Author: Kenai

For my first foray into creating a new recipe I am opting for an Italian chicken salad.  I am a fan of  cold dinner salads on hot summer days but I find most chicken salads are flawed a bit because they tend to be dressed with mayonnaise-based dressings.  I  prefer a much lighter vinaigrette dressing.  So, in defining this new recipe, I want not only an Italian palette of flavors but also a vinaigrette dressing.  And one more thing, many chicken salads are long on chicken but short on vegetables, fruits, etc. –  often about a 3 to 1 ratio of chicken to other ingredients.  I prefer a chicken salad with about a 1 to 1 ratio of chicken to other ingredients.  Now with my palette chosen and the two stated goals for the salad “construction”,  let’s launch into building a recipe.

Here is a list of the ingredients I have chosen:

• For the vinaigrette: a good olive oil and fresh lemon
• For the chicken: a roasted bone-in chicken breast
• For the added ingredients:
  • Kalamata olives: briny, bold flavor
  • Feta cheese: salt and creamy texture
  • Tomatoes: a hit of acid and sweetness
  • Marinated artichoke hearts: soft velvety texture with herbaceous marinade
  • Capers: for a spicy bite (rinse with water to remove salt)
  • Garbanzo beans: added protein, creamy texture, and adaptive flavor
• For the herbs and spices:
  • Salt and pepper: goes without saying
  • Oregano: strongly flavored herb that can stand its own against the ingredients list

Before going further, I should point out that my recipes are sized for two servings.  I’ve always found it annoying to find a recipe I want to use to feed, say, 4 people which is sized to feed twelve people.  That would require I downsize recipe to be one third of the original size.  Suppose you have one ingredient that should be present in 1/3 of a cup.  So, I need 1/3 of 1/3 cup.  Makes for a lot of arithmetic.  I find it much easier to size recipes for 2 servings.  Then if you need more servings, well, multiplication is always easier than division (at least when I went to school).

When writing a recipe, you need to find the proper balance of the amount of each ingredient.  This will require making several experimental batches over several weeks or months to really get it right, adjusting amounts (and maybe the ingredient list) until you get it “just right”.   For the first experiment, I advocate what I call the “conservative approach”.  When adding ingredients other than chicken, start by adding less that you think you want and taste the result (and don’t forgot to consider the look of the dish since we eat with our eyes, too).  If you are not happy, add more and re-taste.  Make sure you note down your ingredient amounts when you are happy with your first experiment so that later experiments start from that point.

How many experiments do you do?  Impossible to say.  I have one recipe I have been making and improving for over 30 years now but you can get to a good place it a lot less time than that.

Immediately below is my cut of a version of a Italian chicken salad.

Italian Chicken Salad

• 2 servings
• 1 to 1.25 lb bone-in chicken breast
• 2.5 tbsp of good quality olive oil
• ¾ tsp oregano
• Juice of a large lemon
• ¾ cup of Kalamata olives cut in half, or more to taste
• 2 tbsp drained capers
• 12 to 14 cherry tomatoes cut in half
• 1 cup canned garbanzo beans rinsed and drained
• 2 tbsp feta cheese, crumbled, or more to taste
• 6 marinated artichoke heart halves sliced into four pieces and drained, or more to taste

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Pull back skin on breast and season with salt and pepper.  Pull skin back in place, rub with ½ tsp of olive oil and season with salt and pepper.  Place breast in baking pan and into oven.  Cook for 50 minutes to 1 hour and 10 minutes depending on size of breast.  Check for doneness (165 degrees) and remove immediately to let cool.  Do not overcook or you will get stringy dry chicken.

When chicken is cool enough to handle remove the crispy chicken skin and give to your dog.  He or she will love you for it.  Tear chicken into large bite size pieces (do NOT shred) and place in serving bowl.  Season with salt and pepper.  Sprinkle oregano over the chicken.  Pour oil olive over the chicken and stir until all the pieces of chicken are coated with oil.  Cover bowl and let sit at room temperature for 1 hour.

Cut tomatoes in half.  Cut olives in half.  Add all these to chicken.  Add feta, capers, and artichoke hearts.  Squeeze lemon and add lemon juice to salad.  Mix to distribute ingredients evenly and chill in fridge for at least 1 hour.  Serve cold or at room temperature (my recommendation).

NOTE:

• You can use rotisserie chicken as a shortcut.

We have a first recipe based on the Italian culinary palette.  Our next step will be to take this recipe as a sort of template and re-envision it using a totally different palette.

See you soon with my next blog entry.

 

Over the years, I’ve learned to cook in the style of several of the world’s cuisines – Southwestern, Italian, Chinese, Thai, and Pacific Northwestern.  My attempts at learning cuisines lead me to see that there is a clear path to becoming proficient.  The key is to understand two things about the cuisine: its flavor palette and cooking techniques.  (NOTE: In this blog entry, I am concentrating on cooking with a palette.  We will return to cooking techniques later.)  This is very much akin to how an artist produces a painting.  His palette holds different colors of paint which he can use to depict a scene.  His painting techniques result in different styles of paintings – everything from abstract to an almost photographic reality.   Likewise, a chef creates a new dish using flavors and ingredients from a cuisine’s palette and the appropriate cooking techniques.  (We are ignoring fusion cuisine for the moment.)

What exactly is a cuisine palette?  It is a list of the common ingredients and flavorings found in signature dishes associated with the cuisine.  Let’s ground this concept by looking at the palette for Italian food.  Italian food is well known world-wide so I use it as an example because many people can relate to it.

Listed below is my cut at defining the palette for Italian food.  It identifies the cuisine’s ingredients in broad strokes.  It includes those flavors most commonly seen in well-known Italian dishes (e.g., lasagna, spaghetti, pizza, etc.) and is not meant to be an encyclopedic list of everything that might ever appear in any Italian dish.

Italian Palette
Ingredient Category	Ingredients
herb	basil, oregano, thyme, red pepper flake fennel, dill
spice	cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla
other flavorings	balsamic vinegar, red and white wine vinegar, red and white wine, capers, pancetta, prosciutto
animal protein	pork, beef, lamb, poultry, lots of seafoods, eggs
cheeses	ricotta, parmesan, mozzarella, pecorino, feta and many more
other dairy	milk, cream, sour cream
sweets	honey, chocolate, various sugars, various liqueurs
fruits	lemon, lime, orange, berries, apples, pears, apricots, peaches
nuts	hazel nuts, walnuts, pine nuts
vegetables	tomato, fennel, onion, garlic, various olives, various squashes, potato, leeks, sweet potatoes, artichoke, caper
beans	string beans, garbanzos, cannellini
breads	ciabatta, focaccia and others
other foods	pasta – many types

 

Now that we have a palette to work with, the next step is to take it and derive a new Italian-ish dish.  This will involve choosing ingredients from the palette and marrying these together with right cooking techniques to produce a new and exceptional dish.  My next blog entry will be taking on this challenge.  Come back and see how I do 🙂

Almost every savory recipe you read, no matter the cuisine, will always contain two things: salt and pepper – the essential seasonings.  These two rather humble ingredients play a very important part in the final flavor of a dish.  But have you ever thought about what kind of salt or pepper you should be using?

The standard package of salt bought in grocery stores in North America is ground from mined salt and has a small amount of iodine mixed in (iodine is added because it essential to the human diet to prevents goiters).  Most of us cook with this without any real thought.  However, if you go to the spice section of a good grocery store you might be suprized to find a selection of salts available to you.  Often you will find a pink colored salt mined in the Himalayan mountains of Asia.  The color is cause by various minerals that are trapped in the salt crystal.  These minerals give the salt a subtle but complex flavor that can really enhance food, especially roasted animal proteins.

You might also find Mediterranean sea salt on the same shelf.  As the name suggests, this salt is obtained by evaporating actual sea water.  As with the pink salt, it contains traces of other minerals which also lend it a more complex flavor to enhance your food.  These days other salts from around the world are also beginning to show up.  Each will have it’s own flavor profile.  Try a few and find you favorite(s).   Personally, I keep several kinds of salt in my kitchen and pick and choose which to use with which dish.

As for pepper, most of us buy this in small glass jars or tins filled with pre-ground black peppercorns.  We use the same container for months or perhaps years depending on its size.  All the while, essential oils of the pepper are continually evaporating off the grounds each time the jar is opened.  By the time you reach the bottom of the jar, you probably have a fairly flavorless dust.  You can do better than this.

The alternative is to use fresh whole peppercorns and grind them in a pepper grinder on demand (make sure your grinder is adjustable so you can get coarse to fine ground pepper).  When the newly ground peppercorns land on your dish, all the flavors have just been released by the grinding process are available to flavor your food.

About 20 years ago, I was shopping in my local grocery store and wound up on the spice aisle looking for a jar of peppercorns.  As I was reaching for the jar of black peppercorns, I noticed a jar next to it labeled “Five Peppercorn Blend”.  It contained a mix of peppercorns that were variously black, white, pink, green, and red.  I decided to give this a try.  I took it home, loaded the grinder, and ground a little bit onto a plate.  Then I took a whiff and I was instantly a convert.  Each color of peppercorn had a unique scent and the symphony of all them was wonderful.  Better yet, when I put it in a favorite dish for the first time, I could taste a better flavor in the finished product.  I never went back to black peppercorns and, over the years, I have converted many family and friends to use this mix, too.

Several spice companies make different variants of a peppercorn blends.   You might want to try several to find your own favorite.  McCormick, Penzeys, and Spice Island all sell peppercorn blends and I am sure there are others – though the exact number of peppercorn types in a mix may vary by brand.

So, as a starting point, rethink the salt and pepper you cook with.  This is a first step you can take towards producing exceptional food. These two humble ingredients can lay down the foundation of a great dish.

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