Marinated Chicken with Leeks

Here I am again, watching the rain fall, which has made food shopping challenging. I think I mentioned before the fresh-premade meat and fish dishes that Field’s offers (and, I’m told, makes fresh every day). I’ve tried a couple now, and they’re uniformly tasty and well-prepared.

And then I had a brainstorm. The meals as sold need only to be baked to be ready to eat, and are already nicely marinated (not too salty, not too overwhelmingly spiced), which makes them a perfect candidate for a slightly more elaborate dish—half your work is already done.

This is especially important when you're working with a tiny kitchen like my Irish one!

My Slide and Hide oven

 I happened to have watched recently a show in which Mary Berry was gallivanting around from place to place sampling restaurant dishes. One involved prawns and oyster mushrooms and leeks in a light sauce. Well, I had no prawns and haven’t even sighted oyster mushrooms in a market, but I could find leeks, so I decided to improvise my sautéeing the boned chicken breasts and giving them a nice bed of lightly cooked sliced leeks. You could use heavy cream as a sauce (as Mary did), or a lightly thickened chicken stock, or nothing at all. You could serve the dish with orzo, which I often think of as fake rice, but a bit easier to cook.

[As a slightly relevant aside, my neighbor who lives behind me was born in Ireland but spent most of her adult life in England before moving back. She mentioned that on one occasion when she was house-hunting for her family, she toured what was then Mary Berry’s house (although she didn’t buy it). It had two complete kitchens.]

Now, what do I call this? I’ll take the easy out: Marinated Chicken and Leeks.

Chicken and Leeks:

(serves two)

Ingredients:

2 chicken breasts, boneless

3 large leeks

Bread crumbs (white or brown)

Instructions:

Marinate the chicken breasts, covered, in the marinade of your choice, for a couple of hours (or buy them pre-marinated).

Butter the inside of a round or oval roasting pan. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

Slice the leeks thinly. If they seem to be a bit gritty, rinse them in cold water after slicing, then let drain and pat dry.

Melt some oil and butter in a saucepan and saute the leeks gently until they are soft but not browned. Spread them in the bottom of the prepared baking dish.

Here’s where you have to decide if you want a sauce with your dish, clear or creamy, or just skip that step.

In the same pan, melt some more butter with oil at medium heat, and sprinkle the breasts with salt and pepper and saute them, turning once, until they are lightly browned (you don’t need to cook them through).

Lay them over the layer of leeks. Sprinkle to top of the dish with breadcrumbs.

Place the dish in the preheated oven and cook for half an hour, or until the bread crumbs are lightly browned.

And there you have it—a quick and simple meal (if you’re lucky enough to have a Field’s nearby!)

Coming in January 2020

Did I mention I found a ring fort right down the hill from my cottage? 

IRISH WHITE ONION SOUP

From not one but two recipes in Clare Conner’s Irish Cooking

Sometimes you feel like putting together a meal that is quick to make, doesn’t take a lot of obscure ingredients that you don’t have, and just plain tastes good. I found a couple of recipes in the cookbook Irish Cooking, but neither one was quite right—so what the heck, I went ahead and combined them.

One was Leek and Potato Soup, the other was White Onion Soup, and not surprisingly the recipes overlap. (Funny--when I see "onion soup" I always think of the French version, which is translucent. This one isn't--it's thicker and creamy.) I also fancied up the result by adding coarsely chopped ham, for a bit of color and more flavor. I will admit the idea was inspired by some leeks that I picked up at the market last week: they were the size of baseball bats (well, almost).

Ingredients:

Yes, that big thing in the front left is
six inches of a single leek--they were big!

2 oz salted butter

1 lb white onions, thinly sliced

1 leek (white part only), thinly sliced

(all right I confess: I used half onions and half leeks)

1 oz. plain flour

1/2 pound of potatoes, peeled

6 cups chicken stock

Salt and white pepper

1/2 cup heavy cream

Oil for frying

1/2 pound cooked ham steak, cut into cubes

A few chives for garnish if you have any

Instructions:

Slice your vegetables. Melt the butter in a large saucepan, then add the onions and leeks and cook slowly over low heat (do not let them brown) for about 30 minutes.

Sprinkle the flour over the leek-onion mixture and blend thoroughly. Gradually add the chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and let simmer for about 15 minutes (until the liquid thickens some).

Saute the ham pieces in oil in a small skillet.

Taste the soup and add salt and pepper if you want. Puree the liquid (you can use a food processor, but I happened to have an immersion blender that I bought at a yard sale, and it worked well).

Return to the heat. When the soup is hot, spoon or pour into individual bowls, then sprinkle with the ham bits and chives.

(BTW, this can also be served cold in summer. You might want to thin it with more stock in that case.)

Coming in July! Killer in the Carriage House.

Plus there will be a new Museum Mystery next month, once my patient editor and I decide on a name. So far I'm torn between Bring Out Your Dead, What Lies Beneath, and The Lost Letter. And would you have a problem with more than one skeleton on the cover?

www.sheilaconnolly.com

Pork Chops with Leeks

This recipe seems to have been lurking in my recipe file for a decade now, but I don’t recall if I ever made it. But it pays to be prepared! The original recipe apparently came from Bon Appetit, but after reading it over I made one major change. Originally it included chopped bacon. Much as I love bacon, I thought that in this dish the flavor would overwhelm all the others, including the more delicate herbs. So I simply skipped the bacon. The result was fine without it.

Ingredients:
(Note also that the original recipe called for four pork chops. I cut that to two, but kept the amounts for the sauce the same.)

Yes, Oliver the cat is helping

2 thick bone-in pork chops 
2 tsp kosher salt 
2 tsp chopped fresh thyme 
(And another note: it’s still winter in Massachusetts, and I didn’t have a lot of fresh herbs on hand. The recipe was fine made with dried herbs, but fresh herbs would be lovely too.)
1 tsp finely chopped fresh rosemary 
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper 
4 cups thinly sliced leeks (white and pale green parts only) 
3 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1/4 cup Irish whiskey 
1 cup low-salt chicken broth 
2 tsp finely chopped fresh sage
2 Tblsp Dijon mustard 
1/3 cup créme fraîche or sour cream 


Instructions:

Pat chops dry with paper towels. Mix 2 teaspoons coarse salt, thyme, rosemary, and 1 teaspoon pepper in small bowl. Sprinkle seasoning mixture on both sides of chops. Let stand at room temperature 1 to 2 hours or wrap and chill up to 1 day. 

Heat a heavy large skillet over medium heat. Melt a combination of butter and olive oil in the pan, then add the chops to skillet. Sear them until brown, 4 to 5 minutes per side. Transfer the chops to small baking sheet and keep warm.

Pour off all but 3 tablespoons of the pan drippings from the skillet (or add olive oil to make 3 tablespoons). Add the leeks and sauté until soft, about 7 minutes. Add garlic and stir 1 minute. Add whiskey, then the broth, and bring to boil, scraping up browned bits. Add the sage and stir to blend.

Nestle the chops in the leeks in the skillet. Reduce heat to medium-low, then cover and simmer 3 minutes. Turn the chops over. Cover; simmer until they are cooked through and springy to the touch (the original recipe said a meat thermometer inserted into thickest part of chops should register 140 to 145 degrees F, but I checked and they were well cooked about ten degrees lower in temperature). Transfer the chops to a platter. Cover loosely with foil to keep them warm while you prepare the sauce. 

Spoon off any fat from cooking liquid in the skillet (yes, you're still using the original pan). Boil until all liquid evaporates, about 3 minutes. Whisk in mustard, then crème fraîche (do not boil). Season with salt and pepper. To serve, spoon the sauce over the chops. 

Serve with whatever starch you like.

Coming in July! The second book in the Victorian Village series.

After fifteen years away, Kate Hamilton never expected to end up back in her hometown of Asheboro, Maryland full time. And she definitely didn’t expect to be leading the charge of recreating the town as a Victorian village and tourist attraction. But as unexpected as the circumstances are, Kate is ready to tackle them.

The town, on the other hand, is going to take some convincing. Ever since Henry Barton’s shovel factory closed down, it’s started to seem like there are more tumbleweeds than tourists rolling down Main Street. Kate’s ideas are good, but ambitious―and her friends and neighbors are worried that finding the money for them would push the town even further into debt.

Luckily, Kate and the handsome historian Joshua Wainwright are two very determined people who may have come up with a solution. The Barton mansion, meant to be the centerpiece of the Victorian village, has proven to be a veritable goldmine of documents about the town’s nineteenth-century history, and Kate is convinced the papers hide something of value. When a dead body turns up in the town library―mere hours before the documents were meant to arrive there themselves―Kate begins to worry that the papers spell danger instead of dollars. It seems that someone doesn’t want these forgotten secrets coming to light, and they’ll do whatever it takes to keep Kate quiet…

www.sheilaconnolly.com

Leeks and Goat Cheese Tart a la Alice Waters

My daughter gave me a copy of renowned chef Alice Waters’ autobiography for Christmas, and I just got around to reading it. 

We lived in the Bay Area for several years (and my daughter was born there, in Alta Bates Hospital), and I worked on the Berkeley campus or in the town for a part of that time. Parking was always hard to find, so often I ended up parking off campus and walking to work—a path that took me right by Chez Panisse (Water’s iconic restaurant) on Shattuck Avenue. You may be incredulous when I tell you that I read the posted menus each time I passed—and back then a three-course prix fixe dinner cost $15!

Even that was a bit steep on a starving student budget, but my husband and I managed it a couple of times, and even took our daughter there on her first birthday (we shared the pasta primavera with her).

The book held some interesting surprises. The first was that Alice and I grew up in spitting distance of each other in New Jersey, in adjacent towns. And we used to shop in the same food stores in Berkeley. I still have a poster from the restaurant hanging in my house now.

And of course I have a copy of the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook from 1982 (which was about the time I was reading all those menus). The recipes make wonderful reading, although I’ve seldom had the nerve to try them. But I was looking for something different for this week’s post and I came upon a savory tart recipe that called out to me.

One note: Alice Waters was one of the first chefs to champion locally raised and impeccably fresh foods, and the results were eye-opening back then. The recipe here asked me to make my own puff pastry, but time and hot weather and fear of disaster pushed me to use the frozen kind (I apologize, Alice!). The filling, on the other hand, more or less follows the original recipe, although I cut back on the amount of leeks.

Leek and Goat Cheese Tart a la Alice Waters

1 pound leeks, with roots and green parts removed

8 Tblsp unsalted butter

salt and pepper
1/4 pound pancetta
1 egg
1/4 cup crème fraiche or 1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tsp Dijon mustard (mine had gone AWOL, so I used whole-grain mustard)
Pinch of curry powder
1/4 pound goat cheese
1/3 cup fresh bread crumbs

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degree F. 

Julienne the leeks (slice in thin strips lengthwise) and rinse them, in case there’s any grit. Drain them well.

Cook them in 6 Tblsp butter over low heat. After 10-15 minutes, season with salt and pepper, then cover and continue to cook (“sweat!”) for another 10 minutes. 

Slice (or dice) the pancetta into small pieces. Place it in a pan over low heat and render the fat (about 10-15 minutes). Pour off any fat and water in the pan.

Beat the egg lightly in a large bowl. Stir in the crème fraiche or heavy cream, the mustard, and the curry powder. Crumble in half of the cheese. When the leeks and the pancetta are cool, stir them into the mix.

Thaw the puff pastry and press it into a 9” pan (it doesn’t matter if the edges are raggedy). Place on a baking sheet. 

Fill the shell with the cool leek mixture. Crumble the remaining cheese over the top. Sprinkle with the fresh breadcrumbs. Melt the last 2 tablespoons of butter and pour it over the crumbs.

Place in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes. Turn the heat down to 350 degrees (open the oven door and let the temperature cool before putting the tart back in)  and continue to bake for another 30-40 minutes.

Serve immediately! (It was delicious!)

And on another note (if I may blow my own horn), Murder at the Mansion, the first of the Victorian Village Mysteries, released on June 26th, has already gone into its third printing! That's a first for me, and I'm so glad people are enjoying it.

for details see 
www.sheilaconnolly.com

Cooking Challenges -- Leek Tart

Still in Ireland with my husband and daughter, and we're all trying to figure out how to work in the kitchen.

It's small, although I think my first apartment had a smaller one. It has one cupboard (china and glassware) and one set of shelves for supplies. That's it. It has a new fridge now, with limited capacity, which means we go grocery shopping about every day. It also houses the new washer, which I'm still trying to figure out. (And, hoorah, there is a new dryer, in the pantry.) The new stove and its separate hob (stovetop) sit in the shed, waiting patiently for installation, but it would have been chaotic to try to rebuilt the kitchen counters while we were in residence.

But still we eat! Usually we go out for lunch (since driving at night on narrow country lanes can be a bit challenging) and try to cook dinner (or supper, locally) in. I am sharing with you one of my most recent efforts, which was a mixed success. But it tasted good.

It all began at the farmers' market, where a local farmer had a lot of leeks, picked only hours earlier, still covered with dirt. But they were tiny and lovely, so I bought a bunch, and started thinking of what to do with them. I landed on the idea of a leek tart.

Small problem: I had no tart pan. Quickly remedied. Next problem: I am crust challenged, and if that weren't enough, I have no large surfaces upon which to roll one out, and I don't have a rolling pin. Ah well, I do have an empty wine bottle or two (French, of course) so I improvised. (Oh, and I had to find beans to weight down the crust while it pre-baked, but I couldn't find dry beans so I used dry peas instead.)

Wonder of wonders, I found a package of pre-made fresh pie crust at our lovely local supermarket, so I was ready to go.

So here are the vague instructions for Irish Leek Tart.

Line a tart pan with pastry. Line the crust with foil and fill it with pie weights of your choice. Bake in an oven preheated to 350 degrees F (about 175 degrees C) for twenty minutes, or until the edges of the crust begin to brown. Remove from the oven and remove the pie weights.

Clean the leeks and cut off the roots and most of the green tops (watch for grit!). Parboil for a few minutes to soften.

Lay the half-cooked leeks in the pie crust. Sprinkle with cheese (yes, I'm still working my way through a pound of good Cork gubbeen).

Make two cups of basic white sauce (3 Tblsp flour, 3 Tblsp butter, 2 cups whole milk/cream, plus a bit of salt and pepper). When it is ready, ladle it over the leeks in the crust (do not swamp them!), return to the oven and bake for another 20 minutes or so.

Wish I could show you a lovely picture of a pristine slice of tart, but it was a bit goopy. The whole might work better as a quiche, in hindsight. But the three of us consumed the whole thing!

Oh, right--there's that new book coming out in January: Many a Twist, the next book in the County Cork Mysteries. I'll save the rest of the details for later, when I get over jet lag.

Salmon with Leeks and Phyllo Pastry

I’m finally purging my freezer of the ancient phyllo pastry, left by my daughter during her spanakopita phase several years ago. Note: old phyllo dough, even frozen, crumbles into tiny pieces if you breathe on it, so it’s not worth saving for long. I decided to start with fresh.

The recipe was born on one of those evenings when I was staring into space thinking “what’s in the fridge?” and “what do I feel like eating?” There was salmon—at staple in our household—and there was phyllo pastry. And leeks! I went hunting for a recipe that fit and found a variety online, but none was just right, so I sort of combined a couple.

The hardest part of this recipe is making a tidy packet when you try to wrap the salmon with the phyllo dough. Don’t beat yourself up if it looks messy—it’ll taste good anyway.

Salmon with Leeks and Phyllo Pastry

Ingredients:
(as usual, this is a recipe for four, but I cut it in half)

8 Tblsp (1 stick) butter

2 cups small strips leeks (white and pale green parts only, washed to remove any grit)

1/2 cup dry white wine

1 tsp fresh dill, chopped (you can use dried, but it has less flavor)

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup sour cream

12 sheets fresh phyllo pastry, or the same amount of frozen pastry, thawed

6 5-oz. skinless salmon steaks [Note: you can make this recipe with fillets, but they’re hard to wrap neatly. Using cross-cut steaks of the same weight makes them neater.]


Instructions:


Melt two Tblsp butter in a large heavy skillet over medium-high heat.

Add the leek and sautée until the leek is tender (about 5 minutes)

Add the wine to the skillet and simmer until the liquid evaporates (about 4 minutes).

Remove the skillet from the heat and let the vegetable mixture cool. Stir in the dill, sour cream and salt.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Melt the rest of the butter in a small saucepan. Take one sheet of the phyllo pastry and lay it flat (keep the other sheets covered with a damp paper towel—otherwise they will get brittle). Brush the sheet with some of the melted butter. Top with a second pastry sheet and brush that one with butter.

Place a salmon piece crosswise on the pastry sheet and top it with 1/4 cup of the vegetable mixture. Fold the phyllo pastry over the salmon, then fold in the sides and tuck the whole thing into a rectangular packet.

Transfer each packet to a heavy baking sheet, keeping the vegetable side up. Brush the packet on all sides with more melted butter. 

Repeat until you’ve used up the salmon fillets. (If you’re not baking them right away, cover with plastic film and refrigerate.)

Bake the salmon packets until the pastry is pale golden and the salmon is cooked through, about 25-30 minutes (depending on thickness).

So it's crunchy, tangy, and fun! And you get to wrap up your fish like a gift.

Oh, right, books. Next in line: A Late Frost (Orchard Mystery #11), coming in November.

The New York Times bestselling author of Seeds of Deception returns with a story of orchard owner Meg and the search for a poisoner.

The usually quiet town of Granford, Massachusetts, is even drowsier during the colder months. But this year it’s in for a jolt when Monica Whitman moves into town. She’s a dynamo who wants to make friends fast in her new home, and she throws herself into community activities. Meg Corey, now Chapin after her marriage to Seth Chapin, is intrigued by the new arrival, who has already sold the town board on a new, fun way to bring in visitors during the off-season: WinterFare, which will feature local foods (such as Meg’s apples) and crafts, as well as entertainment. 

Tragically, Monica falls ill and dies after the event in what looks like a case of food poisoning. When all the food served at WinterFare has been tested, including Meg’s apples, it becomes clear that there’s a more sinister explanation to the older woman’s sudden demise. 

Meg’s investigation uncovers a bushel of potential suspects, one of whom is rotten to the core.

www.sheilaconnolly.com