Posts Tagged ‘chicken’

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Bula, Fiji (Part 1)

Friday, May 11th, 2012 by Carrie

In case any of you do not know, I LOVE my job!  Not only do I love going to work every day, but to make it even better, in January 2011 I was voted Employee of the Year 2010 by my co-workers.  The prize for this honor is a flight anywhere in the world you want to go, a week’s paid vacation and some spending cash.  It only took me 11 months to decide where to go!  Why not Fiji?

Fiji has a multi-ethnic population consisting mainly of Polynesian, Indian, Chinese, Melanesian and European descent.  This makes for a wide variety of interesting and delicious cuisines.  Seafood, beef, chicken and pork are the main proteins used, accompanied by coconut, cassava (yuca), yam, taro root, mango, pineapple, banana, guava and many different leaves and greens.

Researching this before going, I wasn’t really sure what to expect.  My first meal upon arrival was Cajun spiced chicken, fried cassava, and a salad of fresh coconut pieces, carrot, cucumber and cabbage.  Dessert was a homemade brioche cup, filled with sweet custard and topped with fresh fruit.  For me, the fresh coconut was the star of the dish.  Breakfast was amazing every day.  The eggs were so fresh with yolks almost orange in color, and the unbelievably delicious fresh coconut crusted-banana stuffed French toast and sugar cane syrup.  Yum!  Not to mention the picturesque sunrise!

I am thankful to have spent 5 nights on the island of Vanua Levu, the second largest of the Fiji Islands.  Vanua Levu is not as touristy as Viti Levu (the largest island) so I was able to delve into a bit of the true Fiji culture.  The main exports of this island are coconut, sugar cane and cava.  I might have to write a third blog just about coconut!  I am still amazed by the sheer height of the coconut trees.  Savusavu is the closest town to where I was staying.  The town is known for its beautiful bay, copra (coconut) plantations, and natural hot springs where locals still cook their lunch using nothing other than a plastic shopping bag.

Watch for my blog next month to hear more about my Fiji adventures!

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Carrie finally found her culinary niche as a Chef Instructor for The Chopping Block in May 2008, but only after a hilariously traumatic demonstration interview (of which you will have to attend one of her classes to hear about). She gets a thrill of sharing the things she’s learned about food and cooking with others and the memories and experiences around food that have made her who she is today. Her hope is to take away the apprehension people have of cooking by pouring on her southern hospitality and charm and having fun in the kitchen. When she isn’t cooking, you can usually find her at a concert, a neighborhood restaurant or just hanging out with friends and enjoying their company.

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Spring Braising

Friday, April 13th, 2012 by David

Spring is here. I think. Last week was a little chilly. Anyway, as the weather warms up, people start to steer in the other direction as far as eating goes: more grilled food, lighter salads, less heavy starches and so forth.  One of my all time favorite foods is braised meats, any and all types: short ribs, spare ribs, chicken thighs, pork shoulder, etc.  Spring menus tend to be much lighter, more refreshing and don’t really lend themselves to heavy braised dishes.  Pot roast and 80 degree temperatures don’t go so well together.  But there are always exceptions.

One recipe that comes to mind is a North African inspired braised chicken featuring some authentic Tunisian products that we now carry at The Chopping Block.  It is a much lighter dish, with fresh flavors and incredibly simple to make.

Tunisian Braised Chicken

4 chicken leg quarters

1 Tablespoon ground cumin

1 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1 medium onion, sliced

2 cloves garlic, minced

¼ cup dried apricots

2-3Tablespoons honey

1 stick cinnamon

3-4 cups low sodium chicken stock

2 Tablespoons Les Moulins Mahjoub Piquant Orange Preserve (available at TCB)

1 medium carrot, diced

1 medium parsnip, diced

1 medium sweet potato, diced

1-2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar

lemon juice to taste

 

Cous Cous

1 cup Les Moulins Mahjoub cous cous (available at TCB)

1/3 cup dates chopped

1/3 cup almonds sliced or slivered

1/3 cup red onion sliced thin or one small shallot

1 Tablespoon mint, chiffonade

Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar, to taste

Salt & Pepper, to taste

Season chicken leg quarters with ground cumin, coriander, salt and pepper.  Sear in a heavy braising dish and set aside.  In the same dish, sauté sliced onion.  Once lightly caramelized, add garlic and apricots.  As soon as the garlic becomes aromatic, add chicken stock, cinnamon, honey and piquant orange preserve and bring to a boil.  Add the seared chicken back to the pan, reduced heat to a simmer and cover.  You can leave the pan on the stove on low heat or put it in the oven at 325 degrees. Either way, let the chicken cook for approximately an hour, and then add in carrots, parsnips and sweet potato. Cook for another 15-20 minutes, until the chicken is fork tender, and vegetables are tender.  Once it is finished cooking, finish with balsamic vinegar and lemon juice. Don’t forget to adjust salt and pepper to taste.

This is best served with a light cous cous salad.  Cook the cous cous as directed, add in dates, almonds, red onion, mint, and season with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.

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David Indriksons is a Lead Class Assistant at The Chopping Block with a background that goes from small scale bistros to large scale catering and everything in between. In addition to a great love of food, he is a self-admitted travel junkie that enjoys hanging out with locals around the world and trying new cuisine. Outside of TCB, he enjoys skating, snowboarding, and playing with his dog, Caesar.

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Where’s the Beef? Argentina!

Wednesday, April 4th, 2012 by Janet

I recently had the great pleasure of visiting South America with my husband and two of our friends, Kent and Tanya.  We spent a short time in Buenos Aires, a few days in Mendoza and a couple more days in Santiago, Chile.  It seemed like a whirlwind adventure, but our focus was clear:  wine… and all the great food we could find to go with it.  I think I have enough material for many blogs to come, so I will make the focus of this one a bit narrower:  beef.

When one visits Argentina, one must be open to the idea of gaining a few pounds on the scale as well as a few points on the cholesterol chart.  The sooner one accepts this fact the better, as there is a lot of tasty and affordable beef to enjoy, as well as excellent Malbec with which to wash it down.  We made a point to visit two parrillas, one more traditional and one more modern.  A “parrilla” refers a style of grill used for cooking asado (barbecue), and is also the name for a steakhouse that serves said grilled meats.  This is charcoal grilling at its best, with great markings and smoky flavor.  At La Brigada, we feasted on several delectable cuts from various animals:  (parallada – mixed grill) the lomo (beef tenderloin), bife de chorizo (top loin or strip loin), short rib, morcilla (blood sausage), and Andean lamb “oysters”—not the Rocky Mountain kind.  All of our steak cuts were cooked to a beautiful medium rare and served with chimichurri.  For us Americans, that was quite a switch for eating short ribs, as we generally cook those low and slow until they melt in our mouths.  But here we did more chewing and savored the flavor along the way.  As a professional chef I feel that it is important to try food that hasn’t tickled me in the past, and I expected the morcilla would not be a great thrill for me.  I was pleasantly surprised by the delicate texture, and mild yet full flavor with smoke from the grill.  That inspired us to enjoy morcilla at several more restaurants that week.  While our husbands snickered over being able to order testicles in Spanish, Tanya and I rolled our eyes but were surprised by the delicate flavor and smooth texture.

Miranda, our second parrilla, had similar meat and offal offerings with a more contemporary twist on some of the entrees and side dishes.  Kent’s ribeye was accompanied by a halved red pepper, grilled with a soft-cooked egg inside, and my husband had a side dish of a whole, roasted sweet potato drizzled with honey.  I lightened up my dinner with a salad of chicken and grilled vegetables, but still enjoyed sharing a mixed grill of morcilla, kidneys, sweetbreads and chorizo.

These restaurants certainly fulfilled our Argentine steakhouse fantasy, and they did not disappoint in the wine department.  Stay tuned for our journey through the land of Malbec in future blogs!

 

 

 

 

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Janet Kirker is the Executive Chef of The Chopping Block. She oversees the culinary staff at both of The Chopping Block locations, manages the curriculum and menu development teams, and works with the Event Sales team to organize private events. Cooking is still her favorite hobby, whether it be a simple dinner for two or a huge family gathering. Wine is a major interest, and it often dictates where she and her husband choose to vacation.

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I Wish I had Thought of That

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012 by Clair

I hear this all the time when teaching people how to cook. Sure, learning new techniques is great and opening their eyes to different ingredients is wonderful. But when you show them how to do something just a little simpler than how they usually do it, it really gets them excited. That’s when I hear “I wish I had thought of that years ago!”

One of my favorites is when filling a Ziploc plastic bag, fold over the top part a couple of inches and the bag will stay open and clean if you are pouring something into it. Ziplocs are also great to use if you need to crush up a can of whole tomatoes. Just pour in the contents, zip it up removing as much air as you can and squish away. Clean up is a breeze as well. Just throw away the bag or wash it out and reuse it.

Another tip is to save the ends of the vegetables that you usually throw away. Instead, save them in a gallon Ziploc bag and keep it in your freezer. When the bag is full, you can make a great veggie stock for soups, sauces, risottos, etc.

I do the same with chicken. If I’m grilling chicken wings, I cut the tips off and put them in a bag. If I’m using a whole chicken I’ll (at the very least) cut out the back bone and save that in a bag or if I’m de-boning a chicken, I’ll save the bones in the same bag.  This bag combined with my veggie bag in my freezer makes a great chicken stock which I use all the time. It’s much healthier than stock you buy, and the taste is so much better!

One of my most favorite tips is keeping those tiny bottles of alcohol in my kitchen cupboard.  Not for drinking, mind you, but for cooking.  I often use rum, cognac, even Baileys when cooking or making desserts, but I don’t keep large bottles of alcohol that I don’t drink. This way, I don’t take up a lot of space in my kitchen that I don’t have anyway, and I can keep a large variety of liquors on hand for very minimal cost.

I’m a HUGE fan of kitchen tips, so post yours here to share.

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Clair Smith is a Lead Chef's Assistant at The Chopping Block's Merchandise Mart and Lincoln Square locations. After being a long time student, Clair joined the TCB team in 2006. When she's not helping people learn how to cook, she enjoys traveling, camping, and entertaining family and friends. Clair lives in Hyde Park with her husband Ken and her cat named 'Kitty'. She loves Mexican cuisine and her "go to" dish of the moment is Pozole.

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Butchery Bravado

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012 by Kate

I love taking classes at The Chopping Block, so much so that I’ll even spend my precious few days off at them. (People: this means that I like where I work so much that I go there when they are not paying me.) A few weeks ago, my boyfriend and I spent our Sunday elbow-deep in raw meat. We took Chef Ethan’s Meat Butchery class, which is an intensive four-hour introduction to breaking down a chicken, filleting a fish, and cleaning a pork tenderloin.

Little did I know that Brandon, who’d hunted and fished as a kid, was already a pro at deboning and degilling. I, however, was in need of help. I learned to cook first in a house full of vegetarians in Northern California during my sophomore year of college, so I’m a whiz with a vegetable. But, sadly, I’m no expert at breaking down meat. When I saw this class on the calendar, I knew it was time to fill this gap in my culinary know-how.

Aided by CAs Matt and Breanne, Ethan made it look like a breeze; but when it was my turn to tackle the beasts, I went about it with more sawing than grace. We used boning knives because of their flexibility and ease of maneuverability in tight spaces. The right knife is certainly important in any preparation, but I realized that the most useful tool was just plain confidence. When I first approached the fish, a protein I’ve always purchased in its delicate, filleted form, I was far too gentle and hesitant. My cuts were shallow, my fillet was a mess. When we flipped it over and went about working on the second side, I said to myself, forza, an Italian word that colloquially means you can do this, and I glided through the meat directly down to the spine. My next fillet: gorgeous, if I do say so myself.

After all that butchery, we’d worked up quite an appetite, so we turned our handiwork into a delightful lunch. We worked with two others named Noelle and Robinson, and together we made a braised Moroccan-style chicken, a citrus-herb snapper en papillote, and a stuffed pork tenderloin. By the end, our bellies were happy and we talked enthusiastically about how we’d try butchering again soon.

Though I’m by no means a master, I do feel confident enough to try these techniques at home, and the class is a great introduction to basic principles. This is definitely worth taking for any carnivore.

 

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Kate Soto is a part-time class assistant at the Chopping Block, and has never met a vegetable she didn't like. She writes about recipes and feeding people at domestikating.wordpress.com. When not thinking about food (especially anything with the carb-sauce-cheese trifecta), she's thinking about books, and is coordinator of the Creative Writing and Poetics programs at the University of Chicago. She was born and raised in LA by card-carrying members of the Fraternal Order of the Casserole.

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