Wowee what a week. We did the biggest event to date…..eight courses for forty people. Plated. I got very nervous talking to people between courses and found myself doing deer in the headlights when it came time to describe what they were eating. I really…
For all of this week I’ll be testing and prepping for the October 14th event. There’s only a few tickets left and I’m both terrified and excited at the same time. This will be a defining moment in the fledgling Basil & Sage private chef…
The quest to decrease the tomato problem in my kitchen continues. My friends are now turning down offers of free tomatoes because they also have more than they can handle. So what am I going to do today? Well, more salsa, for starters. And then it’s chicken cacciatore time….with fresh tomato sauce.
Usually, I reserve chicken cacciatore for a way to use up leftover marinara. I just add onions and voila! Sometimes, there would be mushrooms, too, depending on the state of my wallet at that moment. This time, I’m trying to avoid tossing tomatoes into the trash because they sat on the counter for too long and have become fruit fly hotels and are leaking tomato water all over the place. Gross. And the next two days are just going to see an influx of more tomatoes because all the fruit has to come in before the rain starts…..which is just a couple of days away.
You can use any chicken parts you like. I usually use what I have. Today, I have a whole chicken or some boneless skinless breasts. Who bought those?! Oh right, it was me. If there’s any meat I really don’t buy ever, it’s boneless skinless chicken breasts. It’s like…why?! I save those things to be pounded, breaded, fried, and smothered. That’s pretty much it. Naked chicken is like canned gravy. Why bother? I was recently at a spot with a friend having lunch where I was served the driest, hardest, grodiest pieces of boneless skinless chicken breast on my salad…totally confirming my hatred of this sort of meat cardboard.
Anyway. I’m going to spatchcock this chicken, season it with salt and pepper, bake it until it’s crispy, and then serve it over some sauce on potatoes. Italian comfort food at its best. I don’t stew the chicken in the sauce. I used to. But then I had it in a restaurant served with the chicken made separately and the skin was crispy and I was sold. Adding white wine to the sauce makes me feel fancy and I happen to have a half bottle of white cooking wine left in the fridge. What is the difference between cooking wine and drinking wine, you ask? Cooking wine is cheap wine or oxidized drinking wine. We’ll discuss it all later.
You can totally season your chicken however you like. I’m 100% guilty of pouring Italian salad dressing on a spatchcocked chicken in the name of efficiency when I have no time to cook, but have to cook because there was no money to order a pizza or allow a defrosted chicken to languish in the fridge one more day.
Fine, I’m guilty of it when I’m lazy, too. Happy? Well, the Italian salad dressing trick makes a very juicy and delicious chicken and goes with literally everything. It’s the real finger lickin’ good chicken the Colonel, may he rest in peace, didn’t want you to know about. There’s this thing that happens with the chicken juices and the dressing drippings that makes you want to lick the plate. Ok fine…I’ll admit I’ve mopped up that hot mess with wads of chicken. Shushit.
Splitting the chicken is a fast and simple way to conquer a whole chicken and it cooks quickly. Spatchcocking! I think I just like saying it. I cut it, using poultry shears up one side of the back and I cut the top portion of the breast at the neck end to make it a little flatter. Why poultry shears and not a knife? Because I have terrible knife skills and I’m a cheater. That’s why.
Some will cut the back completely out. I don’t bother. Mostly because I’m lazy and also because I’ll use this carcass to make stock, so I want all the bones roasted. I usually just use salt and lots of fine ground pepper because I like chicken this way in this dish. This time, I used my herbed pink salt. But feel free to add rosemary or thyme or some herbs d’provence or whatever. Serve the sauce over egg noodles, rice, mashed potatoes, or spaghetti! We did smashed baby red potatoes.
Diary Entry September 29th, 2018: It’s official. Elizabeth and I are now private chefs. Tada! After exhausting requests to cook in a hired capacity from friends, I’ve finally acquiesced. My reluctance comes from being traumatized by the public after being forced to become a waitress…
I’ll be glad when I get to the point where I’m posting about recipes that don’t have tomatoes in them. In the meantime, I made this little side dish to go with some mystery beef we smoked up the other night. I had some leftover…
I have lots of slicing and dicing and chopping type tools across the various appliances alone, not to mention the mandolines. But the one I use the most is the hand held mandoline. I love love love this thing. It was inexpensive and it has become indispensable in my kitchen. It’s cut my salad prep by more than half. I use it at least twice a week if not daily. Instead of prepping a salad on a cutting board with a knife and putting it into a large bowl for just the four of us, I can make the individual salads with just the hand held mandoline. I get the bonus of less dishes to wash later. I just hold it over the individual bowls and slice away. Then I can just wipe it clean, rinse it under hot water, and let it dry. Done. I don’t even look at my other mandolines anymore unless I need something julienned in a jiffy. But Scalloped potatoes? Right into the casserole dish. Delicata squash puff pastry tartlet? Five minutes. Tomato pie? Six minutes. It’s endless.
Panic has discovered that a just blushing tomato is edible and has started eating just ripening tomatoes on the vine. Does she target the small tomatoes? Of course not. She goes after the giant fruit. What a jerkface. But the forecast is showing intermittent days…
Ugh the tomatoes. I spend all year chomping at the bit to seed and transplant and grow and eat heirloom tomatoes. One month after the fruit starts coming in, I’m sick of tomatoes. I am tomato’d out, man. But I grew such bitchin’ tomatoes this…
My kitchen counters are covered in tomatoes. I have them falling all over the place and the fruit flies are having a party. Some of the tomatoes came in cracked and I knew I was tempting the fruit fly fate fairy (try saying that more than once), but it’s a just a few cracks and those can be cut off and the rest can be salsa. Over ripe fruit is just crying out to be made into salsa. No, I’m not canning salsa. We eat it like Popeye ate spinach. It’s too much work to can it. But I do cook it. Daddy would have been so proud. He was the salsa maker extraordinaire. I could sit at his table and eat gallons of his salsa.
Luckily, everyone in the house eats my salsa because I need to make a lot of it over the next few days. That means we’ll be eating a lot of Mexican food. Oh no. What ever will we do?! Last night was yellow tail ceviche, chili rellenos, and of course chips and salsa. Yes, I did put fresh tomatoes in the rice. Tomorrow night is shrimp fajitas. And there’ll be tons of quesadillas in between and after. Cheese coma coming. Mmmmm queso……
In an effort to reduce the tomato quantities covering every surface in the kitchen, I took all the smaller fruits and the cherry tomatoes and oven dried them all day yesterday. I managed to get two full sheets done by 9pm before heading to bed. …