Quickened Moroccan chicken

One of the reasons I love the multi-cooker is preparing a dish with multiple cooking techniques and having only one vessel to clean up. This Moroccan-style chicken is a recent example, at least the way I modified it.

Our last entry went into some detail on Maillard reactions, and you may have noticed this recipe specifies just putting the chicken and onions in the slow cooker. That means no browning, no Maillard reactions, and if not no, much less, flavor! We can't have that. So after seasoning the chicken almost according to the recipe (I substituted smoked paprika for cayenne, as my family doesn't like hot spicy, and added sumac because it's awesome), I browned the chicken and onions in the cooker on the sauté setting. Then I sort of proceeded with the recipe, after two hours adding the chickpeas, substituting dried mango for apricots and capers for olives, as those were what I had available in the house, and adding an extra cup of stock and a half bag of Trader Joe's Harvest Grains blend to slow cook with everything else.

One pot, minimal fuss, easy cleanup, and seriously delicious. It's even better the next day when all the flavors have melded more.

Easy, mostly healthy fish

My wife and I love fish, and it's a healthy protein, but I struggle greatly to find ways to get my 12-year-old to enjoy it. She briefly was into pan-seared steelhead trout with udon, but it didn't last, so I keep trying new preparations.

My latest attempt was a riff on roasting it in foil with butter, garlic, and lemon. For once I mostly followed this, with the exception of leaving the skin on (my wife and I love crispy skin on top, but the kid? Not here for it.), grating the zest of that half a lemon on top in addition to the juice, using jarred, not fresh, herbs (I use Fairway's Herbs for Fish blend, but I'm not sure they still sell it, as it's not on Instacart), and opening the foil and broiling it for a few minutes at the end. (Crispy skin! Plus the zest caramelizes. Yum.) In future I'd broil it a few minutes sooner, as the juice prevents the skin from crisping quickly. This is one instance when I really could have used a torch or Searzall.

I served it with greens sautéed in olive oil with garlic and lemon (no pine nuts or raisins this time) for one of the healthier dinners we've had while isolating. Sadly, my daughter wasn't a big fan of this one either, but the grownups both thought it was delicious. Wine recs here? You can basically never go wrong with NZ Sauv Blanc or South African Chenin Blanc with fish, butter, and lemon, and there are lots of good values there. I could also go with Finger Lakes or Alsatian Gewürztraminer, which is just fun to say. In the Finger Lakes Hermann Wiemer, Sheldrake Point, Glenora, and Dr. Konstantin Frank are all good bets. Grüner Veltliner would be another great choice, either again from Wiemer or Dr. Frank or from its native Austria. (Also, try Slope Cellars.)

 

Finally, since I realized I used to talk about the science of food, and my recent posts have not, I'll make a brief discourse on the browning and crisping of food. Food browns in two ways, enzymatically, which is generally undesirable, and is what happens to apples and pears for example once they're cut and exposed to the air. Yuck.

The browning we like is heat-related, and in the case of proteins like meat and fish, goes by the specific name of "Maillard" reactions, for a French (duh!) chemist of that name. Maillard reaction occur between proteins and sugars, as opposed to caramelization, which involves only sugars. Maillard reactions are what make for such culinary delights as the seared crust on meat and fish, brown butter, créme caramel, and, maybe less obviously, toasted bread. I also learned recently that toasting flour is a thing, not just for roux, but also for baking, adding nuttiness and making raw dough safer to eat! Maillard reactions are a gift that keeps giving.

Important things to note: Maillard reactions only occur above 285ºF, meaning reasonably high heat and less in hydrous (water) and less yet in acidic (see lemon juice above) solutions. Chemistry 101 lesson: if a reaction's product, in this case water, is already in abundance, equilibrium tends away from the reaction happening  Conversely, if the reactant concentration is high, which here are alkaline amino groups in an alkaline environment, the equilibrium direction is more reaction, hence more browning. This is why you want your proteins dry before searing them.

Don't be that person, tip generously!

I read anecdotal accounts on Twitter yesterday of customers hiding behind contactless delivery to not tip delivery people. According to these stories, it's true even of regular customers who'd tipped in the past.

This should go without saying, but apparently it needs to be said. If you don't tip delivery people, who are risking their lives so you can preserve yours staying inside, for not very much money, you are, to put it succinctly, a Very. Bad. Person. It's also worth reminding people that in most places (Seattle is an exception), the legal minimum wage is lower for tipped workers, as the tips are assumed. Making customers subsidize businesses' costs is pernicious, but until political consensus shifts away from this practice, tip. Tip as generously as you are able.

Cornbread, comfort food for body and soul

Stress baking. It's a thing that actually helps, and in the realm of comfort food, few things do it for me like cornbread. One of my stockpile items is cornmeal, which I use for breading fish and thickening chili among many other uses. I typically buy polenta (or grits in Americanese), which generically means coarse ground cornmeal. (We Americans often use the word for a specific dish.) I like Bob's Red Mill (employee-owned, B-Corp, does the right thing), although you can only buy a 25-pound bag at the moment, or support local New York farmers and the post office.
So how do you make cornbread? I started with this as a base, with a couple of modifications: I use 1-1/4 c. polenta to 3/4 c. wheat flour, added a can of white corn kernels for some added chew and moistness. Depending on how grainy or smooth you like it, you can vary the polenta/flour ratio between 1:1 and 5:3 either way, and from no kernels to the full can.
As for baking it, I first heated a cast iron skillet over high heat and greased it with pork fat. I poured the batter in, cooked it on the stovetop for a few minutes to brown the edges and bottom, then transferred to a 450ºF oven for 20 minutes. This is with the caveat that I like the bottom browned and crispy, even slightly charred. If you don't, skip the stovetop and bake at 400ºF. If you want to kick it up, add some shredded cheese on top and broil for a couple of minutes.
For this morning's breakfast I drizzled it with hot honey-- the heat from Lola's Trinidad Scorpion Sauce. Damn, that's good.
For those looking to make this vegan or gluten-free (I'm neither so can't directly vouch for it), I can suggest the following. Vegans, obviously skip the butter and pork fat, with coconut or avocado oil being good substitutes, or some form of vegetable oil spread or margarine or make your own? Vegan egg substitutes, based on advice from a vegan friend who bakes a lot of bread, include the water from canned chickpeas or flax meal dissolved in water. To make it gluten-free, others probably know better, but King Arthur and Bob's both offer gluten-free 1-1 baking flour. If you have more experience with this, please leave your advice in the comments.