One Chicken. 17 Meals.

One chicken - 17 meals...now how the hell is that possible?

Quite frankly: it's not. Well, maybe it is, but you'd for sure have to eat some pretty small portions. The whole 17 meals thing - I just thought it might be a good way to get your attention.

In any event. lemme show you how many dishes I recently stretched a single, high-quality bird into, using some pantry and fridge items I always have around...

Roasted chicken

First, I roasted the chicken on a vertical roaster, while a bunch of cut up potatoes cooked in the drippings below. The next day, I pulled the remaining meat off the bird...

Salad and stock

Which I made into a chicken salad. The bones (along with a few chicken scraps saved in the freezer) made a quart and a half of a nice, rich stock. Once you've got stock...

Making risotto

You can use it to make risotto; in this case, mushroom risotto, with both fresh and dried mushrooms (the soaking liquid from the reconstituted dried 'shrooms also goes into the making of the risotto)...

Mushroom risotto

The mushroom risotto was a big hit with Significant Eater. I always make a little more risotto than the 2 of us can eat in one sitting, because...

Frying risotto pancakes

With the leftover risotto, I make risotto "pancakes." And who doesn't like a nice, crispy rice pancake...

Risotto "pancakes"

 Served alongside a tart, peppery arugula salad?

Not quite 17 meals, but that one bird sure made for some nice eating. Next up, going to the source (almost) for a real chicken.

Salad Days - Watermelon's Better Than You Thought, Especially With Feta

I remember, back when I was a kid growing up, me and grammy and grampy would sit out on the back porch, grampy having just harvested a big, old 30 pound watermelon. We'd just sit there, them in their rockers, me on the steps, with the sweet juice running down our chins, seeing who could send those pits the farthest, while meanwhile the hogs would gather round, cuz they really loved the rinds and any fruit we might share with 'em.

OK - not really. Grandma and Papa were in a 4th-floor walkup, off Gun Hill Road, in the Bronx. And watermelon was a real treat, if there was any at all (I don't remember any). More likely, it was helzel, or if we were lucky, chicken feet. And Grandma could make a mean potato latke.

And now, it's summer once more, my season of complaining a lot - and cooking as little as possible. So yesterday, when my local grocery store had cut watermelon on sale for a mere 49 cents a pound, I bought a big wedge. Normally, I just bring it home, and keep it in the fridge - it's a good dessert for Sig Eater and me, when we pretend we're trying to be healthy.   

But I wanted to make dinner, and without "cooking," that can be a challenge. Looking around the fridge, in addition to the watermelon, I noticed I had some organic parsley and cucumbers. Some feta. And on the counter some reasonably nice tomatoes. Bingo - salad time...

Watermelon and Feta Salad

Because the watermelon and tomatoes are so nice and juicy, the dressing can be kept to a minimum. A drizzle of good extra virgin olive oil and some fine Spanish dry Oloroso vinegar from Despaña, and we were good to go. Well, we did need something crunchy...

Za'atar Pita Crisps

So I cut a pita bread in half, cut the halves into triangles, brushed them with that olive oil, sprinkled them with za'atar and salt, and baked them in my toaster oven for about 7 minutes. Not a bad dinner, with (almost) no cooking.

Watermelon, Feta, Tomato, Cucumber and Parsley Salad 

All the above ingredients, salt and pepper, olive oil and vinegar.

Make a salad out of them.

Paella - It's Only Rice, Right?

Rice. Many food cultures have their special rice dishes. Others eat rice at literally every meal. There's risotto in Italy. Red beans and rice in New Orleans. Congee in China. Chelo, pilaf and pulao in the Middle East. Sushi rice. Jasmine rice. Red rice and black rice. Thai rice. Sweet rice. Sticky rice. White rice. Brown rice. On and on. And then, in Spain, there's paella.

So, this is a quick post about paella. Specifically, the paella I make at home, the dish I've been trying to master for years. When done well, a thing of beauty - the rice taking on the flavors of the rest of the ingredients, without any one of those flavors overpowering another. Texture is important; gummy or overcooked or undercooked - not good. You also want a bit of socarrat at the bottom of the paella - the wonderful, crusty and crunchy bits that form from cooking paella on an open fire - or, as in my case, on my stove.

So, where to start?  First off, paella is about rice. I've tried a bunch of different rices, all claiming to be "the best" for paella...

Paella rices from Spain

What my experiments have shown me is that the best rice for paella is also the most expensive, coming in at about $15 for a kilo, but hey - you get what you pay for. (Oh, it's the one in the upper left hand corner, Calasaparra Bomba rice). And if you think that's expensive, wait'll you see the price for saffron, the most expensive spice in the world, and that which is necessary in any fine paella.

I also use a traditional paella pan, which can be a pain in the ass, as they're meant to be used over an open fire, or on a specially built paella burner. In my kitchen, there are 2 paella pans - a small one, which is good for 2 or 3 servings (or, for Significant Eater and me), and a larger one, which will easily serve 6. Here's an early attempt, in a 2-serving pan...

Chicken and chorizo paella

Generally, paellas start with a base, called sofrito in Spain. Other than in Catalan areas of Spain, where it's a sofregit, which is like an Italian battuto, which is like a French mirepoix, which is like the holy trinity in New Orleans, which is -   oh, forget it.  You sort of start with sautéing the base, gently and for what can seem like a long time, if you do it right. The base, in this case, is olive oil, tomatoes and onions, with an addition of garlic and maybe some pimenton, which is smoked Spanish paprika. Then you add the liquid, (i.e. stock), which had better be good, otherwise your paella will suck. Unless, of course, you add the rice before you add the stock, into which the saffron has infused (who said this was gonna be easy?!). You'll also add back maybe the chicken, which you've already browned, along with the chorizo, if you're using that, but no one said you have to.

Then it cooks; quickly, at first, and then more slowly, as the liquid reduces. Some people (heathens) and some recipes (meant for heathens), call for cooking paella in the oven, after its initial phase. Bull. It's meant to be cooked over fire. (OK - you can cook it in the oven - it's easier.)  For me, I go the stovetop route, which involves rotating the pan every other minute, so that it's all exposed equally to the heat of the flame. Basically, you're not leaving the kitchen while you're cooking - so make sure your guests already have drinks and other stuff to eat...

Snacks for guests

And make sure you have your booze in the kitchen with you. You probably also want to make sure you've tried your hand at paella a few times before you serve it at a dinner party. But you already knew that - anything you're serving at a dinner party - you should've already tried to prepare once or twice, right? What if it sucks...

Sucky paella - only for me

Paellas can be made from seafood. Or chicken. Or vegetables. Or, I guess, other stuff. But Valencia's traditional paella, called, ummm, paella Valenciana, is made with rabbit, snails, a few kinds of beans, and other stuff. It was a dish prepared by rice farmers, and they used what they found in the fields, hence the rabbit and snails.

So - are you ready to make paella? Are you waiting for a recipe? Well, you're not getting one here - I'm not exactly the Julia Child of paella. I can point you to Despaña, which is where I shop for great Spanish ingredients and cookware. La Tienda's another good resource for the above. To start, you can read a David Rosengarten article in Saveur. And there are plenty of paella cookbooks at Amazon.

Then maybe, just maybe, after you've taken in all the above, bought a paella pan, bought the right rice, saffron, pimenton, etc., and practiced making paella a few times, you can impress your guests - or even just your signifcant other. Because believe me, when done right, paella is one of the world's great rice dishes...

Chicken and seafood paella for 6

¡Buen apetito!

Dinner For One a la Alain Ducasse

Cooking dinner for one's self isn't all that exciting.  Oh sure, you can make yourself a beautiful salad, or a nice one-dish meal, and that's just fine.  Something that'll give you leftovers the next day for lunch is always a plus.  But generally, are you roasting a chicken for yourself or making a pork roast or even preparing a big, fat steak? Along with a couple of sides?  My guess is no. Or at least not too often.

But since I 've had a bit of blogger's block lately, and since my blog is mostly about food and cooking, I figured if I started actually cooking when Significant Eater and I are in different cities, I might have that much more to blog about. Friggin' genius, eh?

Last week, while digging around in my freezer, I came across a steak I'd had frozen for a while and thought it would be good to use, since I wanted to try out the Ducasse method of cooking a steak over moderate heat on the stove top  (Alain Ducasse is considered one of the world's great chefs) and since I also wanted to empty my freezer of various frozen stuff that was reaching the end of it's lifespan.

Of course, me being me, I didn't follow the Ducasse directions exactly. But I did do what you all should do when following a recipe - read it from start to finish; that way you at least have some idea of what you're hoping to end up with.  It's also the first thing I learned in cooking school...read the damn recipe.

My steak happened to be a rib eye which is actually my favorite cut.  You'd never guess it was under here, but I always think these things will help keep the cook top clean, which, by the way, they don't...

The steak got turned after 10 minutes...

It's looking good, with a nice crust.  At the same time the steak was cooking, these were roasting in a hot oven...

And finally, the lonely man's dream frozen vegetable side dish (I always have them in the freezer - they come in so handy)...

One of the most important steps in that recipe you've read all the way through is the resting period.  I don't care if it's a steak, a pork chop or a roasted turkey. Let it rest before carving; end of story. Chef D. recommends resting a thick steak for about half the time it takes to cook it - I went a few minutes less, but not by much...

Perfectly medium rare, and exactly the way I like my steak cooked. Plated up with those vegetables and potatoes, and it's a meal you might even be tempted to  serve to someone other than yourself.  And it took less than an hour, start to finish...

If You Need Cooking Lessons - Just Phone

A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine asked me if I'd teach him how to "make" spareribs. Seems he and his wife were having some people to their house for dinner, and he wanted to show off his barbecuing/grilling skills. Significant Eater and I were invited, but were unfortunately unable to attend.

As a side note, this lovely couple has a "country house" in a little town upstate, somewhere near New Paltz, NY. They had been inviting us up for a weekend all summer, but due to our travels to and from DC, it hasn't happened yet. Of course, they think it's because I hate the "country," but c'mon, really, who hates the "country?" I mean, I don't like mosquitoes or flies or bears or the sun or any of that stuff that you find in the country, but we have a few of those things in the city too, don't we?

Where was I? Oh yeah, cooking lessons. The spareribs. And there was a catch. You see, my buddy was going to be upstate cooking these ribs, and I was going to be down (state), right here in my sunny, bug and bear free NYC apartment. So these cooking lessons were being given - you guessed it - over the phone.

Now one of the cool things about this lesson was that my buddy was able to take pix during the event (who doesn't love an I-Phone) and send them to me virtually simultaneously. Excellent. So here's how it went.

We started with the dry rub - which we actually made here, in my bug-free NYC apartment. Any good dry rub will work - this one had salt, brown sugar, black pepper, paprika, chile powder, a bit of cayenne and maybe even a little garlic powder thrown in for good measure. (Don't use too much garlic powder - the stuff is vile - but in a dry rub a tiny bit can't hurt.) Once my bud was upstate, dry rub in hand, he purchased a couple of racks of spareribs - St. Louis style. I had him remove the fell, the membrane covering the underside of the ribs, as I think it makes for a better end product and allows the ribs to absorb more of the rub flavor. And then he massaged the dry rub in, and put the ribs in the fridge overnight to rest.

Of course there are as many ways to cook ribs as there are barbecuers who swear by their versions. Trust me, I love smoking ribs, low and slow, for hours on a Weber or other smoker device, but since the upstate grill was a gas one, these were going to be bastardized bbq - first cooked in the oven and then finished on the grill to get all crusty. The nice thing about this is that the ribs can be cooked ahead of time and then finished in like 15 minutes, giving the hosts plenty of time for other things - like hanging out with their guests, sweating and swatting flies.

As the oven preheated to around 275 F, the ribs were laid onto a couple of baking sheets, to which about a cup of white wine with a bit of melted honey and worcestershire were added, and covered tightly. And into the oven they went for about 2.5 hours. When uncovered, they looked like this…

Set those ribs aside. Wrap 'em up in foil and refrigerate them even. But save all the yummy liquid from the baking sheets - that gets reduced way down for the glaze, which you can do now.

About 45 minutes before dinner, crank the grill up - let it preheat good and hot, and anyone that tells you your oven or grill is done preheating in 10 minutes is kidding you - it's not. I like to give everything, oven and grill, at least 1/2 an hour - it gets the heat all evened out and you'll get better results that way. You can cut the ribs into smaller slabs to make them easier to handle on the grill.

Brush the ribs with the glaze and put 'em on the grill. Turn them every five minutes or so, and brush them some more. In about 15 minutes, your ribs will look like this. And your guests will be eating them up.

Now sit back, crack open a beer and admire your handiwork. Watch your guests as they can't stop eating. After all, you've just learned how to cook spareribs - on the phone.

Note: If you don't have a grill, if it's too hot or cold outside, if you live in an NYC apartment, the final step can be done under a hot broiler.

Phoned-In Spareribs
2 slabs spareribs, St. Louis style, membrane removed

Dry Rub

2 T kosher salt

2 T brown sugar
1 T chili powder
1 T paprika (sweet or medium, or even smoked)
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
.5 tsp cayenne

Braising Liquid

1 cup white wine (almost anything works here)
1 T honey or brown sugar
2 T worcestershire (in a pinch - soy)

Technique above.

You Go, Grill

Yay - it's finally grilling season. Now, I know what you're thinking; dude, grilling season just passed - it's called "summer." You know, from Memorial Day to Labor Day in these parts. Bull, I say. In my opinion, there's actually no better time to grill than when the weather starts getting cooler; after all, do you really want to stand over a blazing grill when it's 100 degrees out? (If I did, I guess I'd still be in the restaurant biz). And all those years that I lived in California, football season was when I most enjoyed my barbecues - grilling and watching the 49ers beat everyone in existence...those were the days.

My biggest problem when it comes to grilling? I don't own one. Well that, and the fact that we live on the 15th floor of an apartment building, leads to very little grilling. Sure, I can get my cast-iron grill pan screaming hot and pretend grill in our 98 square foot kitchen, but it's just not the same. And no matter what I do, the 49ers suck.

But just this past weekend, Significant Eater and I were invited to a friend's house - yes, house - where there are two, count 'em, two grills in the backyard. And, I got to play on them. My buddy and I both shopped with the grill in mind; and then we both cooked on those grills.

First off, we had some beautiful fish and shellfish from the farmer's market. Assorted clams (cherrystones and littlenecks), cooked just till they pop open and dressed sparingly with nothing but lemon juice, were a gift from the Atlantic. If you've never had a clam like this, you don't know what you're missing...

Also procured at the same seafood vendor were a couple of beautiful black sea bass; when my pal bought 'em, they were still in rigor (that's a good thing). If you've never had black sea bass, you don't know what you're missing. David Pasternack serves it as part of a crudo platter at Eataly, and that's all you need to know. We decided to cook them, simply stuffing the cavity with fresh herbs and lemon slices, tying a bay leaf around the outside and tossing it right onto the grill - no special equipment needed if your grill is properly prepared, hot enough and you know what you're doing...

10 minutes to a side and we ended with some mighty tasty fish...there was even a slight fight over the facial parts and collar - as there should be...

Of course, man does not live by fish alone, and I had headed over to my butcher at the Essex Street Market to pick up some lamb. He had a few beautiful racks of lamb with my name on them, so I took home two and marinated them in olive oil, garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper. Nice and simple and simply delicious after a short stint on the Weber with some apple tree trimmings thrown on for good measure...

So you see, there's nothing to stop you from grilling after Labor Day. Or barbecuing. Well, as long as you've got some friends with a backyard and a Weber, that is. We're lucky - we do. Now, if only the 49ers would stop sucking...