Tarragon Chicken Salad with Walnuts

A few months back, a group of friends brought together online by the love of food finally started eating out together at the many great restaurants in Tampa Bay.  One of our first meals was brunch at Pane Rustica where I braved my fear of mayonnaise-based salads on the advise of a friend and ordered their chicken salad served inside of an acorn squash.  It changed my mind about what this type of salad can be and ever since, I have been toying with the idea of making chicken salad at home.

My local farm, Hydro Harvest Farms, has Mexican Tarragon growing right by their entrance.  Mexican Tarragon is an anise, or licorice, flavored herb more often seen in local butterfly gardens than used in culinary applications.  It's a shame because it is a hardy herb that lends itself well to many dishes.  Think hollandaise! 

Not being able to resist this pretty and flavorful herb, I cut a large bunch from his overflowing pots determined to make something with it!  It's been sitting in my fridge, taunting me, for almost a week now. Finally, I got the ambition today to play when I realized I had a packet of chicken thighs that had to get used or frozen today.  Whole Foods sells vacuum-packaged chicken pieces without polystyrene.  We picked up their chicken thighs knowing we would use it if it's in the house.

I poached the thighs with fresh tarragon, one small yellow onion and two garlic cloves.  Using a technique I've learned from my friends at Chowhound, I covered the contents of the pot with water.  Then, after putting the pot on the stove, I turned up the heat to medium-high heat.  As soon as the contents came up to a boil, I covered the pot and took it off the heat to sit for ten minutes.  I never remember timing, so I set a kitchen timer.  After ten minutes, I strained the contents from the pot and set them off to cool while making the tarragon vinaigrette. If you are cheap like me, reserve the poaching liquid and cook it down for a herb-flavored stock. 

To make the vinaigrette, I combined the oil, salt, lemon juice and tarragon in a large container and blended with an immersion (stick) blender until emulsified.  That's it.  Why anyone buys bottled salad dressing full of preservatives and odd chemicals when this is all salad dressing comes down to just boggles my mind.  This dressing will keep easily for several days. 

Once the chicken is cooled, chop the chicken thighs into small pieces.  Chop half of your boiled onion, and one garlic cloves and add it with the chicken pieces, walnuts, yogurt and some of your vinaigrette. After blending, add salt, pepper, or more vinaigrette to taste.  I'm still not a big fan of mayo, so the yogurt is my substitution.  Feel free to use mayonnaise if you like it, or if you are interested in keeping this recipe strictly kosher.

I have a mini food processor, so chopping the ingredients ahead of time helps me get everything in the darned thing!  You don't have to if you have a normal sized food processor.  Using the food processor helps give this chicken salad a smooth texture, but if you prefer a more rustic approach just chop the ingredients by hand and mix the rest in a large bowl and be sure to incorporate it all fully. 

Serve the chicken salad on top of a lettuce based salad, in lettuce cups or as a sandwich!  If you have any leftover matzo like my house, it's great on matzo too.  If you have them, grapes or celery would be great textural additions. I used walnuts because I had some in the freezer left over from some making Charoset earlier in the week. 

This is lunch tomorrow, Tarragon Chicken Salad with Walnuts over mixed greens (also from Hydro Harvest Farms.) I've got the leftover vinaigrette in a small side container and, with some matzo, plan to enjoy this for lunch tomorrow.  You should too.  Seriously.  Go make this now. 

 

Poached Chicken:
Enough Water to Cover the Chicken
1 pound of chicken thighs (breasts would work well if you have them)
1 small yellow onion, peeled
2 garlic cloves, peeled
1/4 cup of fresh Mexican tarragon leaves, tightly packed

Tarragon Vinaigrette (makes 1 1/4 cups of vinaigrette):
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup lemon juice
3/4 cup safflower oil
1/4 cup of fresh Mexican tarragon leaves, tightly packed

Chicken Salad (makes 2 cups or 4 servings):
1 pound Poached Chicken
1/4 cup Tarragon Vinaigrette
1/4 cup plain flavored yogurt
1/4 walnuts

Slow Cooker Chicken Cacciatore

Knowing that I have to work late this week, I wanted to make sure that I don't have a repeat of the last two weeks' funk fest and got ahead of the game with a slow cooker adaptation of a old family favorite.  My mom used to work in an Italian restaurant as a teen, so I had the strange childhood comfort food pairing of Italian foods and Eastern European Jewish foods.  At a favorite restaurant in the area, The Refinery, my hubby and I enjoyed a fantastic rendition of Chicken Cacciatore.  So good, I felt like I was back in grade school and sitting down to the table for a plate of my mom's cooking!  So good, I've been craving it ever since and felt the need to make a slow cooker version of my mom's Chicken Cacciatore.

With a nod to my mom, it's not cooking until there's garlic sauteing in oil. 

To me, chicken cacciatore is a braised stew of chicken and bell peppers in tomato sauce.  To adapt this to a slow cooker, I sauteed the onions, a red and green bell pepper, and a half pack of mushrooms with a small can of tomato paste and white wine with some oregano, salt and pepper to taste. 

After cooking this mixture with a can of tomato sauce to get all of the flavors to mingle before pouring this tomato love over chicken thighs. If you had the time, you should sear the chicken parts first. 

I just took a pack of chicken thighs I had in the freezer and put the tomato mixture over the top and stored it in the fridge until the next morning when I set the slow cooker up to cook for the day.

After cooking on LOW for 6-8 hours, here is the final result.

Ingredients:

1 package chicken parts, or thighs (skinless)
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 garlic cloves, sliced
1 medium sized yellow onion, sliced
1 red and green bell pepper, sliced
1 6 ounce can of tomato paste
1/2 package of white button mushrooms, sliced
1/2 cup of white wine
1 28 ounce can tomato sauce
2 tablespoons dried oregano

Recipe:
Saute sliced garlic in olive oil until tan.  Add onions and bell peppers to the pan.  Cook until the onions become translucent and the bell peppers brighten and lose their crispness. Add the tomato paste to the pan and saute it with the pepper mixture for one minute.  Add the white wine to the pan and cook until the tomato paste is cooked into the wine.  Add the tomato sauce, with oregano, salt and pepper, to the pan and cook for five minutes - while scraping the pan to ensure that no bits get left behind.  Pour this mixture over chicken parts and into the slow cooker.  Set on low for 6 - 8 hours and serve over pasta or with garlic bread.

Chicken Stir Fry with Bok Choy, Snow Peas and Red Bell Pepper

Growing up, my mom would occasionally get the itch to experiment in the kitchen.  Before I was born, she took a class in Chinese Cooking and would refer to her yellowing notebook for inspiration.  Then my brother went away to college and brought back a love of sushi which my mom felt the need to perfect.  Because of these experiments in Asian foods, my kitchen pantry did not resemble that of my neighbors in my suburb.  We had sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, multiple bottles of soy sauce stored in the same pantry as the cereal, bread crumbs, and macaroni and cheese that my friends recognized.  In our small community, "Asian" ingredients were relegated to a shelf-sized section at the local grocery chain and bok choy didn't show up too often in the produce section. We had a small garden in our yard at one point, and I was definitely the only child I knew that snacked on snow peas (stolen) on the way to school. I credit my mom for my habit of experimenting in the kitchen, and every time I see bok choy I get the hankering for "stir fry" because that's how I remember our stir fry adventures beginning.

At Hydro Harvest Farm, I found bok choy last Sunday, and then remembered he had snow peas, and the itch to experiment started.  On a field trip to MD Oriental Market in Brandon, FL, I found vegetarian oyster sauce (no shellfish in our house) and it's been sitting gathering dust in our pantry and mocking me ever since.

Recipe:

4 tablespoons oil
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 inch of fresh ginger, minced
2 chicken thighs, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
3 scallions, white and light green section thinly sliced 
1 head of bok choy, stems separated from greens and sliced, greens cut into strips
1 cup of snow peas - cleaned, with the tips snipped off if woody
1 red bell pepper, cut in strips

3 tbsp vegetarian oyster sauce
1/4 cup of rice wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
1/4 cup of chicken broth, 1 tablespoon of broth reserved
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper1 teaspoon cornstarch

Cooked Brown Rice - 1/2 cup per person

*Serves two very hungry people with leftovers for lunch, but this should probably serve four.

Prepare all ingredients and have ready by the stove.  Stir frying moves quickly and you don't want to have to chop something while trying to make sure something isn't sticking to the bottom of the wok!!!  Heat the oil in a wok on high heat.  If you do not have a wok, use a large saute pan with plenty of room.  When shimmering, add the ginger and garlic and saute them until just beginning to brown.

 

Remove the ginger and garlic from the oil and reserve in a large bowl for later use.  Add the chicken to the hot, and now seasoned, oil.



When halfway cooked, add the scallions to the wok.

Cook chicken pieces in the oil until no pinkness remains.  Make sure to keep the chicken moving, as it may stick and burn. Do not overcook.  Remove the chicken and scallions; add to bowl containing the ginger and garlic. Add the stems of the bok choy to the oil.

Saute for one minute.  Add the snow peas and continue sauteing.  Add the pepper slices and continue sauteing.

Add all remaining ingredients except for bok choy leaves, the cornstarch and reserved chicken broth.  Keep the vegetables and seasonings moving in the wok.  In a small bowl, combine the corn starch to the reserved broth to make a slurry.  Once the liquid in the bottom of the wok is at a boil, make a well in the center of the wok, and add the slurry to the liquid and stir vigorously.  If you don't add this slowly, or skip this step, your cornstarch will form little balls in the stir fry and give it an off texture. Once all vegetables are tender but still crispy, add the bowl with the chicken mixture to the pot along with the bok choy greens. Continue cooking until the sauce thickens and the greens wilt.

Serve over brown rice to best enjoy all of the delicious sauce. 

Verdict:  Oh wow, this is good!!!  Like "why do I ever get take-out" good...  I might have a fight on my hands for these leftovers.

Chicken "Burgers"

Recently, I've been playing with my new cast iron grill pan, and the house favorite to play with is burgers.  In keeping with the New Year/New You idea, I went with chicken "burgers" for dinner tonight. I say burger in quotation marks because I just can't write chicken and burger together without them.  If I did, I'd end up feeling that I was somehow not be honest with you.  Burger = beef  and "burger" = any other patty in my book.

Tempted by the Brew (I haven't decided on a blog nickname for my husband yet, but since his hobby is brewing beer, he suggested this one) made the meal while I was busy getting caught up in my work.  While shopping on Sunday, we decided to use some sliced "gourmet" mushrooms hidden away in the produce section of Whole Foods that called my name from the forgotten corner and now sitting in my refrigerator mocking me.  To add on the delicious produce and pretend a "burger" can ever be healthy, we added the arugula picked up this weekend from the farm, and a red onion to make a great "burger".  Ok, I lied.  He had the onion.  I can't, or at least shouldn't, eat raw onions due to a diagnosis with acid reflex that I remember when it suits me.

While I was busy forgetting what time it was due to good news in the world of social work,Tempted by the Brew got busy cooking.  This is what I came home to tonight:

The Murray's Chicken "Burgers" I found on sale at Publix were sizzling away on the cast iron grill pan and all it took for the mushrooms to be added to the stove top was a gentle reminder by way of me taking it out of the refrigerator and putting it out on the counter.  Subtle, right?  Let's just say mushrooms are notTempted by the Brew's favorite addition to our meals and they make it in very often anyway.  I just can't get enough of them!

This is the part of the night when the greens argument rages again.  Our home is at a stalemate - I like mine at least wilted unless the greens are part of a salad.  He likes them raw.  He's right health-wise and texture-wise, but I know what I like and my tastebuds just don't want to hear it.  I lost this battle tonight and had my burger with raw arugula.

But......It didn't matter!  This burger looked so good that I just had to dig in, even before I remembered to take a photo.

Recipe:

4 Murray's Chicken "Burgers"
4 Cottage Cheese Dill Rolls from earlier in the week, sliced in half
1 Package of Mixed Sliced Gourmet Mushrooms - a mix of oyster, cremini and another mushroom that I have already forgotten
1 garlic clove, sliced
About 20 medium sized arugula leaves - thicker stems removed
*Red Onion
1 tablespoon Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper

Serves 4 - 1 burger per person

Heat grill pan and small saute pan on medium heat. While these are heating up, slice up the garlic clove and onion and prep the arugula. I went with the idea of about five leaves per burger.  Grill chicken for about 3 -5 minutes per side.  Chicken is not ok undercooked in our house, so we err on the side of caution here.  At the same time, you should also begin to saute the garlic and a minute later, add the mushrooms to the garlic and oil.  Tempted by the Brew did this a little later, after the mushrooms mysteriously ended up on the counter by the fridge. When the "burger" is seared well on one side and easily separates from the pan, flip it for another 3-5 minutes.  At some point, check the mushrooms to make sure they are cooking evenly in the pan.  Stir them occasionally while you are at it.  When the chicken is cooked throughout, set them to the rest and reabsorb all the meat-juices (it's chicken, so that's not much).  While this is happening, we grilled the rolls in the grill pan until they developed some nice grill markings. It was about this time that the mushrooms looked done and were taken off the heat.

Now comes the best part - putting it all together. I won't tell you how to do that.  If you are making this, it is your unalienable right to put together your "burger" however you see fit.  If you see a chicken "burger" fit at all, that is.  If this recipe is making you say, "Where's the Beef" a la old school Wendy's commercials - then by all means, go for beef!

*This is where my wonderful sense of measurement fails my blog responsibility.  We just did two slices since Tempted by the Brew was the only one eating it, but the slices were probably equal to 1/4 of a medium sized onion.