I’m up early, and behind on finishing this today. But there’s six inches of fresh snow here in Ohio, and that calm silence that comes with it means … well, I could say it’s contemplative, but really it just means I can’t hear the railroad tracks or the traffic on the big street a couple blocks over.
Also, it’s still winter. According to various highway berm-dwelling rodents around the country, it’s either going to continue being winter for another five weeks, or this thing where it’s cold even in Florida, and it’s really cold everywhere else, is just a figment of our imagination.
It’s a pretty good case for not using a kind of fun, but otherwise pretty weird, giant, tailless squirrel for predicting anything other than the likelihood of giant, tailless, squirrel-sized holes in the ground.
The point here? The one I’m not getting to? This week’s Weekly Menu is another winter menu. There really is some great winter produce available, and we are relying on the root cellar and techniques like braising – but the flavors we’re going to coax out of them are a little different than the rich tomato and dark stock-drenched benchmarks for those foods and flavors.
Today’s menu even features kale and sweet potatoes, for you trendy, health-conscious people. They’re not in the same dish, and they’re cooked, respectively if not respectfully, with butter and salad dressing. But they’re still there.
Kale Salad with cranberries, apples, and walnuts
I know, I’ve ranted against the proliferation of kale salads on the menu of certain kinds of restaurants before. So I’ll do my best to suppress that particular literary tic today. The fact is, there’s a time and a place for it. The time is the dark of winter, in the middle of a pandemic, when the garden looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland and you’re not about to scoot out to the store for fresh greens a couple of times a week. Then, it makes a fine, hearty salad. This recipe leans on some almost old-fashioned flavors – apples, walnuts, dried fruit – but uses goat cheese in the dressing to change up the flavor a little. The crunch of the nuts and the apples is a great contrast to the stolid, chewiness of the kale. Be sure to wash the kale well, and chop it finely – bigger pieces can make the dish a chore to masticate.
Ok, yeah. I just wanted to use the word masticate. But you should still chop the kale finely.
2 cups finely chopped curly kale
1 granny smith apple, peeled, cored, and finely diced
¼ cup dried cranberries
¼ cup candied walnuts
1 clove garlic
3 tbsp mayonnaise
2 tbsp plain goat cheese
1 tbsp lemon juice
½ tsp dried dill
½ tsp kosher salt
½ tsp fresh ground black pepper
Peel, trim, and microplane or crush the garlic.
Add the garlic, salt, and lemon juice to a non-reactive bowl and allow to sit for five minutes.
Add the mayonnaise, goat cheese, dill, and black pepper and whisk to combine into a smooth dressing.
Taste for seasoning and add salt and or lemon juice as needed.
Add the kale, apples, walnuts, and cranberries and toss well.
Serve immediately.
Provençal Garlic Soup (Soupe à l’ail)
This soup is basically nothing more than garlic, wine, and chicken stock, which both sounds like a joke about French cooking that someone named Nigel St. John Wallowthorp-Gathers III might make at his club if he existed, but also something that might be … well, not that good. The thing is, this soup is great. Slowly simmering the garlic cloves in wine and chicken stock changes their nature entirely, slowly replacing the harsh raw taste with a rich sweetness.
This recipe uses a liaison – egg yolks tempered with hot liquid and then whisked back into the main body of the soup. If you haven’t used it before, it can be a little intimidating - une liaison dangereuse if you will – but the result is an incredibly silky soup that’s just made for mopping up with good crusty bread. Nigel St. John Wallowthorp-Gathers III would approve. If he was real.
4 cups rich chicken stock
20 cloves peeled garlic, whole
1/2 cup white wine
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 sprig thyme
2 egg yolks
1 tsp salt
salt and pepper to taste
Using a small paring knife, trim just the root end off of each garlic clove.
In a soup pot, bring the stock to a low simmer, add wine, salt and the sprig of thyme, then add the garlic. Bring to a boil and reduce to a low simmer.
Cook covered at a very low temp for 1-2 hours, adding water if necessary.
Remove the thyme and discard.
Transfer the contents of the pot to the container of a blender and process until very smooth. Return to the pan and return to a very low simmer.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks until smooth.
While whisking vigorously, carefully ladle small portions (1/4 cup at a time) of the soup into the bowl.
If the egg appears to scramble, you’ll need to start again with fresh yolks.
Once you’ve created a smooth even liquid, reverse the process, whisking the egg and stock mixture back into the soup pot.
Return to a low simmer and cook for 5-10 minutes.
Off the heat, and just before serving, whisk in 1 tbsp of cold or room temperature butter.
Taste for salt and pepper and serve sprinkled with fresh herbs and fried garlic chips.
Dutch Oven Braised Chicken
This easy dish is perfect for this week’s menu for two very important reasons. I had a whole chicken, and we got a brand new 7 quart Dutch oven this week. I could tell you a long and convoluted story about culinary traditions, and using simple ingredients and techniques and how I was eager to share said culinary traditions and techniques, but the truth is that chicken in the fridge plus a new Dutch oven equals … a really delicious Dutch oven chicken.
Unlike other poultry dishes I’ve featured in this newsletter, the goal here is not to create a perfectly bronzed crispy skin. Instead, we’ll use a long moist cook to infuse the meat of the chicken with the aromatics. It comes out of the oven almost looking like it’s made of marble. The bay leaves, thyme, and white wine delicately scent the flesh of the bird, while the leeks both flavor the dish overall, and melt into luscious morsels of flavor themselves.
The preparation is incredibly simple – really we’re just throwing it all in a pot and cooking it – but you will need a Dutch oven or another heavy pot with a tight fitting lid to create the moist cooking environment needed to yield tender meat.
1 small whole chicken
4 medium leeks
2 fresh bay leaves
6-8 sprigs thyme
1 cup dry white wine
½ stick unsalted butter
Kosher salt
Season the inside and outside of the chicken with salt.
Allow to rest, uncovered, in the refrigerator for 1-2 hours.
Preheat your oven to 350°F
Place a ½ stick of unsalted butter and 2 sprigs of thyme in the cavity of the bird.
Place the chicken in a Dutch oven with a tightly fitted lid.
Pour the wine into the bottom of the pan.
Arrange the leek around the chicken.
Scatter the remaining thyme around the chicken and leeks.
Cover the Dutch oven.
Cook at 350°F for 1 hour to 90 minutes (depending on the size of the chicken) or until a thermometer inserted into the thickest parts of the meat reads 170°F.
Allow chicken to rest, covered, 20 minutes before serving.
Optionally, you can slightly thicken the pot liquid to use as a sauce by whisking in a slurry of 1 tbsp AP flour mixed with 3 tbsp cold water.
Serve with the braised leeks.
Roasted Root Vegetables
I’ve been making some variant of these roasted root vegetables for two decades. They’re simple, they’re delicious, and other than a fair amount of time peeling and chopping, they’re fairly easy to prepare and cook.
Note: Cutting the vegetables into regularly sized pieces ensures that they’ll cook evenly. That doesn’t mean they need to be cut into perfect cubes. Sometimes the weirdly shaped pieces get that crispy chewy edge that makes the whole thing worth it.
1 large carrot
2 large parsnips
1 large turnip
1 large sweet potato
1 large russet potato
3 tbsp melted butter
1 tbsp dark brown sugar
1 tsp kosher salt
½ tsp smoked paprika
½ tsp dried thyme
Preheat your oven to 350°F.
Peel, trim, and dice the carrot. I’m not gonna type this for every vegetable.
Peel, trim and dice the turnip, the parsnips, the sweet potato, and the potato. See? I didn’t.
Mix the brown sugar, salt, paprika, and thyme and toss with the vegetables to coat evenly.
Pour the melted butter over the vegetables and toss to coat with the butter.
Spread evenly on a sheet pan.
Roast, stirring occasionally, until browned and soft, about 45 minutes.
Optionally, you can raise the heat to 400°F for a few minutes at the end of cooking to further brown and crisp the vegetables.
Tarte Normande
This isn’t your usual apple pie. It’s still an apple pie, but it’s both fussier than a normal apple pie and less fussy than a normal apple pie. To be completely honest, I love it because I’m not a great baker. I’m not patient enough to spend my time carefully layering and arranging apple slices so that they melt into each other, cook evenly, and look pretty. So, I don’t. If you’re that kind of baker, I commend you. I throw handfuls of apples haphazardly into a crust and cover it with delicious custard. Fast and furious and fancy and … I’ve run out of F words that are pie appropriate. Come to think of it, furious isn’t particularly appropriate. Furious and custard don’t really go together, though Furious Custard would have been a great band name.
Tart Shell
2 cups AP flour
8 tbsp cold, unsalted butter
2 oz rum or brandy
1-2 tbsp cold water
Pinch of salt
Filling
4 medium granny smith apples
½ cup granulated sugar
2 egg yolks
½ cup heavy cream
½ tsp freshly grated cinnamon
Prepare the dough.
Cut the butter into small cubes.
Add flour and butter, along with a pinch of salt to the container of a food processor.
Pulse until the mixture resembles fine cornmeal.
Add the rum or brandy.
Pulse again.
Check the dough consistency – if the dough can be formed into a pliable ball, stop. If not, add water, pulsing regularly until a pliable dough is formed.
Form the dough into a disk.
Allow the dough to rest, wrapped in plastic, for at least 20 minutes.
Roll out and use to line a tart pan or the base and 1 inch sides of a springform pan.
Preheat your oven to 375°F.
Gently whisk together the egg yolks and sugar, stopping as soon as the color lightens.
Add the cream, and grated cinnamon.
Peel, core, and slice the apples.
Layer the apples in the tart shell, and pour the egg and cream mixture over the apples.
Bake at 375°F until the crust is lightly browned and the custard mixture is fully set.
Allow to cool completely before serving.