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Chicken Tikka with Tomato

16 Aug

This recipe is straight-up not mine, but it has, over time, morphed into something that comes as close to anything as being my signature dish. I bring this dish to potlucks and birthday dinners, I make it for family events like last fall’s cider pressing, and once, at the request of the betrothed, I even brought it to a wedding. It has become a dish for which I am known, and there is a tiny little part of me that feels sort of bad about it. After all, I didn’t put in any work when it came to developing the recipe or testing it out to make sure that it was perfectly delicious. To make it I just crack open a book, gather things together, and use someone else’s wisdom to guide me. Other than a tiny little tweak concerning the switching of cardamom pods with ground cardamom, and the exclusion of clove that I insist on in every recipe that happens to call for clove (because if there is one spice by which I cannot abide, it is clove), this recipe is 100% Madhur Jaffrey’s.

With the simplest of preparations involving nothing more than whirling up a marinade, pouring it over some chicken, then waiting a few hours before grilling the chicken to a perfect finish, there is no simpler way to become acquainted with making Indian food. Make it enough, and people may even begin to request it from you. I take no credit for the recipe itself, but I may have to claim ownership of warning you of its charms.

There is something about the warmth of the spices—a bit of cinnamon, a hit of cumin, a good dose of cardamom—combined with the perfect bit of brightness, garlic, and onion, that makes this chicken really stand out. I know that might sound a little phony and desperate (really? Can someone feel that strongly about chicken?), but I swear it is true. If you’ve always wanted to take a stab at Indian cooking, but are at a loss over where to start, I suggest you make this dish (along with these super simple accompaniments) your inaugural entrance to the world in Indian cooking.

Last Year: Quick All Parmesan Crackers–gluten free!

Chicken Tikka with Tomato Recipe

From Foolproof Indian Cooking, by Madhur Jaffrey

For the marinade:

5 tablespoons olive oil

3 ½ tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 onion, chopped

4 garlic cloves, chopped

1-inch piece of fresh ginger root, peeled and chopped

2 tablespoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons ground coriander

¼ teaspoon ground cardamom

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

20 black peppercorns

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon sea salt

1 tablespoon tomato puree

3 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 2-inch strips

Put all of the ingredients for the marinade into a food processor or blender and process to a smooth paste.

Place the chicken pieces in a large bowl, add the marinade, and stir to mix. Cover and refrigerate for 4 to 5 hours. (I have been known to marinate this chicken for fewer than 4 hours and it turns out just fine—I have also left it to marinate overnight, for up to 12 hours, and it also turned out just fine.)

When the chicken is done marinating, preheat an outdoor grill or a grill pan over high heat. Grill the chicken pieces in a single layer, being careful not to crowd the grill surface. Discard any marinade that is left behind in the bowl. Grill the chicken for about 10 minutes total, or until the chicken pieces are cooked through, but still tender.

Serve immediately.

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Niçoise Cobb Salad

2 Aug

This is the type of salad that defies definition. It is also my favorite type of salad, boasting a variety of elements, tastes, and textures. Containing elements of both a Cobb salad and a Niçoise salad, it is the type of salad that, undoudtedly, some people will declare an unholy mess and then simply disregard. Those people are making a big mistake.

I’ve long been tempted by many elements in a classic Cobb salad, but there are a few things about it that temper my enthusiasm. One is the presence of blue cheese, a cheese that I enjoy in small amounts, but when paired with eggs, bacon, and avocado, seems to provide a bit of overkill. And now that I have mentioned it, I am no fan of bacon (I know, I know—this makes me wholly unqualified to talk about food, right? But there you have it). As for a Niçoise salad, I’m nearly always a fan, what with its high presence of crisp, textural vegetables and subtly tangy dressing, but my affection always seems to falter when the salad happens to be served with canned tuna, one of the few food items I can unrepentantly admit to absolutely detesting.

The only logical thing for me to do, of course, was merge the two salads together, along with a few unsanctioned ingredients that I thought seemed like a good fit. I’ve been on a big sweet potato kick lately (the dark, thick-skinned type that is often referred to as a yam), so when I was mentally constructing my hybrid salad, I knew I wanted to include a bit of sweet potato in lieu of the standard red potato often found in a Niçoise salad (except when it’s not, as some salad purists insist that a Niçoise salad must only contain raw vegetables). I also included cucumbers, because it’s tough to forgo their crisp coolness when constructing any type of salad, and since I was already bringing shame to the name of both salads, why not just keep going?

Culinary liberties in full effect, this salad came together wonderfully. The lemony shallot dressing provides a lovely balance to the creamy egg and avocado, and the piles of fresh vegetables just make everything seem so crisp and friendly. The best aspect of the salad, I think, just might be that, with its ratio of vegetables to protein, it makes a suitable, satisfying meal for both cold nights and warm afternoons. Totally inauthentic as it may be, it’s still awfully fantastic.

Niçoise Cobb Salad Recipe

Strictly speaking—though there is nothing really strict about this salad to begin with, it being a total deconstruction of two different salads—both a Niçoise salad and a Cobb salad include fresh tomatoes, but I didn’t have any lying around. Feel free to add some. You can also add some really nice, salty olives to the salad, as found in a classic Niçoise salad.

Dressing

1 tablespoon finely minced shallot

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

½ teaspoon Dijon mustard

½ teaspoon fresh chopped tarragon, or a pinch of dried tarragon

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Salad

1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes

1 tablespoon olive oil

salt and pepper

1 boneless, skinless chicken breast

2 large eggs

4 ounces turkey bacon or regular bacon

handful of fresh green beans, ends trimmed

½ an avocado, peeled and sliced into cubes

½ a small cucumber, sliced into coins, then half moons

1 small head of Bibb lettuce leaves, or a similar type of tender lettuce (I used some Tom Thumb lettuce from our garden), rinsed and drained

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

On a heavy baking sheet, combine diced sweet potatoes, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Toss with your hands to evenly coat the potatoes with oil, then place in oven and roast for 20 minutes, until the potatoes are soft on the inside and caramelized underneath. Remove from oven and set aside to cool.

While the potatoes are roasting, season the chicken breast on both sides with salt and pepper, then grill over medium-high heat (an indoor grill pan is just fine for this) until cooked through, about 5-7 minutes per side. Remove from heat and set aside to cool a bit, then dice into cubes.

In a medium saucepan, place eggs in just enough water to cover them. Place pan over high heat until the water comes to a steady boil. Immediately remove pan from heat, cover, and allow eggs to cook in hot water for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, remove eggs from pan and place in ice water to cool. When cool, peel then slice each egg in half lengthwise.

While eggs are cooking, cook turkey bacon or regular bacon until crisp, then remove them to a paper towel-lined plate to drain and cool a bit. When cool, crumble into medium-small pieces.

Drain the water from the saucepan in which you cooked the eggs, then refill with about 2 inches of water. Bring water to a boil over high heat, then add green beans and boil rapidly for 2 minutes, until the beans are crisp-tender. Drain immediately and rinse under very cold water.

To make the dressing, combine all ingredients in a medium bowl and whisk together until thoroughly emulsified and quite thick.

To assemble plates of salad, divide half of the lettuce leaves amongst two plates. Divide and arrange half of the sweet potatoes, chicken, eggs, turkey bacon, green beans, avocado, and cucumber on top of the lettuce leaves on each plate. You can arrange everything in neat rows, as in a Cobb salad, or you can place things in individual piles around the lettuce, as in a Niçoise salad. You can also just dump everything on top and call it good. Drizzle salads with dressing.

Makes 2 large salads. You can also divide the recipe amongst 4 plates for lighter servings of salad.

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Grilled Lemongrass Chicken

29 Jan

Keen observers may have noticed by this point that I tend to go on extended benders when I become interested in making particular types of food.  Over the summer I made more tarts and galettes than any rational human should consider consuming in the span of a mere 3 months, and not long after that I became enamored with all things related to Mexican food.  A short glance at the most recent archives will more than give away the fact that my heart currently resides on the continent of Asia, bringing us food from India, Japan, and undetermined (but it sure tasted good).

A couple of those recipes are courtesy of Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford, a formerly-married couple from Canada (and now Canada and Thailand) who make their living traveling around (mostly through Asia) with their children and researching recipes.  They have written numerous cookbooks (including two books on baking and one book entirely about rice), and I can only imagine that, given their track record of producing incredible recipes and cooking techniques, time will only bring us more of their wonderful work.

This recipe for lemongrass chicken is taken from one of Duguid and Alford’s books with a focus on the cuisines of Southeast Asia, from Myanmar (Burma) to Vietnam.  As is often the case, I was reading this cookbook as I would read a non-cookbook, sitting down and flipping through it page by page, reading everything in detail before moving on.  My best friend once revealed to me that sometimes she liked to sit in bed and read a cookbook before falling asleep, as one might read a novel or a magazine, and I could not stop nodding my head in agreement (needless to say, there is a reason we are best friends).

The recipe originally calls for beef, but I, recent indiscretions aside, am not the biggest fan of beef, so I swapped it out from some chicken breasts.  Say what you want to about everyone’s favorite meat to belittle, but boneless, skinless chicken breasts really work well in this application, subtly sitting in the background so the lemongrass marinade can receive all the glory.  For a dish so simple, it is a huge winner in our household.  We eat it over steamed rice, over thin rice noodles sprinkled with herbs, or sometimes over a pile of fresh and snappy arugula.  I can’t say that I’ll ever possess the gumption to cook an everyday meal like Duguid and Alford are prone to doing (I recall an article in the New Yorker that detailed the couple making a casual meal of homemade crackers, hand-rolled noodles, and roasted wild boar), but with inspiration culled from time spent with many a cookbook, I am at least hoping that, little by little, I’ll be able to take these little bursts of global cooking and transform the bulk of them into regular staples on our table.  This recipe is a good place to start.

Grilled Lemongrass Chicken

From Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

2 stalks lemongrass, trimmed and minced

2 to 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped

2 shallots, peeled and chopped

1 bird or Serrano chile, finely chopped

2 teaspoons Vietnamese or Thai fish sauce

1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

1 tablespoon water

1 tablespoon roasted sesame oil

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts

2 tablespoons roasted sesame seeds

To prepare the marinade, combine lemongrass, garlic, shallots, and chile in a mortar and pestle or a food processor and pound or blend to a paste (adding just a little water if necessary to make a paste).   Transfer the paste to a bowl, add the fish sauce, lime juice, and water and blend well.  Add sesame oil and stir well.  Set aside.

Cut the meat into very thin slices (less than 1/8-inch) against the grain (this is much easier if the meat is cold).  Duguid recommends you then cut the slices into 1 1/2 –inch lengths, but I kept our slices longer and was quite fond of them that way.  Place the meat in a shallow bowl, add the marinade, and mix well, making sure that the meat is well coated.  Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour, or up to 8 hours.

Prepare a grill, grill pan, or broiler on medium high heat.  Sprinkle the meat with sesame seeds, then grill or broil until cooked through, about 2 minutes for the first side and 1 minute for the second side, depending on how hot your grill or broiler is and how fast the chicken is cooking through.

Serves 4 as part of a meal, more as an appetizer.

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