Cure for the Summer Cold What’s cooking? Mustard-Ginger Chicken

Kitchen Goddess alert: This is the KG’s 300th post. You know what that means, don’t you? It means the Goddess is officially nuts. But we’re all crazy in some way. This blog is mine. Or at least one of them. This post is about another.

It seems almost inevitable. You handle 104 different decks of cards over four days in a row – 208 hands of 13 cards each. A total of 2,704 cards that have been handled by 104 other players. And it’s not like you can wash your hands after every round.

I’ve just returned from Washington, DC, where my hubby and I competed in the American Contract Bridge League’s Summer National Bridge Tournament. It’s a game dear to both of our hearts, but it has its share of health issues.

For starters, playing 8 hours of bridge a day is mentally exhausting, so it’s important to get enough sleep. I went into the tournament well rested, but didn’t remain that way long. Our hotel room faced East, and the blackout curtains worked really well... except for just that little bit at the top of the window, where the summer sun came in laser-like at a very early hour. The evening sessions at the tournament don’t end until about 11:15, so the very best you can do is to be in bed by 12:30 or 1a.m. As a result, there was hardly a night that I got more than 6-7 hours of rest.

Then you have the playing area, which for the first two days was a perfectly reasonable temperature. But the event for our last two days took place in what felt like a meat locker. So... hot outside, freezing cold inside, back outside to the heat, back inside to the North Pole – nothing more than the reverse of winter conditions, and a perfect recipe for immune system vulnerability. According to an article I read in the Wall Street Journal, extreme cold constricts the blood vessels in your nose and throat, which makes you more susceptible to viruses. Which takes me back to the germs.

That said, we still love the game, and the form of competition. So it won’t stop us from heading off to another tournament. Next time, maybe I’ll take a sweatshirt and wear gloves.

So here I am, with a summer cold. And as we all know, one of the best foods when you’re suffering from a cold – winter or summer – is chicken soup.

How do I love thee, chicken soup? Let me count the ways.

1. First, soups work well because nutrients are easier to absorb in liquid form, and even a small amount of oil promotes absorption of vitamins A, D, K, and E.
2. Hot liquids get all that nasty nasal mucus out of the body faster, thus easing congestion.
3. Organosulfides (found in garlic and onions) stimulate production of certain immune cells.
4. Carrots – big chicken soup veggies – help with antibody production.
5. Researchers at the University of Nebraska have found that the combination of vegetables and poultry in soup can help you feel better by alleviating respiratory tract inflammation.

So I had a chicken, and was preparing to roast it using just salt and pepper and a little olive oil, when I remembered a Silver Palate recipe that was one of my old reliables in the days when my kids were teens. The Silver Palate ladies called it “Bobbie’s Chicken,” after their friend who developed it; but I don’t know Bobbie, so I’m just calling it Mustard-Ginger Chicken. It’s ridiculously easy to make – though a bit more cooking time than a plain roast chicken – but the result is very long on flavor, and incredibly moist. In fact, the dish is almost more of a stew than roast chicken, so you’ll definitely want to serve it over noodles or rice; whatever you call it, it’s delicious and one of the most popular among Silver Palate fans.

If you want to summer it up, serve it with a nice, big salad of summer greens. That’s what I did, and the next day, I made soup from the leftovers.

Kitchen Goddess note: The ginger/mustard combination here is unusual but quite nice – you have to trust the recipe and its legions of fans. One of the best features of this recipe is its flexibility: you can use a larger or smaller chicken and simply adjust the spices and amount of time in the oven for each stage. Also, the original recipe calls for 6 onions. Well, folks, the KG doesn’t always have exactly 6 onions, and what size would that be in any case? The recipe didn’t say. So the Kitchen Goddess has used – at various times – 4 large onions, or 5 medium ones, or 2 large and 2-3 small onions. Pretty much whatever’s in the pantry, and that’s hardly ever 6 onions of the same size. And if they’re large onions, you may want to cut them into eighths. Use your judgment and don’t fret.

Mustard-Ginger Chicken (a.k.a. “Bobbie’s Chicken”)

Adapted from The New Basics Cookbook (Workman, 1989), by Julee Rosso & Sheila Lukins

Serves 4.

Ingredients
1 young chicken (also called broilers or fryers or roasters), 4-4 ½ pounds, with giblets
1 lemon, halved
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons ground ginger
2 tablespoons dry mustard
4-6 onions, quartered (see Note, above)
bouillon cubes for 2 cups of broth (KG prefers Knorr, but use what you like)

Procedure
Rinse and dry the chicken. [Kitchen Goddess note: The great chef Thomas Keller, of French Laundry fame, recommends doing this part ahead of time and letting the chicken sit uncovered in the fridge for at least an hour or up to overnight. That dries out the skin which makes it crispier in the cooking. Just a suggestion.]

About two hours before you are ready to serve, preheat the oven to 425º.

Squeeze the lemon over the chicken and rub the juice inside and out. Place the chicken into a baking pan that allows room for 3-4 of the onions. Salt and pepper the bird (all sides) to your liking. Mix the mustard and ginger together and rub it all over the chicken. Scatter 3-4 of the onion pieces around the pan.

Put the pan into the oven and bake the chicken 30 minutes, undisturbed.

While the chicken cooks, rinse the giblets and put them – minus the liver, which adds an overly strong flavor – into a small saucepan with the remaining onion, 2 cups of water, and the bouillon cubes. Bring to a low boil and simmer 30 minutes. Reserve.

After the chicken has been 30 minutes in the oven, turn down the heat to 375º, and add ¾ cup water to the pan. Return the chicken to the oven and cook another 30 minutes, basting once or twice.

When the second 30 minutes is up, strain the stock (discarding the solids) and remove the chicken from the oven. Pour ¾ cup of stock over and around the chicken, and bake another 30 minutes, basting occasionally.

Remove the pan from the oven (leaving the oven on) and remove the chicken to a cutting board. (You may want to place the cutting board into a sheet pan, to keep from spilling any of that yummy chicken juice.) Cut the chicken into fourths, and return it to the baking pan. [A final KG note: This part is easier than it sounds, because the chicken will be so tender the bones can be cut through with almost no effort, and the KG says that as a person who really doesn’t like cutting up poultry. For presentation purposes, the KG recommends removing the backbone and discarding it or saving it for stock.]

Pour the remaining stock over the chicken and onions, and cover or tent the pan with foil. Put it back into the oven for 15 minutes. Serve over noodles or rice, and all else you’ll need is a simple green salad.

On the Road Again What’s cooking? Cumin Chicken with Squash, Fennel, and Grapes

Fall launches our great annual North-to-South migration. Friends who’ve escaped the Texas summer to Nantucket, the Jersey shore, Wisconsin lakes, or Colorado bounce back to our neighborhood in Austin, even though afternoon temperatures there still climb into the 90s.

Until this trip, it’s always been a 2-day drive for us. But I seem incapable of... let’s just say getting my shit together. HE – that would be my hubby – has what appears to be nothing to do but pack two small bags and get in the car. I, on the other hand, have three suitcases, two hanging bags, several bags of recipes and magazines I haven’t quite gotten through, my laptop, a box of spices/sauces I’ve collected over the summer, and – you guessed it – a cooler full of food. Apples and sugar snap peas and other snacky items for the road, along with the stuff I couldn’t stand to leave at the farmers’ market and figure we’ll eat in Texas (turnips, turnip greens, acorn squash, a small bunch of sorrel, and a big bunch of carrots).

In addition to the packing, I stayed up too late chopping up 5 pounds of beefsteak tomatoes and mixing a double batch of arugula pesto; the tomatoes and pesto went into the freezer for our Christmas visit. Both of those are great ways to preserve the fall goodies for winter. But all that activity means staying up too late, so I’m groggy and grumpy before we even get into the car. Not a nice way to start a 27-hour drive with your mate. One day I’ll get saner – just not this year.

Kitchen Goddess note: If you, too, are mourning the last of the field-ripened tomatoes, there’s a way to hang onto them without going through the whole canning thing. Wash them, chop them into cubes ½-¾-inch size, and load them into zip-lock freezer bags. Squeeze out the extra air and lay the bags flat until they freeze, after which you can stack them every which way. Great for use in sauces in the middle of winter.

We’re listening to WNYC as we drive this morning. Through the miracles of streaming radio technology, a bluetooth conversation between my phone and my car, and the magic of radio in the first place, we’re getting Brian Lehrer as he talks with the journalist and photographer Brandon Stanton. Stanton recently spent time in Eastern Europe interviewing refugees fleeing Syria, asking them about why they left. The stories of violence and trauma paint a wrenching picture of people forced by circumstances over which they have no control to abandon their homes and friends and families. They packed a single set of clothes and left everything else they had to look for a life that would be safer. Listening to the voices, I feel spoiled and frivolous in my “need” to cart a car-full of stuff back and forth, and suddenly grateful even to have a place I can call home.

One of the blessings of an upcoming departure is that I focus on menus that take very little work. This year, I discovered a marvelous recipe for chicken and vegetables that can be cooked all at once and on two large sheet pans. (If you cut the recipe in half, it’ll only take one sheet pan!) Yes, you’ll dirty a large bowl with the veggies, and a small bowl with the spice mixture, and certainly a cutting board; but that’s not bad for a full dinner. So even the clean-up is brief. My younger son showed up for the meal, and both he and Grumpy pronounced it a success.

Aleppo Pepper

The Kitchen Goddess loved the sweet-hot spice mixture here – especially with the smokiness of the Aleppo pepper, which gave the dish a vaguely North African flavor. After all, Aleppo pepper is grown mostly in Syria and Turkey. The mint adds to that sensation. Simple but exotic.

Cumin Chicken with Squash, Fennel, and Grapes

Adapted from Epicurious, August 2015

Serves 4.

2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons kosher salt
2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
2 teaspoons Aleppo pepper (or ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper)
2 acorn squash (about 1¼-1½ pounds), halved, seeded, and sliced into ½-inch half-moons
2 medium fennel bulbs (about ¾ pound), cut in half lengthwise, sliced into ½-inch wedges with core intact
1 pound seedless red grapes (about 2 cups)
2 tablespoons olive oil
8 skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs (about 4 pounds)
½ cup fresh mint leaves, ribboned or torn

Special equipment: Two half-sheet rimmed baking pans (18" x 13")

Preheat oven to 425º. Position one oven rack in the upper third of the oven and another in the lower third.

In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar, cumin, salt, black pepper, and Aleppo pepper. Mix well.

In a large mixing bowl, use your hands to toss the squash, fennel, and grapes with the oil and half the spice mixture. Turn the mixture out onto the sheet pans, and spread it in a single layer, evenly divided between the two pans.

Place the chicken pieces in the same bowl and sprinkle the rest of the spice mixture on them, rubbing it into the skin. Arrange the chicken skin-side up on top of the veggies, and roast 30-35 minutes, until the skin is browned. Rotate the two pans halfway through the roasting time. (If you prefer less guesswork, use an instant-read thermometer to make sure the internal temperature on the chicken registers 165º.)

Serve immediately, garnished with torn or ribboned mint.