Tag: ad hoc

Whole Roasted Chicken with Veggies

Whole Roasted Chicken with Veggies
Whole Roasted Chicken with Veggies

Whole Roasted Chicken with Veggies

You may have noticed that roasted chicken was one of our previous blog posts, but this time its different.  There’s a couple different veggies, but the biggest difference is that I roasted an entire chicken!  I was excited and a little scared to do this.  I’ve seen my mom take apart a chicken many times – but for the most part Annie and I buy chicken parts as we need them; thighs and breasts mostly.

I bought a whole free-range fryer chicken at the store, after learning that the only differences between the fryer and roaster birds are their size – in other words, you can roast a fryer or fry a roaster.  For the most part, I followed a recipe from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc cookbook, although I tragically left out onions.  You can use any combination of root vegetables you want – I used leeks, carrots and potatoes.  The best thing about the Ad Hoc cookbook is that it has some great How-To’s with pictures for cutting and trussing a chicken.  For this recipe, I learned how to truss (tie up) a chicken!  Here’s a video of Thomas Keller himself trussing one up, although he does it in a more fancy way in this video than shows in the book.

We ate this last night for dinner, its a great winter-time meal-in-a-dish, and it makes lots of leftovers!

Whole Roasted Chicken with Root Vegetables

Ingredients

1 small whole chicken (smaller the tastier, mine was 4 lbs.)
2 leeks
3-4 carrots
8 golf-ball sized potatoes
1/4 cup oil (canola, olive)
6 garlic gloves, crushed and peeled
6 thyme sprigs
Herb butter (we used leftover herb butter we had from the salmon)
salt and pepper

Instructions

Let the chicken sit out for 1-2 hours to come to room temperature.  Remove anything that’s still in the cavity (neck, heart, etc) and season the cavity with salt and pepper, 3 of the garlic gloves, and 3 thyme sprigs.  Cut out the wishbone for better carving later (good luck, I completely failed at this.  Look up some videos online).  Truss the chicken.

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees. Cut the green tops of the leeks and trim the root end.  Slice them in half lengthwise and wash.  Cut the potatoes in half.  Cut the carrots in half lengthwise and cut into smaller sticks.  Combine all the root vegetables in a large mixing bowl with the remaining 3 garlic gloves and remaining 3 thyme sprigs, plus the oil and season with salt + pepper.

Lay out the veggies in a large baking dish, making a nest in the middle in which to nestle the chicken.  Place the trussed chicken in the bed of veggies, and rub/pour the herb butter on top of the chicken.

Bake for 25 minutes, then turn the heat down to 400 and bake for another 45 minutes. The internal temp of the bird should reach 160 degrees when its done…I had to put it in a bit longer.

Thomas Keller’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

Thomas Keller's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Thomas Keller's Chocolate Chip Cookies
Thomas Keller's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Thomas Keller's Chocolate Chip Cookies

You know how everyone is always on the hunt for the best chocolate chip cookie? When I was younger, our family friend Anita was known for making the best chocolate chip cookies around. Whenever we went over to her house we (my sisters and I) were excited because we knew we would get those delicious cookies. Despite staying close to her family, I do not have her cookie recipe… Odd.

Anyway, the other day I felt like baking (strange, huh?) and Jonah requested classic chocolate chip. I wanted to do a variation, like those thyme and sea salt chocolate chunk cookies I made a while back. But after having no luck finding anything before heading to the store, I remembered Thomas Keller having a recipe for chocolate chip cookies in the Ad Hoc cookbook. I figured, “Hey, that guy kind of knows what he’s doing,” so I pulled out the recipe and went to the store.

I will tell you now that these are possibly the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had (besides Anita’s). You know the great debate: Crunchy or chewy? These are perfectly both. They are crispy on the edges (thanks to our old friend, butter) and chewy and soft in the middle. Oh my goodness. And they spread out when they bake, so they’re pretty big, which makes you feel like you’re really getting a good portion of cookie when you eat one. And if one seems large enough to be satisfying, you would think it’d be easier to not eat like 10 of them. But it’s not. You just get more full.

Side note: Jonah bought me these wonderful baking sheets for Christmas. The brand is Chicago Metallic; they came in a package with two pans and a cooling rack. These pans need no liner or greasing. Nothing EVER sticks to them (knock on wood). They are heavy duty with a wire around the edge so they don’t warp, and industrial-kitchen sized. I love them. I highly recommend them if you’re looking for new pans.

Thomas Keller’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

2 1/3 cups plus 1 Tbl all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp kosher salt
5 oz. semi-sweet chocolate (think 55%), cut into chip sized pieces (about 1 1/4 cups)
5 oz. dark chocolate (think 70-72%), cut into chip sized pieces (about 1 1/4 cups)
2 sticks cold unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar (preferably dark)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper (or just grease them a little bit).

Ok, sorry. Now, sift the flour and baking soda into a medium bowl, and stir in the salt. Usually if a recipe says to sift flour, I ignore it, but I had a lot of time on my hands, and hey, I’m not gonna ignore Thomas Keller. I would say that it made a difference. Put the chips of chocolate you’ve cut in a fine mesh basket strainer to get out all the “chocolate dust.”

Using an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, beat half of the butter (1 stick that has been cut up into small pieces) until it’s smooth and creamy. Now add the sugars and the rest of the butter (also cut into small pieces) and beat until well combined and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well between them. Be sure during all of this to be scraping down the sides of the bowl to get everything well-incorporated. Now add the dry ingredients and mix them in.

Thoroughly fold in the chocolate chips. It’s a little tricky because the dough is really thick, but stick with it, it’s worth it. You wouldn’t want those cookies from the bottom of the bowl to not have any chocolate in them, would you? No. No you would not. At this point you can wrap the dough up and refrigerate it for up to 5 days or freeze it for 2 weeks. But I just don’t understand, you’ve gotten this far, why would you not just make the damn cookies at this point?

If you’re continuing on, take about 2 tablespoons of dough, roll into a ball, and place it on the cookie sheet. You only want to put about 8 on a sheet because these suckers need their space. They spread out for real. Leave 2 inches between each ball of dough. Bake for 12 minutes, turning the cookie sheet halfway through baking. Let the cookies cool on the pan for a couple minutes before removing them to a cooling rack to cool the rest of the way (if you can wait that long). Enjoy with a glass of cold milk.

Fall Salad (Ad Hoc style)

Fall Salad

I figure that for every couple of posts about baked goods and cookies, I should probably post something a little healthier. This recipe is also from the Ad Hoc cookbook I posted about earlier. This fall salad is simple and delicious. So so delicious. Jonah and I have started eating salad again, thanks to this. Yum. It’s full of parmesan cheese, pine nuts, and even persimmons, which I hadn’t ever had before this salad. Not sure I can say I liked them, but it was certainly an adventure.

Feel free to pick and choose which of these ingredients you want in your salad. For example, we didn’t blanch leeks, but replaced leeks with green onion (not really the same, but whatever floats your boat). Plus, it’s always worth trying something new. Who knows, you may love it.

Fall Salad

Ingredients

Mixed greens
Blanched leeks (I didn’t really feel like blanching leeks, so we used green onions… more on that later)
Persimmons, sliced
Prosciutto
Pine nuts
Parmesan cheese, grated

Instructions

The recipe also called for a sherry vinegar vinaigrette, but I didn’t feel like buying a bottle of sherry vinegar just for this, so we just did a balsamic vinaigrette with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, some minced garlic, and then also put the green onions in here rather than sprinkled on the salad… not sure why.

Now, the persimmons. They kind of tasted a little bit like pears, but with a thicker skin. I dunno if they were worth the money. I can see replacing the persimmons with something like a satsuma or another variety of small orange-type-thing that are available these days.

With or without the persimmons, this salad is both light and filling, and perfect for a fall dinner. It also would be a nice salad course to a fancier meal. Enjoy this healthy and delicious salad!

A new cookbook and some jams

Ad Hoc & Jam

Ad Hoc & Jam
Ad Hoc & Jam

Ad Hoc & Jam

For my birthday, I received the most beautiful cookbook: Ad Hoc at Home by Thomas Keller. If you don’t know who Thomas Keller is, well then it’s time to get educated. He is the chef at The French Laundry in Napa Valley, perhaps one of the most famous restaurants in the world: it has won many (that’s right, many) James Beard Awards. He has another restaurant, Per Se, in New York, and both of these restaurants have been awarded 3 Michelin Stars. He is the ONLY AMERICAN CHEF to have had two restaurants both get 3 stars.

But this cookbook is from another restaurant he recently opened. He intended to open a burger joint in an old diner, but when he purchased the space his team was too busy. He decided instead to open a temporary homestyle cooking restaurant called Ad Hoc: no menu, 4 courses, 4 days a week, simple food. Well of course, being Thomas Keller and all, it worked incredibly well and is no longer temporary.

So I bring the cookbook home and I’m looking through it and there’s a section called “Lifesavers.” This section is full of what he calls staples, though not like flour and eggs. There are tapenades, jams, pickled things, candied nuts, anything you might need to make an ordinary dish or meal into an extraordinary one.

I decide, with Thanksgiving coming up and my mom having asked for some appetizer help, that I’d whip up a couple of jams. The two that seemed most appealing to me were the Fig and Balsamic Jam and the Red Onion-Cranberry Marmalade. Now, keep in mind while reading this that I have never made a jam before in my life and I have never canned (in fact, I was quite scared of it before). These recipes don’t require actual “canning” or one of those crazy sets with tongs and crazy jar contraptions. Thank goodness.

Fig and Balsamic Jam

Note: So you see this recipe and maybe you say, “Excuse me, what is a sachet? I thought this blog was about stuff everyone can do!” And to you I say, “It is, my friend! I will tell you what a sachet is!” Mr. Keller is all about sachets. In this case, you’ll want about a 5 or 6 inch square of cheesecloth. Place the peppercorns towards the bottom of the square, roll the cheesecloth over them once, fold in the ends, and keep rolling. Now tie it at both ends with cooking twine. See how you have a nice little package of peppercorns? Now you won’t have to try to fish them out of the jam later. Keller also uses this technique with lots of herbs like bay leaves, thyme, peppercorns, etc. (you know that feeling when the recipe says “remove the bay leaf” and you cannot find it for the life of you? no more!).

Another note from Mr. Keller: “Note on Plate Testing: To check that compotes, jams, and jellies are at the right consistency, put a tablespoon of what you’re cooking on a plate and chill in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. If it is too thin, return to the heat, cook a few more minutes, and retest.”

Ingredients

2 lbs figs, preferably Black Mission or Kadota, stems removed and coarsely chopped
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon black peppercorns, tied into a sachet
Fresh lemon juice

Instructions

Put everything but the lemon juice into a pan and attach a candy thermometer. If you don’t have a candy thermometer, do not worry! You can still just follow the instructions and eyeball things, which is what I ended up doing anyway. Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat, then lower the heat to maintain a gentle simmer and cook, stirring to break up the larger pieces of fig. Cook until the jam reaches 215-220 degrees. My candy thermometer did not want to get up that high. I cooked this stuff for hours and it would still only get to 205 or so. Keller has a nice little tip in his book that says:

So I did my own version of the plate test which was to turn off the heat, let the whole pot cool on the stove while I did something else (hulu, anyone?) and then came back and checked it. It needed a bit more cooking, so I brought it to a simmer again for another little while. Now remove the sachet and stir in the lemon juice to taste. Spoon the jam into a canning jar or two, cover, and let cool to room temperature. Then refrigerate up to 1 month.

Red Onion-Cranberry Marmalade

Ingredients

1/4 cup canola oil
3 cups diced red onions
1 cup chopped dried cranberries
3 cups apple juice
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbl apple pectin (This is Keller’s fancy pectin he gets from lord-knows-where. I just used plain pectin, found at my local New Seasons near the canning jars.)
1 Tbl plus 1 tsp orange zest

Ingredients

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over low heat. Add the red onions and cook very slowly for about 20 minutes, until the onions have softened but not colored. Add the cranberries and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in the apple juice and cider vinegar. In a separate bowl, combine the sugars and pectin, mixing well so that the pectin will dissolve smoothly, and add this mixture to the pot along with the orange zest. Attach a candy thermometer to the pan, bring to a simmer, and cook until it registers 215-220 degrees. I did the same thing as last time where, because my thermometer didn’t want to get that high, I just let the whole pot cool and then cooked it more if it needed it.

Transfer the marmalade to a canning jar, cover, and let cool, then refrigerate for up to 3 months.

Not so hard, right? These made wonderful Thanksgiving appetizers when paired with some good crackers and cheese (we used mostly Rain Coast crackers, goat cheese, and brie). I bet they’d work great for Christmas appetizers too…