Goin to Chicken

Wine: Pleiades xv Old Vines from Silverlake Wine

We cooked two dishes from Sunday Supper at Lucques. Her recipes are exceptional, but take some work to accomplish. These are really worth the effort.


Saba is like Balsamic but better! Saba is the sweet reduction of grape must, simmered in copper kettles over an open flame. It is the exact same must used for balsamic vinegar, but cooked down more, to about one-third its original volume. Aged for two years in chestnut and oak barrels, Saba is a pure, sweet, syrupy expression of the Trebbiano or Lambrusco grape. With a fantastic fruity character, Saba has hints of grapes, plums, and raisins. Try drizzling it over cheesecake, dressing a fruit salad, serving it on panna cotta, using it in marinades, or serving it over ice cream.

We started with a salad: Coleman’s Farm’s Treviso with Gorgonzola, Walnuts and Saba. Instead of Treviso we used radicchio a very close relative. The recipe calls for Saba and we were almost out. Saba is a great product but difficult to obtain. To make it even more difficult, we have a favorite Saba, imported from Modena, by Manicaretti. A few weeks ago, we asked Chris at The Cheese Store of Silverlake if he could get it for us. He surprised us this weekend by producing it. It was a real surprise for us! It is great dealing with someone who will special order foodstuffs for us. We also purchased the Gorgonzola from The Cheese Store.

For the second course we made an incredible chicken. We actually started it on Sat. to cook on Monday! I will simply name it, as it appears in the cookbook. It tells you the main ingredients! The recipe is way too complicated to write here. Buy the book! In the book there is a fabulous picture of the dish. It is a shame the Blog doesn’t have a smell function. It had a wonderful aroma! The name of the dish is: Braised Chicken with Saffron Onions, Italian Couscous, and Dates. It has a multi-layered texture and taste. For some reason we don’t remember ever eating this on Monday night at Lucques. We must have been on vacation the Sunday night she served this. Glad we were able to recreate it!

Chicken Buried in Vermicelli

Wine:

Melville Syrah 01
Domaine d’Orfeuilles Vouvray 2002
Kosta Brown 2005 Pinot Noir Rose


We have eaten several times at Corina’s new restaurant near us in Attwater Village named: Canale. One of our favorite appetizers she serves is a Pissaladiere, which is a Pizza from Provence which is thin crusted, and covered with caramelized onions and black olives. It is very good.

A couple of weeks ago I received the new copy of Cooks Illustrated and there was a recipe for Pissaladiere. I don’t usually bake pastry (especially) with yeast, but decided to give it a try.

We looked through several cookbooks and decided to combine the Cooks Illustrated version with the version in the Mediterranean Cooking cookbook by Paula Wolfert. There were a few small differences. Paula for example allows you to use tomatoes we didn’t want any tomatoes on ours.

I made a Herb Salad to go with the pizza: Italian Flat Parsley, Watercress, Cilantro, Basil.

For the main course we made a dish from the Los Angeles Times: Chicken Buried in Vermicelli. It will be in a new cookbook: Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey & Lebanon by Claudia Roden. It was fun tracking down some of the ingredients in Persian and Italian groceries in nearby Glendale. The dish is made with Cinnamon, ginger, blanched almonds, etc. We cooked to boiled 2 chickens with lots of onions, reduced the sauce, boned the chicken, added additional spices. The pieces of chicken in the thick sauce are places at the bottom of the dish and then completely covered with the noodles. The crispy
are then placed on top of the noodles. It is a very good dish and we would make it again!


For desert we had Brownies from La Brea Bakery.

Pizza and Malaysian Chicken

New on the BLOG! See a YouTube Movie of us Cooking!
Make sure the computer speakers are turned on!




Wine: Pleiades Old Vines from Silver Lake Wine

We made a Pizza as a first course in our dinner. We love the corn meal crusts that you can buy from Vicola Pizza in San Francisco. When we lived in San Francisco we used to go to Vicola for Pizza. It is located near city hall.

We used grated Fontina Valsa from The Cheese Store of Silver Lake. We then covered the cheese with the vegetable mixture we created from the Hollywood Farmer’s Market: Tomatoes, Leeks, Onions, Pimento and Sage. We baked them with lots of Balsamic, Olive Oil and Thyme. We then topped the pizza with torn Prosciutto and grated Parmesan Cheese. It makes a fabulous Pizza. I am not sure if we can still purchase the Vicolo Pizza shells in Los Angeles. I need to find out!

We then made a Malaysian Chicken recipe that was in the New York Times. It was OK, but not worth making again. It was however fun to go shopping. It needed a lot of interesting Asian ingredients and it was fun going to several markets to try and find them. The chicken is cooked in a very unusual method. The spices and chicken broth are cooked in a pan until the sauce becomes very thick. The chicken is then added and is cooked for about 1 ½ hours. By that time almost all of the liquid has cooked out, leaving just the cooked spices and chicken and oil that is rendered from the chicken. The chicken is then fried in the oil.

In addition we made a Thai Rice with coconut milk.