with tight lid (or tin foil) and bake in high heat. The recipe did not give a temperature, so I tried 400 degrees. I put it in for 6 minutes as instructed, but it was still a bit raw, so back in the oven they go for another 3 minutes. "When the meat is springy to the touch it is done." (I think mine took longer because I covered with tin foil instead of something tight that could hold in the heat better.) The safe way is to put in for 6 minutes and check. If not done, then try 2 minute durations. By the time the chicken was done, it was genuinely "springy to the touch".

Step 8: - I pour the chicken bouillon and vermouth to a pot with butter and boiled over high heat until liquid is syrupy. Then added the whipping cream until the new mixture is thickened too.

Step 9: - Lay the breasts on a plate, along with the sautéed onions. Add any side vegi dish you desire.

Step 10: - Pour sauce onto the breasts and now you have yourself a dinner!! A delicious one I hope...

... because we did! ^_^
A side note: I used cauliflower for side dish. Not knowing exactly what to do with it, I

--> Cooked it in boiling water for couple of minutes

--> Drained the water, added a small stick of butter, added parsley, basil and mixed.

--> They were still a bit hard and not tasty, so I added them into the sautéed onion & paprika pan (which by now is empty but had enough sauce still lingering), added 1/4 cup of water and let it simmer in medium-high heat. After the water is boiled away, the cauliflower was soft and the leftover seasoning added a real nice complimentary flavor too. Not bad for winging it. :-)

Bon Appetit!

Tiffany

Chicken Cordon Bleu II

While aimlessly browsing for something easy but tasty as the first dish of the year, I went on AllRecipes.com and found Chicken Cordon Bleu II. It looked fairly simple - few ingredients, few preparation, short cooking time... and the five star rating from its two thousand reviews made it a no brainer.

Original recipe - http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Chicken-Cordon-Bleu-II/Detail.aspx?src=etaf

I read some reviews and followed MEGBY's variation posted on Nov. 3, 2003.

Step 1: - Pound/Jaccard the chicken breast; add ham and Swiss cheese in the middle and secure with toothpicks.

Step 2: - Brush chicken with egg, bread with breadcrumbs, then fry in butter until both sides are golden brown.

Step 3: - Put in oven for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

Step 4: - Mix heavy whipping cream, white wine, chicken bouillon granules and cornstarch in a bowl. Simmer in a pot for 10 minutes or until boil right before the chicken is ready from the oven.

Step 5: - Blanch some great Sugar Snap Peas; season with black pepper.

Now, your dinner awaits. :-)

It was yummy! (First time I liked my own cooking)

The recipe I copied & pasted, with the second steps already incorporating the variation I mentioned earlier.

Tiffany

Summer Chicken Pasta Salad

First, let me say sorry for the bad photos. My camera battery died (why can't I remember to keep it charged?) AGAIN so I had to use my crappy cell phone camera that has no flash. (Thanks, Samsung)

This is a dish that Chris learned from his Mom. She made it when he was growing up and he wanted me to try it.

Ok so we started with some really amazing Heirloom Tomatoes that we got at a local farm stand. Heirloom Tomatoes have a much better flavor than your boring old beefsteak tomato. We also got a few English cucumbers at the grocery store. We only ended up using the one large tomato because that was enough for the dish.

Next we pan seared some chicken breast in olive oil to get a nice crust on it. We only seasoned with kosher salt and some black pepper.

I made a vinaigrette with two cloves of garlic, pressed, half of a lemon's worth of juice, kosher salt, pepper, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and fresh thyme. Just whisk it in a bowl. I used a little more vinegar than olive oil and about double the amount of olive oil than lemon juice. (Algebra, anyone?)

So everything gets cut into bite sized pieces and then everyone goes into a big bowl with one can of black olives (drained) and one pound of rotini pasta (cooked al dente, we use Dreamfield pasta). Only use enough of the vinaigrette to coat everything, you don't want a big pool of it at the bottom of the bowl.

You can eat this salad hot/warm like we did for dinner or put it in the fridge and eat it cold. I usually take the left overs for lunch the next day and I don't heat it up. It is really refreshing and has a nice bite from the balsamic and lemon. We also added a little grated Parmesan cheese, but I really didn't taste it at all and you can save the calories and just leave it out. We might try adding some feta next time, but probably to the plate and not to the big bowl because I don't think it will hold up well in the fridge.

Chicken Soup - Grandma Katie Style

Growing up, Mom always made chicken soup. She says the smell reminds her of her Grandma Katie. I don't remember Grandma Katie, so the smell of chicken soup reminds me of Mom. I feel like I've known how to make this my whole life. I remember watching Mom boil the chicken and then letting it cool overnight, skimming the fat, cleaning the chicken off the bones and then heating everything up again.

Recently, Chris and I made Roasted Chicken. I decided (before we even cooked it) that we would make chicken soup out of the leftovers. So on Thursday night, after work, we set out to make chicken soup. A lot of the work was done for us already. I had saved the gibblies from the chicken, along with the juice that collected in the bottom of my roasting pan, the bones of the chicken and some of the pieces that we didn't eat (wings, some breast meat).


First, we started a pot with water and the juices that were saved, which I skimmed the fat off of before adding to the pot. I cleaned all of the meat that I could off of the bones, separating the good meat, the bones and the sinew. The sinew goes in the trash, the meat goes in the pot and the bones get tied up in cheese cloth and then go in the pot. Gibblies get tied up in a separate cheesecloth and thrown in too.

We added about a half of a large bag of baby carrots, an entire package of celery, chopped, and an onion, also choppped.

Next are the spices. We added some oregano, thyme, sage, salt, pepper and 6 cloves of garlic, minced. I used these spices because that was what I made my chicken rub with.


We simmered it for about an hour, until the veggies were tender and the gibblies were cooked through. Just lift out the cheesecloth bundles, let them drain, and throw them out.

I don't like to put rice or pasta into my soup and let it sit there. I like it much better if you make the rice or pasta separately and then add it to each individual bowl before adding the soup. That way it doesn't break down too much and get soggy. We made rice this time.

We served the soup with a crusty bread and some apple cider (thanks for the idea, Vina!).

It was so delicious. Perfect for a cool night and worth the time we put into it on a work night (we didn't get to eat until almost 9pm since I got home from work around 7:30ish).

The best part was lunch on Friday. If possible (Chris and I agree 100% that it is), it was even better the next day.

Our pot was big enough for us to make dinner, lunch the next day and put a huge container in the freezer for another day.

Renée's Roasted Chicken and Potatoes

Whole chicken was on sale and I was sick so I decided to make a roasted chicken and then turn the leftovers into chicken soup. This is the roasted chicken part of the plan. Unfortunately, my camera battery was dead from the French Toast Experiment so there are not too many pictures for you here. I will narrate to the best of my storytelling abilities.

First you unwrap your lovely lady (the chicken, not your girlfriend) and give her a lukewarm shower in the sink (make sure your sink is clean on the bottom). Rinse out all cavities and crevices, also remove the bag that has the gibblies in it and put it in the fridge for later use in chicken soup making. (I call them gibblies, you got a problem with that?)

Now this part is a little bit hard but you can do it. Put your girl on a cutting board and get a small, sharp knife. Starting by the neck end, you are going to pull the skin up in one solid piece, cutting underneath at the stringy parts that make it stick to the chicken until you have a big skin flap that you can see the whole naked lady under (if you are really good you should be able to get the legs uncovered too, but that takes practice and if you can't do it the first time, its ok). Do not cut it completely free of the chicken! it should still be attached at the opposite side.

Now wash your hands. If you are smart you have made your spice rub ahead of time and can just start applying, but I always forget and have to make it after the de-skinning step. I just mix whatever I feel like in a little bowl. This time I used about a tablespoon of each of the following: sea salt, pepper, thyme, oregano, rosemary and sage. Mix them together well.

If you want at this step you can use your meat tenderizer or a fork to poke some holes in your chicken. I recommend NOT going through the skin, but hold it up instead and work underneath it.

Now the fun part. You are going to give your lovely chicky a nice rub down. Get some of that yummy spice rub and rub it under the skin of the chicken. Make a nice coating under there. Now you are going to stretch the skin back in place (don't worry it will stay). If you have left over spice rub, put it on the outside of the skin.

I baked my chicken in a clay baker (with lid on!) at 350° for 20 min/lb. You will be tempted to take the lid off and look - DON'T! Just let it bake and all the juices and steam will collect on the bottom. After its done you can take the lid off for a few minutes and let the skin get crispy if you want to. You want to keep that juice and bones and leftover meat for the chicken soup.

On to potatoes!

This part is super easy. Wash and quarter about 2lbs of baby potatoes (I prefer red, but white is good too, this time I used both). Put them in a large bowl, season with salt and pepper and sprinkle on some dried rosemary. Enough so that every potato will get some. Add about 1/4c of Olive Oil and toss until evenly coated. Then turn out onto a baking sheet.
Make sure that one of the cut sides is facing down. Bake at 400° for about 35-45 min. (If you want you can bake them with the chicken at 350°, but they will take around an hour or so)

Sorry for the bad plate picture but the lighting was bad and the flash reflected off the plate and then the camera died and I was hungry and didn't want to wait until it charged to eat. Yum! Perfect moist chicken and yummy crisp but tender potatoes. Don't mind the icky pile of green stuff. That was our adventure in frozen artichoke hearts. All I can say is, 'DON'T.'

Chicken with White Cream Sauce

Tonight I made Chicken with White Cream Sauce from the Julia Child cookbook because we were having our friend Anthony over for dinner. I've made it once before and I think it came out better last time. This time we had a few things that didn't work out quite like I wanted.

1) I didn't realize that the bottle white wine I had in the fridge didn't have very much in it, so I ended up using less wine and more vermouth.

2) I didn't check how much Arborio rice we had left and had to send Chris and our friend Anthony to the store to get more when I had already put the chicken in the oven and started the onions for the risotto. The chicken was out of the oven for more than 20 minutes before we ate.

3) My camera battery died in the middle of me cooking so there are not a lot of 'in progress' pictures. This is a picture of the chicken breasts once I cleaned them, rubbed them with lemon juice and salt and peppered them.

This is the cream sauce bubbling after I added the heavy cream

The final product on a bed of risotto (also from the Julia Child cookbook).

The chicken came out a little drier this time (probably from being kept in the pan for too long while they ran to the store) but it was still really yummy. The risotto was perfect, in spite of me having to throw out the first batch of onions and start over once the new container of rice arrived. All served with a side of steamed broccoli.

For dessert I made Chocolate Guinness Cake with Bailey's Buttercream and Chocolate Ganache. Yuuuummmy. It was so good. Check out my baking blog for details on that.

Edit on 8.28.08 to answer Danny's questions:

For the chicken I used white wine (chardonnay) and vermouth because that is what I had in the kitchen. Also, I used chicken stock since I was making chicken (didn't make sense to me to use beef stock). I'm trying to remember but I'm pretty sure I read the recipe wrong. I thought it said a 1/4 c of vermouth and a 1/4 c of white wine, but looking at it now it seems to only say 1/4 of vermouth. Oh well, it was still yummy.

Next time I make this I am going to follow the variation recipe on page 269 for Chicken Breasts with Mushrooms and Cream, because that just sounds delicious.

For the risotto, I again used chicken stock because I was serving it with chicken. I don't know that I would change that if I were cooking beef only because beef stock can have an overbearing flavor and this risotto has such a delicate flavor.

I Attempted Chris' Lemon Basil Chicken

First off, it was kind of a kluge. I called Chris while I was standing in the middle of the grocery store and said, "Hey, what do I need to buy to make that awesome chicken?"

I'm not sure how close I got to Chris' recipe, but I basically juiced two lemons through a strainer, added a couple table spoons of vegetable oil (because we realized we didn't have olive oil), pressed in some garlic cloves and hit it with a dash of salt and pepper.

After I had the mixture, I poked holes in the chicken (w/fork or tenderizer), then submerged each chicken breast for about 30 seconds each, then covered the top with basil. (and I do mean "covered" --you couldn't see the top of the chicken.)

Next I put them into a hot pan with some butter and oil with the basil side down. Then I decided to just pour in what was left of the mixture, right into the pan. I figured, "why not?"

I tried not to flip them too many times. Actually, I only flipped them once. Not sure if that makes a difference, but I found it much easier to see that the chicken was a little more than half cooked through and then just flip it once, knowing that the cook time was basically half over.

We also boiled some artichokes (40 mins) and boiled some red potatoes (25 mins). Make sure you prep the artichokes correctly. We got the directions from the Julia Child book.


The dip for the artichokes is just melted butter (bottom 2 dishes) and then lime juice with salt and pepper (top dish). I ended up only dipping artichokes in the melted butter.... then also dipping the potatoes in the melted butter... then dipping the chicken in the lime juice only to decide it was better without it. So the lime juice experiment was pretty much a no-go.

The orange slices were last minute (because I decided to take a picture and wanted to look all fancy :)