victoria does italian: All chicken-ed out...

after two full meals revolving around the lovely art of braised chicken, i think i can satisfactorily say that i am all chicken-ed out.

up first: Chicken Fricasse with Red Cabbage

wishing to stun my halloween guests with an incredible dish that used seasonal ingredients, the Chicken Fricasse with Red Cabbage seemed to fit the bill very well. Plus, it gave me a chance to use my "new" food processor!! i mean, 4 cups shedded cabbage??? 1 cup onions sliced very thin??? who's got time for that?!? I DO!! with my 1980s food processor!! hahaha!! whatever, it got the job done and i couldn't have asked for more. so here's how this one went down in history.

after a morning of vegging out infront of the tv with my room mate Nikki, we decide that it's about time for us to go to the supermarket and lcbo to buy what we need for the party at our place tonight. list in hand, we head out the door and to the car.

on the menu:
- hand made butternut squash ravioli with goat cheese, pecans and a sage butter sauce (made by nikki)
- Chicken Fricasse with Red Cabbage (by me)

first stop, lcbo. relatively uneventful, minus the phone call from my dad when i finally said to him that i was buying wine for a party i was having that night. first time ever saying that i was buying alcohol for non-parental use... weird. bought a nice red table wine that served well in both the dish and for dinner drinking, some port and an argentinian rose.

next stop, no frills. whoot! i officially feel sorry for anyone who has to go grocery shopping with me. it takes forever!!! and i buy the most ridiculous things -- like 10lbs of carrots... yup, still sitting in my fridge. i figure, if stored properly, they should last me a while... right? but, after almost 2 hours in there, nikki and i emerge victorious with enough food to feed an army! (aka 8 university students)

our final stop is a small cooking store where i pick up a ravioli wheel then we zoom back home and begin an afternoon of cooking.

i don the chef coat (which doubles as my costume), put my hair in pigtails and begin to feel like a female equivalent of jaime oliver -- chopping, pulsing, sauteing and moving about the kitchen. we've pulled out the dining table that became the ravioli headquarters while our kitchen became my battlezone of cabbage, onion and garlic. with the help of another friend, karam, i fire up the stove and start heating the pan.

because of pan constraints, i had to cook the chicken and the sauce in the same pan, so i guess i modified the recipe as i had all the "little brown bits" in the pan before adding the onions to saute. after karam processed my onions and cabbage, i followed the recipe until i had to leave it to 40 mins to simmer.... that's when, at the 30 min mark, i noticed the acrid smell of burnt something in the air and raced back to the stove to check... sure enough, the bottom of the pan was encrusted with a thick layer of burnt-ness. CRAP!!!!! it was already 5:00 and we were supposed to be having dinner at 6:30!!! and the sauce needed 40 mins without the chicken and another 40 with the chicken!! so, without a hesitation, i reached for bowl, took out what i could of the non-burnt cabbage and went to scrape the pan clean to start from the beginning as i wouldn't have anything to serve if i didn't.

knowing the steps definitly helped as the world around me became a blur and the methodical chop-chop-chop sound of the knife on the chopping board became all i could hear. somewhere around me, nikki was asking for my help in making ravioli -- something i've never done before, so i pointed her to the book. pan heated and oil in, i waited for the onions and garlic to turn a deep golden, which happened soon enough. then i threw in the half-cooked cabbage from the burnt dish and cooked that down for a few minutes. after that, deglazing with the red wine and more simmer time. sure enough, by the time the chicken went in, the sauce was dark purple and definitely on the sweet side. in when the chicken, whose flesh was instantly stained a deep purple, turning them almost unappealing. they were so beautifully golden before and now not :( it made me sad... but 30 mins later, at a slow simmer, the chicken was done. i turned off the heat and let the residual heat keep on cooking the chicken as we enjoyed a glass of wine or two while waiting for others to arrive. by the time it was served, the chicken was tender but slightly firm. i don't know whether or not it was done correctly, but the flavour was there and that, is all that counted. i do however, think that i need to work on the presentation of the dish. (sorry i can't show it right now, the left overs are in the freezer and i forgot to grab a picture as i was serving it)

it still amazes me how such few ingredients can create such a wholesome dish. you just need some time... and by some, i mean lots...

as for the ravioli making, the only thing i really did was point nikki in the right direction. i mean, i knew in theory how to make ravioli stuffing, the pasta part and how to put it together, but the actual hands that touched it, were her's. they turned out perfect, by the way, and were gobbled up as quickly as they were being sauteed in their sage butter and topped with pecans and goat's cheese. (ok fine, yes, it was me doing that part, but only because nikki was already well on her way in a bottle of wine... good times, good times.)

up next: lauren's birthday