Persimmon Chicken

Sweet and Savory Persimmons

Recipe adapted from Persimmon Love

I thought I’d escaped the annual ritual of receiving persimmons from my friend Bill’s tree by being away for the holidays, but alas! I responded to his Christmas greeting early in the New Year, and he replied, “Persimmons?” Sure, I’ll take some. I froze the super-squishy Hachiyas, but had to find a use for the hard, super-ripe Fuyus right away. We’re off the usual persimmony sweet treats post-holiday, so I adapted an online chicken recipe by adding sour and salty components to the sweet persimmons for a perfect balance of flavors. A dash or two of cayenne completes the flavor spectrum.

Cashew Chicken Salad with Mandarin Oranges

A Salad for All Seasons

Recipe Inspired by Cooking Light

In the middle of winter, comfort foods abound. Yet, after months of hefty fare, along comes an unseasonably warm and sunny day, and we suddenly crave fresh raw veggies. This winter veggie salad is a nutritional powerhouse, good for boosting immunity during the winter months. Cabbage is high in Vitamins A, K, and B6, plus 20 flavonoids and 15 phenols. Carrots are loaded with beta carotene and antioxidants. Bean sprouts contain lots of iron, copper, and other minerals. Ginger aids digestion and warms the body from within, a good addition to a wintertime salad.

Spring Chopped Salad with Tarragon Vinaigrette

Dressed for Dinner

Recipe Inspired by Salad for Dinner

Chopped salads are frequently found on Los Angeles menus, and I can see why. Consisting of hardy fresh vegetables topped with assorted cheeses, meats, and condiments, these wilt-proof salads are perfect in hot weather. As temps top the high 80s in the Santa Cruz mountains—and we get lots of fennel and cabbage in our CSA share—it’s time to get chopping. The idea of chopped salad is that a variety of veggies are cut into a similar size and shape, then goodies like chicken, capers, olives, onion, and cheese are added. A quasi-Mediterranean invention, this salad is usually dressed with an herby vinaigrette. Sturdy ingredients make leftovers stay fresh and crunchy.

Roast Chicken with Wild Rice Stuffing & Orange-Wine Sauce

Early Spring Comfort Food

Recipe by Robin

Stuffed chickens are extremely out of fashion and I’d like to reverse that trend, particularly at this time of year. Though technically spring, many days still tend towards damp and chilly, evenings are nippy, and my East Coast friends are looking at snow from yet another storm. We’re craving something warm and comforting. An oven-roasted bird with stuffing reminds us of celebratory feasts from seasons past and orange-wine sauce provides a lighter take on gravy. Why limit our enjoyment of stuffed birds to winter occasions?

Coq au Vin

Classic Coq Au Vin

Recipe Adapted from French: Delicious Classic Cuisine Made Easy

My mom used to make chicken with wine, and for years I’ve wondered how similar her recipe was to the classic French coq au vin. I’d never felt brave enough to venture into the French cooking world until my friend Lynn graced me with French: Delicious Classic Cuisine Made Easy last Christmas. Even with the simplification, this dish is much more complicated than Mom’s chicken, and it tastes quite different. After a frenzy of cooking activities, a slow simmer adds the real magic. Slow cooking is key to the chicken’s melt-in-the-mouth tenderness as well as its wine and mushroom flavor permeation. This is the richest “simply braised chicken” imaginable.

Slow Cooked Chicken Two Ways

DIY Taco in the Works

Recipes for Tacos and Chicken with Pasta

Slow cookers. Gotta love a device that cooks dinner for you. It’s even better when it cooks two dinners at once, and they’re both comfort foods. With my friend Jenn’s help, a couple years back I multiplexed my slow cooking with a Turkey Chili and Soup idea. Tacos (Jenn’s original idea) and chicken with pasta are this year’s double dinners. Like the super-simple originals, just a few ingredients go into the slow cooker, and other dinner preparation is minimal. This leaves plenty of time for other fun activities on cold winter nights.

Chicken Soup for the Body and Soul

Ladle Full of Love and Comfort

Recipe inspired by Mom

If it’s a cold, rainy night in Santa Cruz, or if your husband is recovering from gum surgery, or if you feel a bit under the weather yourself, a big pot of chicken soup is a good bet. If all three of those circumstances occur at once—welcome to my week—it’s almost inevitable. Unlike vegetarian soups, which typically require pre-sautéing of vegetables to bring out flavor, chicken makes plenty of yummy juice when simply thrown into a pot with some water and a few seasonings. This simple preparation is a boon to the ailing cook, and even the Mayo Clinic agrees that chicken soup can help a body with cold symptoms feel better quicker.

Chicken with Oranges

Try Chicken with Oranges Over Rice

Recipe adapted from old magazine clipping

Does anyone else have a box of old recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines in the 90s, 80s, and before? I’ve got a giant box, and the unending project of re-evaluating the recipes one by one and putting them into a binder by type. Some of these retro recipes have readily-available modern counterparts, others seem odd and dated. But some are pure treasures, reflections of simpler times before ingredients like balsamic vinegars and fresh herbs were available year round at the local grocery store. Chicken with oranges is one such recipe, combining sweet and savory with a touch of salt and green herb, featuring the fresh taste of orange.

Southwest Chili Lime Chicken Soup

Toppings Add Character

Recipe by Robin, Inspired by The Lunch Box

Earlier this month, I couldn’t quite grok the fact that my friend and neighbor James harvested 98 limes from his deck-cultivated, in-container dwarf tree. Serious citrus in the Santa Cruz mountains? From a deck? But as a result, we were blessed with over a dozen limes, which I’d said I could use to make chili lime chicken soup. “I’d like that recipe,” responded James, a lover of all spicy foods. But actually, there was no recipe, just a vague recollection of a delicious soup sold by the now-defunct Lunch Box, which used to deliver lunches and goodies to my day job. I remembered that it was a simple soup with numerous toppings that could be added to tweak the flavor. So I proceeded with the experiment. My first attempt was given the seal of approval (ie. was nearly polished off) at our monthly game night potluck. And so, by special request…a recipe for game night host James.

Chicken Marengo

Add Chicken to Sauce and Simmer

Recipe by Robin

Chicken Marengo. I’d heard the name for years, but never realized that it’s a historical dish. Napoleon Bonaparte’s chef Dunand first whipped it up after Napoleon’s victory at the Battle of Marengo in northern Italy in 1800. Using miscellaneous foraged ingredients, Dunand employed considerable skill in crafting the original recipe using chicken, eggs, tomatoes, onions, garlic, and crayfish, plus a couple of glugs of cognac from Napoleon’s flask.  The result was a chicken-tomato-onion stew served with fried eggs, crayfish, and soldiers’ bread rations on the side. Although this sounds like it would only taste good if you were camping, Napoleon considered the combination lucky. He insisted that Dunand prepare it the same way time and again when they returned home, despite the chef’s desire to modify the ingredients. Fortunately modern chefs are no longer literally under the sword, and have reinvented the recipe minus the eggs and crayfish and plus a few classic ingredients from Italian cuisine.

Chicken Cacciatore

Served over Spaghetti Squash

Recipe by Robin

One way to almost guarantee success with a recipe that you haven’t tried before is to make something with tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes. Your chances of success are even greater if you use homemade tomato sauce and/or homemade stewed tomatoes. Add a little wine for even higher odds of success. Case in point: I have only made chicken cacciatore twice but both times it was enthusiastically enjoyed and compliments rolled in. The first success was back in yesteryear when feeding an under-appreciative boyfriend with a recipe from the new 1985 Joy of Cooking. The second success was at a recent dinner party where my husband hoped that I knew what I was doing when I made up a recipe at the last minute.  It’s hard to go wrong with variations on this recipe, as long as you use a wine that you’d consider drinking. It doesn’t need to be expensive wine. I used a 2001 Two Buck Chuck Shiraz. Yeah, I might consider drinking that if the occasion were right, though it’s even better for cooking.

Quick and Easy Chicken Soup

To Your Health

Recipe by Robin

Summertime colds seem so counterintuitive and unfair. Staying in bed shivering under blankets while everyone else is outdoors playing in the sun, swimming with the kids, or sipping cocktails at a barbecue just doesn’t seem right. So the other day when I felt a bit under the weather, I chose to nip the virus in the bud. In addition to getting extra rest and drinking ginger tea and lemon tea, I made chicken soup.

Thai Style Napa Cabbage Chicken Salad

Summery Salad

Recipe by Robin

I have no idea where this recipe came from. Does this ever happen to you? It’s in my own writing. I found it in “The Cooking Decade,” a binder of family recipes that my older sister gave me. It’s one of the recipes that I added, and like all other Cooking Decade recipes was pre-tested and family-approved. Yet I have no recollection of making it, naming it, or writing it.

But who else would make a dressing with no oil, using simply lime juice, tamari, and garlic? Certainly not a professional chef. Doubtlessly it was created during hot weather when our CSA supplied us with plenty of Napa cabbage and we had limes on hand. On a day like today.

Tagine of Chicken and Fava Beans

Delightful Combination of Flavors

Recipe adapted from Cooking Light, May 2006

Today’s new moon ushers in the energetic high point of this Year of the Dragon, according to Chinese tradition. From May 20 – June 18, the Dragon Moon intensifies characteristics of the Water Dragon Year, including creativity, good luck, and accomplishment. So perhaps it’s the energy of the Dragon that made this recipe turn out perfectly the first time. Or maybe I just got lucky. In any case, this is my husband’s favorite of the many ways I’ve tried fixing fava beans.

Smoky Chicken Paprikash

Smoky Chicken Paprikash on Steamed Zucchini

Recipe by Robin

One of the most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever received was a bottle of exotic smoked paprika from my friend Betty. We were talking smoked paprika at a monthly musical gathering. The following month she surprised me with a bottle of my own, from her supply of La Chinata sweet smoked paprika. La Chinata, a manufacturer in Spain, also makes hot smoked paprika and bittersweet smoked paprika, half hot and half sweet.

African Inspired Chicken in Red Pepper Sauce

Chicken & Red Pepper Sauce over Millet

Recipe by Robin

Way back when in ’89, I started studying African drumming. My Nigerian mentor, Danjuma, not only played hand drums, guitar, bass, trapset drums, and trumpet, but also cooked up a variety of spicy hot tomato-based stews.  He used chickpeas, potatoes, spinach to make a vegetarian stew, and sometimes would make chicken stews. All of these were fiery hot. He also prepared “foufou,” a thick millet, which could be rolled into balls and dipped in the stew, a tradition enjoyed in many African cultures. Many variations of red pepper stewed chicken are prepared throughout Africa.

Rosemary Chicken with Fennel

Warm and Savory Winter Meal

Recipe by Yankee Magazine

Welcome to 2012! I like to believe that the first few days of the new year set the tone for the entire year, and intentionally create the kinds of experiences I like during those days. So today I finished up a bit of old business, spent cozy time with my husband, chatted with a friend, took a walk, and simplified my New Year’s Day dinner plan.

Apricot Chicken

A Host of Golden Ingredients for an Uplifting Dish

Recipe Adapted from Rachael Ray

Coming home after 10 days of work cleaning out my deceased father’s house, after an unexpectedly complicated flight and night in a strange city thanks to Delta airlines, with my luggage still in transit, an ailing pet at home, a tree fallen onto my house, and no food in the fridge…well, I’m a little melancholy and introspective.

Chicken with Black Beans and Red and Black Dates

Chinese Black Dates with Garlic & Ginger

Recipe from The Chinese Herbal Cookbook

In search of a recipe for the large bunch of watercress, I remembered this stew recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks [read my book review on Goodreads.com]. The Chinese Herbal Cookbook combines Chinese herb ingredients with European cookery. When used as an accompaniment to this stew, the watercress takes on an amazingly mild character. The stew itself is dark and smoky, and slightly sweet, and as such is actually a more appropriate dish for fall or winter than spring.

Chicken with Green Garlic, Onion and Tomato

Chicken Baked in Thick Sauce over Pasta

Recipe by Robin

Part of my commitment to eating local foods emerges from my greater desire to conserve natural resources. Less transportation of food equals fewer fossil fuels used in its production. As a longtime conservationist, I’m delighted to see increasing interest in global warming. In particular, I am heartened to see individuals taking responsibility to reduce their “carbon footprints” by minimizing the amount of fossil fuels that they consume, reducing personal contribution to global warming by lowering their production of greenhouse gases.