The day after the Oscars the questions were pretty standard: "What did you think of Jon Stewart?" "Were you disappointed Brokeback didn't win?" "What did you think of Charlize's dress?" Sadly, no one asked the one question I wanted to answer: "What did you have for dinner?"
The dinner, you see, was the best part of the whole night! Observe:
Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic
Apple Cobbler with Vanilla Ice Cream
You've got nothing on me, Wolfgang Puck! Well: you have a restaurant fortune and a QVC Empire, but do you have my joie de vivre? Just count my exclamation marks and I'll put you to shame!!!
Two nights before the Oscars, Diana and I decided she'd come over and I'd make dinner. This sort of plan makes a deep impact on my psyche: I have great internal debates about what it is I'll cook and then I carry impossibly large cookbooks to my bed to skim before sleep. This is what we might call obsessive behavior.
But, you see, more than just cooking I love to cook for other people. The last time I had a regular audience--Lauren in Atlanta--I was still very much an amateur and tasting my food was a risky endeavor. Lately, though, I've gotten quite good. The balance has tipped in my favor and most of the dishes I attempt these days come out quite well. So it's exciting to share that with others and Diana is a prime candidate. She's very game and, more importantly, she eats meat. No one I know eats meat. Diana is a revelation.
"Should I bring anything?" she asked when we spoke on Sunday.
"Maybe some wine," I requested.
"Sure," she said. "White or red?"
"A dry white," I said. "We'll use it to cook our Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic."
I settled upon this recipe after flipping the Gourmet cookbook open to the poultry section and reading that recipe title. It reminded me of the same recipe in the Barefoot Contessa's cookbook and in the battle of whose cuisine reigns supreme in my affections between Barefoot Contessa and Ruth Reichl, Barefoot wins, hands down. I quickly got to work assembling the ingredients:
3 whole heads garlic, about 40 cloves (I bought 4 just in case, but only used 3--BC is always right!)
2 (3 1/2 pound) chickens, cut into eighths [I bought only one 4 lb chicken which was plenty for the 2 of us. I had the man behind the counter at Citarella cut it up.]
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 Tbs unsalted butter
2 Tbs good olive oil
3 Tbs Cognac, divided
1 1/2 cups dry white wine [brought by Diana]
1 Tbs fresh thyme leaves
2 Tbs all-purpose flour
2 Tbs heavy cream
Separate the cloves of garlic
and drop them into a pot of boiling water for 60 seconds.
Drain the garlic and peel. [It's super easy to peel once you blanche like this: you squeeze the cloves right out of their skins.] Set aside.
Dry the chicken with paper towels. Season liberally with salt and pepper on both sides. Heat the butter and oil in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium high heat. In batches, saute the chicken in the fat, skin side down first, until nicely browned, about 3 to 5 minutes on each side. Turn with tongs or a spatula; you don't want to pierce the skin with a fork. If the fat is burning, turn the heat down to medium. When a batch is done, transfer it to a plate and continue to saute all the chicken in batches. Remove the last chicken to a plate...
And here's where we present our dazzling new YouTube technology. If you read the post below this (the Karla post) you'll learn what I learned: that I can use my digital camera to record video, import the video with iPhoto, upload it to YouTube and embed it here, on the site. It's miraculous! Expect many many embedded videos in future posts. Now watch as I calmly transfer the chicken to a plate:
https://youtu.be/jEKNA1X0ZWY
And then I add the garlic as the Barefoot Contessa directs: "Add all of the garlic to the pot."
https://youtu.be/WXXuWtSm9W4
[God, I sound so bossy on these videos: "Ok, good, stop!" Maybe I should go to directing school next?]
Anyway, back with the recipe. Here's the browned chicken on the plate: you can see I browned it well.
But you've added garlic. Here's what you do:
Lower the heat and saute for 5 to 10 minutes, turning often, until evenly browned.
Add 2 Tbs of the Cognac and the wine, return to a boil, and scrape the brown bits from the bottom of the pan.
Return the chicken to the pot with the juices and sprinkle with the thyme leaves.
Cover and simmer over the lowest heat for about 30 minutes, until all the chicken is done.
Remove the chicken to a platter and cover with aluminum foil to keep warm. In a small bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup of the sauce and the flour...
...and then whisk it back into the sauce in the pot. Raise the heat, add the remaining tablespoon of Cognac and the cream, and boil for 3 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste; it should be very flavorful because chicken tends to be bland. Pour the sauce and the garlic over the chicken and serve hot.
How was it?
I'll defer to Diana who said, and I quote, "That's one of the best chicken dishes I've ever had in my entire life."
Diana doesn't speak in hyperbole often. And I concurred with her: the sauce is glorious, hymn inducing. We sang a hymn and our heavenly host misinterpreted and gave an Oscar to Reese Witherspoon over Felicity Huffman.
Chatting with Diana now, she says: "I can't remember ever enjoying a chicken dish more."
"And get this," she adds. "Last night for dinner I felt like cooking... so I made the recipe! (Minus the cognac.)"
"How was it?" I ask.
"It was delicious, but the cognac adds a lot...and I used DRIED thyme, because that's what I had, so it was not quite as good. But it was still the best chicken dish I have EVER prepared."
There ya go. But wait, there's more. There's dessert!
A long time ago (more than two years ago) I baked a recipe from Saveur magazine for apple cobbler and it's haunted me since. I loved it. So did my guests. Readers requested that I share the recipe and I never did. (I vaguely give proportions in that post, but not enough to let you make it.)
So here I am, two years later, and here's the recipe. Have a pencil handy?
Here's what you need:
For the apples:
1/2-3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp freshly grated nuteg
2 pinches ground cloves
3 Tbsp. honey
1/4 cup apple cider
Juice of 1 lemon
12 cortland or other sweet tart cooking apples, peeled, cored and sliced {I used Granny Smiths and a few Rome apples]
6 Tbs. butter, cut into small pieces
For the topping:
2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking powder
10 Tbsp. cold butter, cut into pieces
1/2 cup rolled oats
6 Tbs. heavy cream
Vanilla ice cream
1. For the apples: preheat oven to 325. Combine granulated sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, honey, cider, and lemon juice in a large bowl. Add apples and toss well. Put apple mixture into a large baking dish in an even layer, scatter with butter [I forgot to do this, but remembered last minute and saved the day!]
...bake, gently stirring once or twice, until apples begin to soften and release their juices, about 30 minutes. Set apples aside to cool for 30 minutes.
2. For the topping: sift flour, sugar, salt and baking powder together into a medium bowl. Using a pastry cutter or 2 table knives, work butter into flour mixture until it resembles coarse meal flecked with pea-size pieces of butter. Stir in oats. Add cream, stirring until just combined.
3. Increase oven temperature to 375. Scatter topping over apples in a broad band around inside edge of dish, leaving apples in center of dish exposed. Bake until topping is golden brown, about 45 minutes. Allow to cool at least 15 minutes before serving. Serve with ice cream.
Here it is out of the oven:
The smell was heavenly. So heavenly, in fact, that we sang another hymn and, once again, the heavenly host misinterpreted and gave "Crash" the Best Picture Oscar.
I swooned over this cobbler and I think Diana enjoyed it, though not as much as she enjoyed the chicken. Here she is, vocals out of synch (I suppose video recordings done on a digital camera have their limitations), discussing her feelings about chicken, cobbler, and the outcome of the Academy Awards for which I challenge her, but only as an exercise, since I do agree that "Brokeback" was a far better movie than "Crash." (New forum topic, maybe)
https://youtu.be/7E696W-SMpY
Diana would like to amend this video with the following sentiment: "Say that I don't hate Canadian men."
Ok, got it.
"I just think women and people of color should be telling their OWN stories, not having those stories told to them by middle-aged white Canadian men."
Can you really trust the opinion, though, of someone who feels that the cobbler wasn't as good as the chicken when obviously they were both stupendous? The choice is yours. My thanks to the Academy.
