The Chicken Files

When I was living in Montreal, the local Provigo occasionally had chicken sales... Why buy one or two breasts for $10 when I could buy a whole chicken for $5? You better believe I bought a lot of those $5 chickens... But how do I make use of a whole chicken for one person?

I toyed with lots of ideas... should I do a spice rub? I found an interesting recipe for an African-style roast chicken using butter, turmeric and other spices. Or I could boil the chicken in water with whole lemons and make a Persian style lemon soup? But when it comes to chicken, it boils down to this: my ultimate comfort food is a good, ole fashioned roast chicken with gravy. That's it.

Before I lived by myself, I'd never roast a chicken. This was my mom's job. I always made the stuffing, but the chicken was her domain. So I had to email her to get her recipe, or rather, method (since simple roast chicken really isn't a recipe). She gave me her 'secret' instructions and roast I did. My chicken was so good, I think it should have won a prize. Now, I have no one to collaborate my story, since I invited my roommate and a friend but no one came to eat with me... So I got to enjoy a roast chicken, gravy, stuffing, and mashed potatoes all by myself... for three days straight.

Mom's Roast Chicken Dinner:

one chicken

some butter

chicken stock

flour

water

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Place the chicken in a roasting pan. If it's not trussed, truss it up! (And if you don't know how, go here.) Rub the chicken with butter and place a pat or two inside the chicken's cavity. Cover with tin foil and bake for about an hour. After an hour, take the tin foil off, pour about 3/4 of a cup chicken stock into the pan. Return the chicken to the oven and roast for another 30 minutes or so, until the chicken is nicely browned. To check if it's done: take the pan out of the oven. With a sharp knife, poke the skin by the chicken thigh. If the juices that run out are clear, the chicken is ready. If the juices are cloudy, continue cooking.

Remove the chicken from the pan and place it on a serving platter, tented with aluminum foil.

To make the gravy:

Stir about 1/3 of a cup of flour with some water to make a thick slurry. Place the roasting pan on the stove top and add some more chicken stock to the juices to make an appropriate amount of gravy. Turn on a burner and using a spoon, scrape the bits of skin off the bottom of the pan. When the pan has reached a boil, slowly pour the slurry into the broth, rapidly stirring to avoid lumps. When the gravy is the desired consistency, season with salt and pepper and remove from the heat. You can strain the gravy if you like to remove any lumps or bits of skin (or leave them in, as I like to).

Serve with whatever side dishes you want. And don't throw out the chicken carcass! I'll tell you what I did with mine in a later post (I am penniless after all!).

Tortilla de Patatas

(pictures to come when I manage to find a battery charger for my camera)

I haven't gone grocery shopping in a while. In fact, the only things I really have in the kitchen right now are -kind of- boring staples. But I'm not in the mood for something boring.

When I visited Spain years ago, one classic item on every menu was a tortilla de patatas. Not to be confused with a Mexican tortilla, the Spanish tortilla is basically an omelet filled with sliced potatoes. At the time, I was horrified - I hated eggs. But now, I actually love to eat eggs, although I'm not sure what sparked this late-in-life transition. I haven't eaten tortilla since that ill-fated menu-mix up in Barcelona, but I happened to have had the ingredients on hand today.

I looked online for some more information on this standard Spanish dish, which is also sometimes called tortilla Espanola. I found one recipe that looked alright here, and found an even better one at my old standby, Epicurious.com, which can be found here. However, both used ingredients and techniques that I just wasn't comfortable with. Flipping a loose, shaky plate full of eggs? Not so sure about that... Four large potatoes? I'm penniless, remember? The following is what I came up with, using ingredients I actually had:

Tortilla de Patatas with Paprika Aioli

Aioli:

1 egg yolk

two cloves garlic, crushed

1/4 tsp dried mustard

juice from half a lemon

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil (you can use another oil if you prefer - I like the taste of olive oil)

1/2 tsp paprika

salt to taste

Add the egg yolk, garlic, mustard and lemon juice to a large bowl. Stir until frothy. Start to whisk in the oil, one drop at a time. If you add it too quickly, the aioli will separate. Once it starts to gel together, you can add the oil in a steady stream. Add a pinch or two of salt, then taste for seasoning. Set aside.

Tortilla:

1 large russet potato

1 onion

1 clove garlic, chopped

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp olive oil

4 eggs

pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Peel and slice potato into thin slices (about 5 mm thick). Boil until slices are tender, being careful not to over boil - you want the potatoes to keep their shape. Meanwhile, slice and saute the onion and garlic in a pan in 1 tbsp of the oil. You can cook the onions until they're translucent, or for more flavour, cook them until they're starting to brown and caramelize. In a bowl, crack the eggs and beat with a fork. Add salt and pepper, and the potatoes and onions. Mix evenly. On the stove, heat a heavy cast iron pan. Add the 2nd tbsp of oil and swirl to spread. Pour the egg mixture into the pan, being careful to flatten it evenly with a spoon. After about 5 minutes, the edges will look set and the middle should be watery. Put in the oven for about 10 minutes, or until the middle feels firm. When you remove from the oven, place a serving plate over the pan. With both hands in oven mitts, hold the pan and plate and flip, inverting the tortilla onto the serving plate.

Serve warm or cold with paprika aioli. Should serve 8 as appetizers or 2-4 as a main dish.

Enjoy!

The Start of the Blog

This past year has been a rough one, financially. But I still love to eat. My only option? Get creative with what I find on sale... or what I raid out of my parents kitchen (yes, I moved back home after living on my own!). I'm finding that being a student (for years) really provides you with the opportunity to swallow your pride and do what you must to get by.

Anyway, I digress. The issue at hand - food. Since I was a little kid, I was obsessed with food. At first, just with eating. Later, with cooking. When my parents would leave me alone at home, the first thing I would do was peak out the kitchen to make sure the car had left, then run to the kitchen. I'd experiment with anything I could get my hands on. Uncooked rice, HP Sauce and eggs? Sure. Cook sugar in the microwave? Sure, let's see what happens! (Side note - It turns to rock candy and is impossible to clean off of plates).

As I grew older, I started to obsessively read cooking books and magazines. Once a year, the municipality where I live has a spring clean-up week. You can throw out anything! And it's a paradise for a young kid - piles of peoples trash - full of interesting things... once I brought home a smelly old deer skull with antlers. Anyway, one year, I found a box full of old Bon Appetit, Gourmet and Martha Stewart Living magazines. With my heart in my throat I hurried home to tell my mom. "Please don't let someone take them in the meantime." I nervously thought to myself. We got in the mini-van and went, and lo and behold, the box was still there. I looked at those magazines for years, getting inspiration, imagining cooking all the delicious dishes I could make.

I started to experiment - legitimately - actually combining foods you'd want to eat. Sometimes I failed (rock hard bread loaves, chocolate cake with too many ingredient substitutions), but as time wore on, I actually improved. I began cooking for my family quite regularly. And my friends at school would check out my lunches every day with interest.

Flash forward to this year - I'm still obsessed with cooking and eating. And after having the chance to run a series of cooking workshops in Montreal, I realized my true strength lies in combining ingredients and making up my own recipes. I've become adventurous, bold. I know flavours before I taste them. I dream in saffron and yeast.

So, here is my blog. I'm going to write about cooking, about eating and about food. Most importantly, I'm going to eat like a king while living like a pauper. I hope you enjoy!