Salpicon of Chicken Tacos

Burning Desires, Salsa, Smoke and Sizzle is a cookbook you just need on your shelf.  If you are a cookbook reader, ie you take a stack of cookbooks and a nice cold one out to the deck to plan all of the wondrous meals you will make during the endless hours of your weekend, you’ll be way into this.  The topics are all things grilled and lovely marinades and sauces to accompany them.  Chapters include the obvious like “A Smoldering Passion:  BBQ and beyond” and the less obvious such as “With a Little Help From My Friends: Starters, Salads, and Starches”  and yes, all of those are actually grilled.  There are recipes (duh!), each preceded by a little story.  But, the key here is the perfect introduction to each section.  How to grill?  Got that.  And I know you have access to this basic information a gazillion places.  Salads on the grill?  Interesting, but not new.  Here’s the kicker people … if you actually follow these conversational style directions, you cannot lose.  This is one of very few books where everything, and I mean everything, made from it is 100% top notch! Um sorry, just double checked on where you can find this priceless book, and discovered it is out of print.  Shoot!

On to today’s dish … this is kind of like a spicy chicken salad in a soft taco.  There is an interesting technique of marinating the smoked, shredded chicken after it was cooked.  It really makes for a fresh, bright flavor.  The book desribes how to perfectly smoke the chicken on a kettle grill.  While the dish is certainly exceptional with that method, I’ve been known to just rub a bit of liquid smoke on the chicken before popping it on a gas grill when the wind is whipping up too much of a breeze.

Ingredients:

1 chicken, cut into breasts, drimsticks, thighs, and wings

3 cups smoking chips

1/2 cup lime juice

1/3 cup olive oil

2 fresh jalapeno chiles, seeded and minced

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1 medium tomato, cut into 1/2 inch dice

1 avocado, pitted and cut into 1/2 inch pieces

1/2 cup whole fresh cilantro leaves

3 TBS thinly sliced green onions

Romaine leaves

flour tortillas, warmed

Directions:

1.  Smoke the chicken by setting on the cool area of the grill, starting skin side down, and turning every 15 minutes until just cooked through.  Remove from the grill and cool to room temperature.  Skin the chicken, remove the meat from the bones and coarsely shred it.

2.  While the chicken is almost finished cooking, prepare the marinade.  In a large bowl, stir together the lime juice, olive oil, jalapenos, salt, and pepper and let stand at room temperature for 20 minutes.  Add shredded chicken and toss together.  (The salad can be prepared to this point up to 1 hour ahead.  Cover and refrigerate.)

3.  Just before serving, add the tomato and avocado, tomato, cilantro and green onions to the bowl and mix gently.  To serve, line a tortilla with a large romaine leaf, top with chicken salad, and fold in half to create the taco.

Notes:

*  For a lower carb version, just do away with the tortilla.

*  Fresh lime juice is a must in this dish for that bright, zesty flavor.

Best Tortilla Soup Ever!

This weekend we were hosting the occasional home brewers’ group to do some, uh, home brewing. The brewers get started mid day, and generally the families join in the event a few hours later. I figured that doing some dinner would be comforting and had visions of soup and sammies dancing in my head. But, here in California, that quickly became Tortilla Soup and Quesadillas. Yum!

Tortilla soup is a staple in mi casa, with a batch prepared about once a month during the soup season. This time I was ready to play around with it. I started with some research, from my tried and true slow cooker version, to another barely more than broth with chicken and tortillas, and yet another in the “everything but the kitchen sink” soup variety. My mood was leaning towards something a bit leaner than my usual, but still needing a few items from the kitchen sink recipes. How can someone NOT include some black beans and corn in tortilla soup? That would just be wrong!

Lucky for me, the peppers and onions were fresh from a local farm stand. While a few tomatoes can still be found ’round here, I went for the canned variety as the freshies are not so reliable lately.

For our brewers’ gathering, I made huge amounts of this, so here is the scaled back recipe. This makes enough for a hungry family of 4 with left overs for lunch the next day.

Ingredients:

1 TBS vegetable oil

1 yellow onion, roughly diced

1 TBS chili powder

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 quart chicken broth / stock

1 lime, juiced

1 chicken breast, divided into 2 or 3 pieces

1/2 can corn, drained

1/2 can black beans, rinsed

1 Anaheim pepper, roasted and diced

1 Poblano pepper, roasted and diced

1 can diced tomatoes with jalapeno

Accompaniments:

3 corn tortillas, cut into 1/4 inch strips

1 Haas avocado, diced

1 cup grated jack cheese

low fat sour cream

handful cilantro, chopped

1 to 2 jalapenos, seeded and sliced

Directions:

1. Roast peppers. Line cookie sheet with foil and set oven on broil. Lay peppers on the cookie sheet and place under broiler until skin is blackened and blistering, turn over peppers and return to the oven until skin blackens and blisters on the other side. Place peppers in a plastic bag and seal so that peppers steam. When peppers are cool enough to handle, rub off the skins, and remove the seeds. Dice peppers and set aside.

2. In a large soup pot, heat oil over medium – low heat. Add onions and cook 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add garlic and chili powder, and cook an additional 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

3. Add chicken broth / stock, raise heat until the mixture simmers. Squeeze in the lime juice and add the chicken breast. Continue simmering for about 15 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through. Remove chicken to a plate to cool.

4. Add the roasted peppers, tomatoes, black beans and corn to the mixture. Return to a simmer and leave it alone for another 20 minutes.

5. When chicken is cool enough to handle, shred using two forks. Cover with foil and set aside.

6. Place cheese, cilantro, and jalapeños in serving dishes.

7. Serve soup with tortilla slices, avocado and chicken in the bottom of each bowl, topped with soup. Guests may help themselves to the remaining toppings.

Notes:

• While roasting the chilies, I was sure appreciating those canned versions. But, when tasting the soup, I realized that roasting fresh chilis was an important component to the success this time around. Anaheims are a nice, safe addition, but I really love the poblanos with their stronger flavor. I am convinced that the roasted poblanos were a major contributor to the success.
• There is no way to overestimate the patience needed with the onions at the start of this soup. Be kind to them and keep that heat low. Also, the low heat at the beginning keeps the garlic from getting that nasty burnt garlic flavor that can jump in way too quickly at this step. Patience!  (This is also an important skill to learn when cooking Indian curries.)
• Go ahead and get your fingers and hands messy with the peppers. You’re going to chop them up anyways, so don’t worry about keeping them all perfect.
• I know that half a can of corn and black beans sounds a bit odd, but more than that with these proportions will give you more of a stew. Just take the left overs, toss in a bit of tomato and Serrano chilies and ta-da, you’ve got a lovely salsa for tomorrow night!
• Avocado in the bottom of the bowl?  Just try it once and you’ll be hooked!

40 Clove Garlic Chicken

Its been awhile since this dish has come out of my kitchen, and I really don’t know why. After making the 40 clove garlic chicken again, it is definitely going back into the rotation.

Knowing that this Kaleidoscope dinner would be like cooking for a crowd, with my family of 4 plus a friend staying the night, and the other family with 6, 4 of them being teens. We needed some serious protein portions! I picked up 2 whole chickens from the store and went to work. Its been quite a few years now since I finally sat myself down and mastered breaking down the bird, but I must admit it is one useful skill! The time involved is minimal, once you know where to look for the correct joints to sever, everyone ends up with a cut of chicken they like, and if I’m into it, I get some “free” homemade chicken broth from the carcass. If you haven’t yet mastered this skill, do give it a try …. you’ll be quite proud of yourself when you do! Ok, you can wimp out and use breasts, thighs, whatever you find already cut for you, but you’ll also have to carry the guilt of not having given it a go yourself.

Forty clove chicken is one of those wonderful dishes where you end up with both chicken and a nice cream-less creamy sauce all from one pan. Fewer dishes! Yes! Don’t let the garlic frighten you away. It bakes right along with the chicken and mellows into a light flavor.

Ingredients:

1 chicken, cut into legs, thighs, and breasts, with breasts cut in half

40 cloves garlic, very coarsely chopped

1 cup white wine

1 tsp rosemary

1 tsp tarragon

salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Sprinkle salt and pepper on each side of the chicken pieces, and pat in place.

3. Spread chicken pieces out in a roasting pan, allowing a bit of room between each piece. Add garlic, distributing evenly across the roasting pan. Add wine, rosemary and tarragon.

4. Cover lightly with foil and bake for 40 minutes, turning chicken half way through. Chicken should be 170 degrees. Transfer chicken to the serving plate.

5. Using a fork or potato masher, gently smash the garlic pieces and stir to incorporate with the pan juices and wine. It should look like a slightly lumpy gravy when you finish. Pour over chicken and serve.

Notes:

* Personally, I love the flavor of tarragon in this dish. Other than that, if you don’t have rosemary, go ahead and substitute some other similar herb that happens to be in your pantry.

* Cutting each breast in half makes each piece more even in size which is important when cooking it all for the same amount of time. Another benefit: portion control.

* This is not the time to peel all of that garlic! Buy the kind that has already been peeled. And you don’t need to get all particular and count out the garlic cloves. Just pour a whole bunch of cloves on your cutting board, give them a few quick chops and toss them on the chicken.

* I was amused to see how many You Tube videos show how to cut up a chicken!  It truly never occurred to me to film myself breaking down a bird and sharing it with the world.  Time to expand my goals!