polenta, according to Marcella's book, is great for anything braissed. ok, i had bought a pork roast to braise, but ended up with too much 1/2 cooked browned chicken from halloween so i thought it better to make it into something. so, i settled on Chicken Cacciatora, New Version.
on the menu for the dinner:
- asiago dip with fresh carrots
- warm polenta topped with fork-tender chicken cacciatore
- baked raddicchio for contrast
- fresh pear tart as a birthday cakeHide all
asiago dip with fresh carrots:
yup, used up some of those 10 lbs of carrots to make a not-so-heavy version of bread or bread sticks available on every italian table. i'll admit, the dip was from the super market. i was going to make a ricotta and anchovy crostini when i shied away and opted for a less odd thing of pre-made dip.
warm polenta:
polenta is a corn based grain "sponge" used to absorb flavours of whatever is around it. a staple comfort food for any true italian -- or so i've been told. i have to say, if you've never made it before, it's actually quite a nerve racking experience, especially if you've never done it before. add in the element of "guests" and you've got yourself a fiasco... yup, you guessed it, welcome to 7:15pm Nov. 2nd, London Hall, rm 510, kitchen.
lauren and her boyfriend were supposed to be coming over for 8pm for her pre-birthday dinner. having horror stories of yellow rubber flowing through my head, i thought it smart to make the polenta at the very last minute, ie 7:15 start boiling the water with a projected finished time around 8:05pm when it would have to be spooned directly onto the plates and served. great plan, i swear! except that....
a) boiling water with polenta grains = super-heated mini canon balls of yellow goop that fly, stick and burn anything they touch; BE CAREFUL!! my cookbook definitely started it's battle wounds that night when yellow clods of 1/2 cooked polenta flew onto it and my hands as i tried to continuously stir it while it was boiling at med. temp. very bad idea on my part.
b) whenever you think water will boil quickly, it never does meaning that i finished making it around 8:15 and not 8:05
c) your making 2 other dishes at the same time and your room mate needs the oven to make dinner. the chicken was braising on the stove -which, based on my 1st attempt of chicken and red cabbage, i was watching like a hawk- while i was prepping the radicchio for it's bake in the oven. then nikki says "how long are you going to be using the oven? i need to make dinner..." to which i respond, "uh.... um.... i was going to use it till tonight was over?" obviously i didn't but that meant a whole bunch of time calculations to make sure that i wasn't going to be serving dinner at 10pm...
d) your cookbook's ratios differ from the ones of the package you bought
e) you think you've over salted the entire thing -- thankfully, it wasn't the case and i just compensated by under saltig the sauce of the chicken
lots of things can go wrong, i swear... but it all turned out fine in the end :)
all crisis averted (at least on my part) when, at 8:15, i start cursing because my guests haven't arrived yet and every minute that passes, the polenta's ultimate fate of yellow rubber draws closer. at 8:20, i decide that i'm not going to let it become a pot-shapped mass of yellow and grab a square baking dish and make a cake of it. served it in a puddle of the chicken sauce, hidden under a chicken piece and topped with some fresh green parsley.
chicken cacciatore, new version:
with the extra pieces of browned chicken from the halloween dinner, i took all the juice and fat that was at the bottom of the bowl and used that as the beginning of the flavour base for the sauce (i know, not exactly as it was written in the book, but i just couldn't pass up on infusing more flavour into the dish). then added the onions and garlic. deglazed with the wine and added a can of crushed tomatoes. adjusted the seasonings and placed the chicken back in to cook slowly. just before serving, i found the sauce to be too monotonous, so i threw in large diced very ripe tomato which was the perfect thing because it balanced everything and removed the "from can" taste that i felt was coming through. under close supervision, no mishaps occured and the chicken was ready when i was.
baked radicchio:
apparently this is not a vegetable that people know as neither lauren nor kyle, her bf, knew what it was when i asked them. for those of you who don't know, it looks like a very small red cabbage with white ribs. its has a bitter taste when eaten raw, but baking it mellows it out a little. i served this as a dish on it's own, after the polenta and chicken, using it's bitter notes to cut through the creamy-ness of the polenta and rich sauce.
i basically cut each head into quaters and tossed it with some olive oil, salt and pepper and baked it at a super high heat. the result? soft, mellow radicchio with just a touch of bitterness - perfect for a beginner's palate. i drizzled some extra olive oil on it before serving and a small grating of fresh parmigianno. it was well recieved.
farmer's wifes' fresh pear tart:
seeing as it was a birthday, a cake was definitely in order. pears are now in season, so, why not? fresh pear tart it was.
i chose smaller ones, seeing as everything else in the cookbook called for small things, but in the end, it really didn't make a difference. what does make a difference, however, is the ripeness of your fruit. for example, the pears i took were sweet, but didn't have the full pear-flavour yet so the cake ended up being a little bland for my liking but i added a light dusting of icing sugar to the top which helped.
i fear that this was not the best dessert for the end of this meal because it just didn't stand up to the other strong flavours that were just presented. kyle brought a bottle of YellowTail bubbly, which helped bring out the pear flavour, but just couldn't cut through it all.
All in all, i think that this menu was great, save the dessert. i should have gone for a cool gelato like i wanted to, but i didn't listen to my initial instincts and had a good tasting, but not 100% fitted dessert. oh well, next time.
Farmer's Wifes' Fresh Pear Tart
No comments:
Post a Comment