Oh! Oh! I totally forgot the “secret” ingredient! Based on the Fine Cooking recipe, I added about a tablespoon of honey in the sauce with the lemon, chicken stock & wine. I’ve amended the recipe below!

This was sort of one of those meals where I looked around at what we had and then figured out what to do with it. Chicken breasts? Yes. Capers? Right there. Lemons? Uh-huh. Wine? Well, duh. Feta stuffed green olives that I love-love-love? Oh yeah. So, here we go.

This recipe is also a combination of many different recipes I found online. The fried capers bit is from Fine Cooking magazine and the rest is a little bit Everyday Italian (Little Big Head) and a little bit I love my smoked paprika and I love my Parmesan cheese.

Chicken Piccata with Olives and Fried Capers
2 skinless and boneless chicken breasts, pounded flat*
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup AP flour
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1 tsp smoked paprika
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 tbsp brined capers, rinsed
1 clove garlic, minced
Juice of 1 big lemon (should be about 3 - 4 tbsp, you may need another lemon if yours isn’t super juicy and/or big)
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup of white wine (I used a chardonnay)
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp butter
1/4 cup chopped green olives (rinsed) — stuffed with feta if you’ve got ‘em
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped

Combine flour, cheese, and paprika and pour onto a rimmed plate. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Dredge chicken pieces in the flour mixture and shake off excess.

In a large 10 or 12-inch skillet over medium high heat, add the olive oil. When hot add the capers and cook for about 60 seconds until they get a little color.

They will also expand a little, almost pop open a bit. Use a slotted spoon and remove the capers and let drain on a paper towel.

In the remaining oil, add the chicken and cook about 2-3 minutes.

When chicken is browned, flip and cook other side for 3 minutes. Check for doneness with a meat thermometer. You are looking for about 165. Remove and transfer to plate. Cover with foil to keep warm.

If you are making pasta to go with this, now is a good time to have your pot of boiling water and your pasta ready to go. We had spaghetti and some green beans. I added the pasta to the water when the sauce was about 8 minutes from being done and then the green beans to the pasta for the last 3-4 minutes of cooking time.

Okay, now back to the sauce. Reduce heat to medium and add the lemon juice, stock, honey, wine and garlic. Bring to boil, scraping up brown bits from the pan for extra flavor. Reduce for about 10 minutes. Check for seasoning and overall taste. Add more wine, stock or lemon as needed. I have to admit I fiddled a bit here. I added a bit more wine. Tasted. Then added a bit more stock. Then gave it a couple more minutes to reduce. When it is just where you like it, add the fried capers, the olives, parsley and butter. When butter is melted, it’s done.

To serve: plate up some drained pasta and green beans. I thought a large rimmed plate worked well but jwa thought a big bowl might have been better. Pfffftttt…whatever. Give each plate a chicken breast and top with the sauce, dividing it between plates.

This was really, really good. We will definitely be having this again. I was kind of sad I only used two chicken breasts and that there were no leftovers.

* To pound your chicken, Place some plastic wrap over a cutting board and put a chicken breast down. Fold the wrap over the chicken and pound with –
a: a pounding mallet
b: a rolling pin
c: some other instrument of choice

I actually have a metal tenderizing side/flat side mallet that I use. I like it because I can just throw it in the dishwasher. That’s one thing to remember, you might get a little raw chicken on whatever you’re pounding with so make sure that what you are using is washable. Then, pound each breast until it has pretty much doubled in size and is about 1/2 - 1/4 inch thick.

Until last April, I had never really tried clams or mussels. That changed when we stayed at the Winchester Inn in Ashland and our free chef’s choice appetizer coupon got us a big, steaming bowl of mussels and clams. And lots of hot bread. jwa and I both made slight faces and then each kind of shrugged and dug in.

Things I learned that night:

1. wine and butter make anything tasty
2. crusty bread is your friend
3. I like clams!
4. I am okay with mussels, but probably wouldn’t order a big plate of them

After being exposed to these four new tenets, I have been threatening to make some sort of clam dish at home ever since. jwa only encouraged this by getting me seafood forks as a stocking stuffer last Christmas. So, here’s some clams. But, it’s mostly salmon. But, hey, we’ve had it twice so far and both times it’s been pretty good.

The original recipe called for much more mint and saffron. I omitted the saffron the second time as I thought it overpowered the dish a little bit. I also decreased the mint a bit as it’s winter and I can’t get tons o’ fresh mint from the yard.

Salmon with Clams and Garlicky-Buttery Herb Broth
Influenced by a recipe by chef Michael Kornick of MK Restaurant in Chicago
2 tbsp fresh chives, chopped
2 tbsp fresh basil, chopped
2 tbsp fresh tarragon, chopped
2 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
4 tbsp fresh mint, chopped
6 cloves garlic, finely chopped (separate into piles of four cloves and two cloves)
1/4 cup + 3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 salmon fillets, 6-8 oz each
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 medium fennel bulb, stalks cut off and discarded, and bulb cored and thinly sliced lengthwise
1 medium sweet onion, such as Vidalia, thinly sliced
1 cup dry white wine
3 tbsp unsalted butter
8-12 littleneck or Manilla clams, scrubbed

In large re-sealable plastic bag, combine chives, basil, tarragon, parsley, half the mint, the 4 cloves of chopped garlic, and 1/4 cup olive oil. Add salmon and seal bag, pressing out air. Turn bag to coat salmon, then refrigerate, turning bag over occasionally, at least 1 hour and up to 4 hours. You can also marinate the fish in a large dish.

Remove fish from marinade. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Preheat a grill pan or large skillet and grill salmon, turning once, until just opaque in center, about 4 minutes per side. Transfer to platter and cover loosely with foil to keep warm.

Now, I like to use the same pan that I cooked the salmon in, call me wacky. You could also, of course, use a new pan. Add the remaining olive oil, the fennel, onion and the remaining 2 cloves of chopped garlic. Sauté until just soft, about 2 minutes.

Add wine, butter, remaining mint, and clams, cover and bring to boil. Cook until clams open, about 8-10 minutes. Discard any clams that have not opened.

Place 1 piece salmon on center of each of 8 wide shallow bowls. Spoon clams, broth, onions, and fennel around salmon and serve immediately.

For an extra treat, cook some pasta or rice and place that in the bowl first, followed by the salmon and clams and sauce. Feta cheese makes a nice garnish, as does more fresh herbs. Also, (see lesson #2 above) you really can’t go wrong with slices from a crusty baguette on the side.

Resolution #1 — post more.
So, here we go. This was our stay at home, New Year’s Eve meal. Yep, instead of going out, we opted to stay in and eat a lot of beef. Mmmmm… I’ve wanted to make beef wellingtons for quite a while and finally, the time was right. Oh, was it right. Deliciously right.

In the original recipe, this was paired with a Madeira, beef demi-glace sauce but I just opted to use some tawny port that I already had and some beef broth. In a pinch, I would think you could also just use a cabernet in the sauce as well. Also, I heeded the advice of those on Epicurious who came before me and instead of pre-baking the beef (seriously?), I just seared it first in a pan. That was great advice and worked quite well.

The best thing about this recipe, though, is it’s make-ahead-ability. We came home from the store on Dec 30th and put the wellingtons together and kept them in the fridge until New Year’s Eve night. Tackling it that way, I’d think this would even be a great main course for a big dinner party. If you’re into sharing your beef wellingtons like that…

Beef Wellingtons with Gorgonzola & Mushrooms
Adapted from Gourmet magazine
2 center-cut beef tenderloins or filet mignons to the fancy-pants (about 6-8 ounces each)
1 tbsp canola oil
4 large mushrooms (about 1/4 pound total)
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tbsp finely chopped shallot
1 tbsp tawny port
1 clove minced garlic
1 large egg
1 puff pastry sheet (from a 17 1/4-ounce package frozen puff pastry), thawed
2 tbsp Gorgonzola cheese

Heat the tablespoon of oil in a heavy skillet and get it really hot. Salt and pepper each piece of meat and sear the steaks about 60-90 seconds on each side (salt and pepper the other side before turning over). Remove from the pan and let cool down a bit.

Thinly slice the mushrooms for the beef wellington and in a heavy skillet cook in butter with shallot, garlic, and salt and pepper to taste over moderate heat, stirring, until mushrooms are lightly browned. Add the port and stir until it has mostly evaporated. Transfer mushroom mixture to a bowl to cool completely. In a small bowl lightly beat egg to make an egg wash.

On a lightly floured surface roll out puff pastry sheet into a square. Cut in half and roll out a bit more as needed to make it big enough to fit each tenderloin.

Put a nice layer of mushroom mixture and about 1 tablespoon Gorgonzola in center of each square. Top mushroom mixture with a piece of beef, pressing it down gently, and wrap 2 opposite corners of puff pastry over the beef, overlapping them. Seal seam with egg wash or just dip your finger in a little water and seal that way.

Wrap remaining 2 corners of pastry over the beef and seal in same manner. Seal any gaps with egg wash and press pastry around the beefy goodness to enclose completely. Chances are, this will not work out exactly as described. There will be some wrapping and then perhaps a pause for a few sketches, calculations or whatnot and more wrapping and eventually, you will end up with a nicely enclosed beef wellington. Hang in there, it’ll happen.

Use any leftover pastry scraps and cookie cutter (or just mad knife skillz) to decorate the top. jwa made a giant eyeball on his.

Wrap up the beef wellingtons for chilling. I set them on a plate that I had lightly floured and covered with plastic wrap. Chill at least one hour and up to one day. Like I mentioned in the intro, we did these the day before and that worked really well.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees with your baking sheet in the oven. When you are ready to bake the wellingtons, arrange them, seam side down, on the hot baking sheet. Brush top and sides of each beef Wellington with some egg wash (you can save your leftover egg wash from the day before) and bake 20 minutes, or until pastry is golden. Twenty minutes should yield beef that is medium rare. You will have to adjust this time based on your doneness preference and the size of your wellington. If in doubt, medium rare is 145 degrees, just give it a quick check with the meat thermometer.

For sauce
5 mushrooms (button or crimini)
1 shallot, diced
1 1/2 cups beef broth
1/3 cup Madeira (you can also use plain red wine here or a port)
1 tbsp fresh thyme leave

To make the sauce (and this is doable the day before too), heat a pan with a little oil. If you are super smart, you can make the sauce in the same pan that you seared the beef in. Alas, I did not think of this at the time. I am sad.

Anyway, saute the shallot and mushrooms until soft and add the wine of your choice to deglaze the pan. Next add the broth and reduce by about half, 15-20 minutes. Stir in the thyme; salt and pepper as needed. Refrigerate (if you are making this ahead of time) and reheat with the beef as needed.

Other Optional Condiment
1 tbsp horseradish
1 cup Greek yogurt (regular yogurt will work too — the Greek kind is just extra creamy)

Mix and serve on the side. The sauce was very tasty but I think the horseradish-yogurt was my favorite. What else did we have on the side? Well, scalloped potatoes and braised Brussels sprouts. Then we retired to the couch and rang in the New Year with some season one Buffy.

This month’s Weekend Cookbook Challenge is hosted by Mel’s Diner with the aptly chosen, Celebration Dishes as the theme. For this, I chose my newest cookbook, Nigella Express and made a lamb stew from it.

She calls it a tagine, but since I didn’t cook it in an actual tagine and I’m not familiar enough with Moroccan cooking to judge it’s accurateness, I’m certainly not going to call it a tagine. So, uh, no one get their knickers in a twist.

Anywho….I used a mix of olives here, mainly because that’s what I had — nicoise, kalamata and a handful of plain black, pitted olives. But, I’m thinking oil cured might be super tasty here. I also just made my own caramelized onions, rather than hunting down a jar of them (as the recipe calls for). I have never even seen jarred caramelized onions…maybe that’s a British thing? Another thing I changed is that I added carrots. I just felt the need for more vegetables with the big meatiness of the stew.

Let’s celebrate!

Lamb Stew with Olives and Caramelized Onions
Adapted from a recipe by Nigella Lawson
2 1/4 pounds diced leg of lamb
1 head garlic, separated into cloves
12 ounces pitted black olives in brine, 5 ounces drained weight to give 1 1/4 cups
1 white or yellow onion, diced roughly
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp olive oil
sprinkle of salt
3 tbsp capers
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground ginger
1 bottle red wine (I meant to use a merlot but I grabbed a cab by mistake — worked just fine!)
1 1/2 cups chopped carrots — about 1-2 inch pieces

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.

Preheat a pan over medium heat — preferably a big Dutch oven that you can layer the whole recipe into for its trip into the oven. Add the olive oil and then onions and honey. Give a small sprinkle of salt. Cook until light brown and caramelized, about 20 minutes. Turn the heat down if need be to keep from burning.

Add the garlic, olives and lamb. Brown the lamb just for a few minutes, maybe 5 total, stirring a bit to get color on as many pieces as possible.

Next, add the wine, the capers, and the ginger and cumin. Increase the heat to high, give it a good stir and bring to a boil.

Put a lid on it and stick it in the oven for two hours total. After the first hour add the carrots and continue to cook until the lamb is super tender.

We had this with some couscous that I cooked with chicken broth, about a handful of shelled pistachios and a handful of golden raisins. What were we celebrating? Ah, a cold December evening!

Thanks again to Mel’s Diner for hosting WCC this month!

The other day I was searching around and came across a recipe for onion marmalade. I tried it, tweaking it quite a bit so let’s just call it mine. Okay then. Anyway, here’s what I ended up with. Delicious! Great on bread, chicken, uh, turkey* and anything else you could think to slather it on.

Sweet Onion Marmalade
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tbsp olive oil
3 cups chopped onions (about 1 huge onion — I used a sweet onion)
1.5 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup Balsamic vinegar
1/4 cup port wine
1 sprig rosemary
1/4 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
2 tbsp currants
Salt & pepper

Heat the butter and olive oil in medium heavy saucepan. Add onions and a light sprinkle of kosher salt. Cook for about 6 minutes.

Next, add the sugar and rosemary sprig and continue cooking until onions are very soft and browned, about 15 minutes. Adjust the heat as needed.

Add the vinegar and port and simmer for a while, about 5 minutes. A lot of the liquid will evaporate and you’ll be left with a loose, syrupy brown glob. It’s done! Remove the rosemary sprig and stir in the currants.

Taste and then salt and pepper as needed. Before serving, sprinkle the top with the fresh chopped rosemary.

Store in the fridge and then serve at room temperature.

* Ahhh, Thanksgiving. It’s kind of nice to say that this year we are going to James’ aunt’s house (hooray!) and I am not cooking. That gives me a year to think about next year’s menu! Ha!

Wow! Two posts in two days! Amazing! Uh, anyway, lately, I have mentioned to jwa (threatened?) that we will be eating more fish — at least two times a week. The problem is, we have expensive, fancy-pants fish tastes. Mostly, we both like salmon, tuna and halibut and that’s pretty much our fish repertoire. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love salmon, tuna and halibut but, those fishes are kinda up there in price.

So, I am starting a new project to try different, more, shall we say, economical kinds of fish. First up? Some frozen “Wild Holland Sole Fillets” that I got at Trader Joe’s. Price: $6.99/pound. Not bad.

After some searching, I came across a recipe that was featured on Cooking Live with Sara Moulton a few years back, that incorporates butter, olives, capers and bacon. See — we are eating more fish because it is healthy. We are eating the butter and bacon to eat more fish. Excellent!

Lemony Sole with Green Olives, Bacon, and Capers
4 (6-ounce) sole fillets
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1/4 cup chopped green olives
3 tbsp drained capers
3 cloves garlic, chopped or minced
3 strips cooked bacon, crumbled
1 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
Beurre Blanc (see below)

Beurre Blanc
1/4 cup white wine
1 shallot, finely chopped (I used extra — mm!! shallots)
4 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into cubes and chilled
1 tspn fresh lemon juice
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
Optional: 1 tbsp cream
Optional: 4 more tbsp butter

Combine the wine and shallot in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil, and cook until reduced by half. Now, if you are really crafty, before you even add the wine, you will use the pan you used to fry the bacon in. And you will sweat the onion for a few minutes first in residual, after-being-wiped-out, bacon grease. Next after reducing the wine-shallot mixture, add the cream (if using, I did not) and continue reducing until just thickened. Reduce the heat to low.

While whisking constantly, add the butter, little by little, waiting for each addition to be incorporated before adding more, to make a smooth sauce. Here, the original recipe called for 8 tablespoons butter — I reduced that by half. Whisk in the lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Set aside in a warm area. (The sauce may break if it’s too hot or too cold.)

Dredge the fillets in the flour and season with salt and pepper. Preheat a large skillet over medium heat. Add the 2 tablespoons oil and 1 tablespoon butter and heat until hot.

Add the fillets and cook, turning once, until just cooked through, about 4 minutes. Remove to a plate and keep warm with foil.

Remove the skillet from the heat, add the olives, capers, and bacon, and stir, scraping up the browned bits from the bottom, until the mixture has warmed through. If you have a lot of brown bits to scrape up, I found that adding about a 1/4 cup of white wine worked well.

Add the beurre blanc and parsley and stir to combine. Spoon the sauce over the fillets and serve immediately with rice or orzo.

The verdict: Come on, it had butter and bacon. Of course it was really good! I tried to healthy it up just a little by using olive oil instead of vegetable oil, decreasing the pan-frying butter to just one tablespoon and reducing the sauce butter to 4 tablespoons. Eh, fine, it’s still not exactly a healthy meal but it was a wonderfully successful fish experiment. And the huge side of steamed broccoli counts towards the healthy. So there.

Next up in the new kinds of fish experiment? Mahi mahi — probably next week.

For Weekend Cookbook Challenge #19 the theme is dinner and a DVD and is being hosted by Chef Girl. For this WCC, I pulled out my brand new copy of The Joy of Cooking and thumbed through the seafood section as one of the movies we had at the house via netflix, was, “Lady in the Water.” It’s a little bit odd, unexpected, it makes you wonder if it’ll be any good or not. Then there’s the movie. Hahahahaha. Just kidding.

And, if I hadn’t just started a new job, I would have picked a well-loved and favorite movie for this and not just used the most recent netflix option but, hell, I am tired — Lady in the Water it is. Although, we are at some point planning a Rushmore / The Royal Tenenbaums dinner film festival soon. It just didn’t happen for this WCC event.

Anyway, vanilla bean in a coconut-y, somewhat Asian-inspired shrimp dish — could it work? Let’s find out!

Vanilla Coconut Shrimp
Based on a recipe in The Joy of Cooking, although, I added the garlic, shitake and red bell pepper
1/ 4 cup olive oil
2 shallots, finely chopped
12 shitake mushrooms, sliced, stems removed
1 red bell pepper, sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups dry white wine
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped out
1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
1 14 1/2 oz coconut milk
2 tsp minced ginger
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 lb large shrimp, peeled and deveined (I had a bit under this amount — 10 large shrimp total — worked fine)
1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
cooked rice or pasta

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add the shallots, garlic, mushrooms and belle pepper (it’s a lady pepper!). Cook about 5 minutes and then add the wine and vanilla bean. Bring to a simmer ad reduce the wine by half — about 7-8 minutes.

Next, add the broth, coconut milk, ginger, salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer again and reduce sauce by half — about 8-10 minutes.

Th shrimp goes in next. Turn it once while cooking, for a total of about 8 minutes.

Also, don’t forget to cook your pasta or rice. Hey — what’s this in my pasta water? Oh, it’s a Stash lemon & ginger herbal tea bag for a little extra flavor.

Serve the shrimp and coconut-vanilla sauce over the pasta (or rice) and top with the basil. Pop your movie in and pour some wine.

We found that yelling out, “I’m not drinking any fucking merlot,” periodically throughout the movie (especially during suspenseful moments) is much fun — and we were drinking a sauvignon blanc so it was factual as well.

Both jwa and I were pleasantly surprised by how well the vanilla and coconut milk came together. This was a very good meal made even better by a simple yet delightful dessert of vanilla frozen yogurt, peaches and port. Did that have anything to do with the movie? Not really, it was just tasty.

As for the movie, I thought it was okay. It was definitely missing that creepy in the ordinary, atmospheric vibe that I expected but Paul Giamatti carried it the best he could.

Thanks again to Chef Girl for such a great theme!

The other night we pulled the little Weber grill out of the garage again and grilled some chicken, caramelized some bell peppers and onions (inside, in a pan, with a little salt, cumin and chili powder), made some guacamole and to accompany it all there was a pitcher of tasty, tasty sangria.

The sangria recipe is from the old red and white checked Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. This is probably one of the only recipes I still use this cookbook for, but that alone makes it worth the shelf space, imho. I’m not sure how completely authentic it is, but it is dependably good.

Really Good Summer Sangria
1 bottle red wine (I used $4 barefoot merlot)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 lemon, sliced
1 orange, sliced
1 lime, sliced
1-2 cups sparkling water

Add the sugar, water and the end fruit slices (6 total from the ends of the lemon, lime and orange) to the pan and heat until boiling and all the sugar is dissolved. Remove from the heat and let cool.

Meanwhile, pour the wine into a big pitcher and add the uncooked fruit slices. After the syrup has cooled down add that too, reserving the cooked fruit slices. Squeeze as much juice out of those as you can into the pitcher and then discard. Stir.

I usually make this a couple of hours before serving, just storing it in the fridge. When you are ready to drink it, add a cup of the sparkling water. Taste. Add more sparkling water if desired and serve over ice.

Now, to go with your awesome sangria, you may just want to grill some chicken. If you do, first slather some boneless, skinless chicken breasts with a paste made of fresh cilantro leaves (2 big handfuls), garlic (1-2 cloves), lime juice (about 1 tbsp), jalapeno pepper (1/2 a pepper), salt, olive oil (1/4 cup or so) and green onion (2-3). You get this paste by adding all these items to a food processor and letting it go for a few minutes. *whir* *whir* *whir*

Slather. Then grill. Then eat.

Saturday, jwa and I headed to the Dundee/Dayton area in Yamhill County, where the wine flows like, uh, water or somethng. Seriously, so much wine, so little time. You could not throw a rock and not hit a winery. Add to this, it was a beautiful day (high of 66 and blue skies).

Here’s what we saw and did.

The first stop was at Red Ridge Farms in Dundee. Of course, google maps got us a little lost and it directed us to Sokol Blosser instead of the farm (not necessarily a bad thing) but we eventually found our way to the herb farm.

They had a greenhouse open, along with many herbs, olive trees, herbs, flowers and a small store with olive oil, some art and other things. They were also having a wine tasting — this will be a theme of this post.

View from the balcony. It’s hard to see but the hills are covered with grape plants. Trees? Shrubs? Whatever. It’s all grapes, all the time.

Above the store, there is a great little apartment you can rent. It has a full kitchen, living room and bedroom. But the best part may just be the balcony. It overlooks hills and vineyards — maybe Domaine Serene and the previously mentioned Sokol Blosser, but I could be wrong there. I’m probably wrong. It was hilly and it was grapes. I know I’m right about that, though.

I captured a little bug in this shot

After checking out the farm and walking around, we got back on 99 and headed again to Dundee. Once there, we stopped at Argyle, which is one of our favorite wines.

Here, we tasted some brut, some riesling, a pinot and some merlot. jwa carried the box of six wines to the car afterwards.

The Argyle Nuthouse — unfortunately the Nuthouse Pinot and Chardonnay weren’t ready to taste yet

They also had some cheese, crackers and other snacks out but we were saving ourselves for lunch.

Argyle porch — cute!

Lunch at the Dundee Bistro, which is conveniently across the street.

I started with the cauliflower & manchego cheese soup — which was amazing — and a glass of the Ponzi pinot.

Then, we moved on to halibut fish and chips (jwa) and coq au vin for me. Both were really good.

How to finish the day? A slice of lemon-marscapone cheesecake with an espresso crust, bittersweet chocolate drizzle and white chocolate shavings.

Yeah, it was really good. After all that, we drove back to Portland (well jwa drove back as he just tasted at Argyle and had ice tea at Dundee Bistro). Not a bad way to spend a sunny St. Patrick’s Day Saturday afternoon!

Places:
Red Ridge Farms
5510 NE Breyman Orchards Road
Dayton, Oregon 97114

Sokol Blosser
5000 Sokol Blosser Lane
Dundee, OR 97115

Argyle Winery
691 Highway 99W
Dundee, Oregon 97115

Dundee Bistro
100-A SW Seventh Street
Dundee, OR 97115

Google Map of Red Ridge Farms and Surrounding Wineries

This was a recipe I found on Slashfood, which in turn was an overview of the Boston Globe Food Section. They, in turn had adapted it from Jamie Oliver. Hmmm, this dish gets around — it’s kind of a slutty recipe.

Anyway, it was very tasty. It makes the best weeknight dinner — it’s relatively good for you, it’s quick and damn, it’s addictive. I have to admit, I had two bowls. But, but, it’s healthy so that’s okay.

Chicken Stew with Grapes and Tarragon
1/4 cup + 1 tbsp AP flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder (use good stuff — NOT garlic salt, I get garlic powder from Penzey’s and it’s very good quality and I love using it in coatings)
2 skinless boneless chicken breasts (about 3/4 pounds), cut into 1-inch cubes
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 large shallot, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 stalks celery, trimmed of leaves and thinly sliced
1 cup dry white wine
1 3/4 cups chicken stock
1 tbsp whole-grain mustard
1/2 cup wheat rigatoni
1/2 cup seedless grapes, halved (so, here, I actually ended up using grapes with seeds. They were the best looking grapes, so I got them. I just scooped the seeds out when I halved the grapes. Green or red will work but I think red looks especially pretty)
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
2 tbsp chopped fresh tarragon
Optional: 5-6 leaves red leaf lettuce, torn into smaller pieces

In a shallow bowl, combine 1/4 cup of the flour with the salt, pepper and garlic powder. Toss with the chicken. Discard the leftover seasoned flour.

In a large soup pot on medium heat, heat the oil. Brown half the chicken. Remove the chicken from the pan; set aside. Add another tablespoon of oil if needed to brown the remaining chicken and remove it from the pan too. Cover with foil. Of course, if your pot is big enough, you can do all the chicken at once, just don’t crowd the pan.

Turn the heat to medium-low. Add the butter. Cook the shallot, garlic, and celery over medium heat, stirring often, for 5 minutes. Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of flour. Cook, stirring, for 2 minutes.

Stir in the wine, stock, and mustard. Scrape the bottom of the pan to remove any browned goodies. Next, return the chicken to the pan. Also add the uncooked wheat pasta. Bring the mixture to a boil. Lower the heat, cover the pan partially, and simmer for 8-10 minutes, until the pasta is just tender.

Turn off the heat and add the grapes, parsley, and tarragon. Cover and let the mixture sit for 3 minutes. Stir and dish up.

If desired, also add the torn lettuce before you lid the pan or if you just want to try it on a single bowl (and not the whole pot), you can add a few lettuce leaves to your bowl and cover with foil for 3-4 minutes so that the lettuce wilts a bit. I found that I didn’t dislike the lettuce but I think I liked it better without it. It’s worth trying though, because it certainly wasn’t bad.