Mushrooms Provençal for #RandomRecipeChallenge

This month for the Random Recipe Challenge we are celebrating a big anniversary: number 30. Not 30 years, but still, 30 months is a great accomplishment in the world of blogging.  I wish I could say that I’ve been participating that long but I can say that I have enjoyed every challenge I have accepted.  Rather than choosing a theme, for this anniversary month dashing Dom from +belleau kitchen has set 30 as the target.  Count forward on the bookcase to your 30th cookbook.  Either open to the 30th page (which I did first but there wasn’t a recipe at all) or open randomly (which I did second) and make the first recipe you see.

My 30th book was Richard Olney’s Simple French Food, a classic in food writing circles.  I adore Richard Olney and I adore this book but I have to admit, when I opened it to Mushrooms Provençal, I was a bit disappointed.  Sautéed mushrooms didn’t sound very exciting.  But, after making them as a side dish, we all decided that they were fabulous and worthy of being the star of the meal.  So instead of grilling a steak which they would accompany, I folded a few in a simple omelet and served extra on the side.  The perfect evening meal.  And I will never underestimate Mr. Olney again.

Ingredients
4-5 tablespoons olive oil
1 lb 10 oz or 750g Swiss brown or other mushrooms
Sea salt
3 large cloves garlic
1 handful parsley
1 handful crumbled half-dried bread (I chopped mine up with a large knife.)
Black pepper
1/2 lemon
Glass of wine – optional but highly recommended – for the cook

Method
Rinse your mushrooms briefly to get rid of any dirt that might be clinging to them and drain them well in a colander.  Cut the tough stem ends off.  Small mushrooms can be left whole but larger ones should be cut in halves or quarters.

Puree the garlic in a mortar with a pestle and chop your parsley finely.

Heat your oil in a large frying pan and add the mushrooms and a good sprinkling of sea salt.  Sauté over a medium high heat, stirring or tossing every few minutes, until the mushrooms take on a golden color.

Choose a bigger pan.  This was hard to stir and toss until the mushrooms had reduced in size.

Add in the garlic and parsley.  Stir well.

Give the whole pan a good couple of grinds of fresh black pepper and add in the breadcrumbs.

Taste for salt and add a little more if necessary.

Squeeze your lemon half over the mushrooms.  Stir or toss again.

Enjoy!

Or add them into an omelet.

Beat a couple of eggs with a dash of milk.  Have a sip of wine.

Add a knob of butter to a non-stick skillet.  Once it has melted, pour in the egg/milk mixture and add some Mushrooms Provençal.

Cook until the eggs are almost set.  Add a few slices of cheddar or other cheese, if desired.  Have a sip of wine.

Fold over.  Neatness doesn't count.  Have another sip of your wine.

Slide the omelet onto a plate, sprinkle with some black pepper and add more mushrooms.  Enjoy!

Roasted Broccoli with Quinoa and Bulgur Wheat

Last year I went to Paris to visit a friend and I bought a box of mixed quinoa and bulgur wheat.  Don’t you love the little line in French that says, The Rice of the Incas?

Lest you think the only souvenirs I buy are edible, I also came home with some little tart pans I found at the Marche´ aux Puces or flea market.  Only three Euros for all nine!

Yeah, yeah, I know.  Still food related.  What can I say?  The roasted broccoli with quinoa and bulgur is not the most beautiful dish, but it sure is tasty.  I haven’t been able to find the mix again but this is just as delicious with only quinoa or only bulgur.  Or mix your own.

Ingredients
About 12 oz or 340g broccoli florets
1 cup or 180g quinoa and bulgur
32 oz or 1 liter vegetable stock or water with stock cubes to make same
Juice 1/2 a lemon
Sea salt flakes (I like Maldon.)
Black pepper
Olive oil
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons butter

Method
Preheat oven to 400°F or 200°C.

Rinse your broccoli in a bowl and drain.

Sprinkle on the sea salt and black pepper and drizzle with olive oil.  Squeeze on the lemon juice and toss the broccoli florets to coat.

Put it in a single layer in a baking pan and roast broccoli for about 10-12 minutes.

When the broccoli is roasted, let it cool and chop into smaller pieces.  It should still be quite crunchy.

Meanwhile, finely slice your garlic and set it aside.

Cook the bulgur and quinoa mix according to package instructions (about 15-20 minutes or until almost all the stock has been absorbed.)

Add the sliced garlic to the bulgur/quinoa pot.  Stir.

Add the chopped broccoli to the pot, turn off the flame and cover the pot with a lid.

Leave covered for 15-20 minutes and then pop in two tablespoons butter.  Replace the lid to melt the butter.

Stir and fluff with a fork before serving.

Enjoy!

Crisp Brick-fried Chicken with Rosemary, Thyme and Garlic

Here’s a recipe I’ve been meaning to share for the longest time, (read from back when my photo taking skills were really pathetic - Sorry!) but other more pressing dishes got in the way.  Which is rather ironic since this recipe calls for a great deal of pressing, so to speak, down on the chicken, so there is hardly a more pressing recipe.  Yeah, okay.  You are probably not laughing like I am laughing but that’s all right.  As our friend Jamie Oliver says, “You’ll be laughing” when you eat this.  Because it is delicious!  It is also perfect for warmer months when you are craving roasted chicken but can't bear to turn the oven on.

Ingredients
1 chicken
Olive oil
3-4 long springs of fresh rosemary
1 small bunch of thyme
Sea salt
Black pepper
8-10 whole garlic cloves
1/4 cup or 60ml dry white wine

Method
Spatchcock or butterfly the chicken by removing the backbone.  That is to say, put your bird breast down on a cutting board and then, using a knife or poultry shears, cut up either side of the backbone and remove it.  (Throw it in the freezer bag of bones and castoff vegetable bits you are saving to, one day, turn into stock.  Okay, start one now.  Go ahead, we'll wait and you won't regret it.)

Turn the chicken over and press firmly down on the breast to flatten it out as much as possible.  Use two hands and put your weight into it.  I did.  But I couldn’t take a photo and press at the same time.

Pull your rosemary and thyme leaves off the thick stems (fine stems can be chopped up along with the leaves) and chop them up.

Next sprinkle the bird liberally with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper.  Press the chopped leaves all around on the chicken.

The inside

The skin side

If you have the time, let the chicken hang around with the seasonings for as long as you can before you have to cook it.  If it’s longer than an hour, go ahead and refrigerate it but it’s best, but not essential, if you can get it back to room temperature before cooking.

Start the cooking process by heating a little olive oil in in a non-stick pan.  Put the chicken in, skin side UP.

Weigh it down with a heavy iron skillet or another skillet with weight added by inserting cans or bricks to the skillet.  As you can see, I used an extra skillet and a kettle filled with water.  (Years back I watched the Frugal Gourmet, Jeff Smith, make a similar dish and he used bricks covered in foil laid directly on the chicken.  Hence the name but whatever you’ve got works, as long as it’s heavy and helps flatten the bird out.)

Clean pan on top of the chicken. Full kettle in the clean pan.

Cook the chicken until it browns, about 15 minutes over a medium heat.

Remove the weight and turn your chicken over, breast side down. Put the weight/s back on.   Sprinkle the garlic cloves around the bird and cook until the skin is crispy and brown.

The inside again

I set my timer for 12 minutes on this side but the bird wasn’t quite cooked when it rang.  The garlic was looking on the verge of burning though, so I scooped it out with a slotted spoon.  I turned the stove OFF and left the weights on for another 12 minutes and then it was perfect.   If you use a lower flame, you might be able to avoid this step.  A medium low flame for 24 minutes might just be perfect.  (Twelve minutes each side.)

Regardless of the heat level, your time will vary depending on how cold your chicken was when you started this process. A room temperature chicken will naturally take a shorter time to cook than one straight from the refrigerator.

You will know your chicken is done when an instant read thermometer stuck in the thigh reads 170°F or 77°C or when the juices run clear when the thigh is poked with a sharp knife.

Remove the chicken to a carving board and skim the excess oil off from the pot.

It looks completely black but that's just my poor lighting.  It was a delicious amount of charred.

Turn the heat up high and add 1/4 cup or 60ml dry white wine. Cook until it thickens slightly. Mash your garlic with a fork and add it back into the sauce.

See the little blue bowl back there?  That's how much oil I skimmed off. 

Warm through and serve alongside the chicken.  If you are not serving immediately, put the chicken back in the pan  and cover it with the lid or a bit of foil to keep warm.

Enjoy!

And for those of you eyeing the quinoa salad, I can highly recommend it.  The original recipe post is here and that will tell you how long I've been waiting to share this chicken with you!

I’m on a touring holiday right now with my mom so if I don’t answer comments right away, please know that I am still delighted when you leave them and will respond as soon as I have internet access again. 

Pan-fried Scallops with Garlic Chili Linguine

Garlic and chili flavor the olive oil used to pan-fry succulent scallops and coat linguine tossed with arugula. A deliciously quick meal for any day of the week.

This week’s #SundaySupper theme is a challenge:  Try something new.  A technique, a new ingredient, a new ethnic cuisine.  Just something new that might be considered adventurous.  You may find this hard to believe, but I had never cooked scallops.  I was always just a little bit intimidated by their thickness and the fact that they should be just cooked, not too much, not too little, to be perfect.  Couple that with the fact that they’ve been relatively expensive everywhere I’ve lived and it was easy to justify NOT trying to cook them.  If you know what I mean.  But, thanks to our host for this week, a fellow nomad, Conni from Foodie Army Wife,  I am ready for adventure and here we go!  (And make sure you go on over to Conni’s blog and give her some love.  Spouses like Conni are the backbone of the military and I am grateful for the service of her husband and the sacrifices the whole family has made to make that service possible.)

Ingredients
2 cloves of garlic
1 small red chili
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
8 large scallops
Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper (I actually use a three-peppercorn mix of white, black and pink, but freshly ground is key.)
8 oz or about 250g dried pasta (I prefer linguine.)
Massive handful baby arugula or rocket

Method
Lay your scallops out on a bed of paper towels and pat dry with more paper towels.

When they are completely dry, season with a sprinkling of sea salt and freshly ground pepper.

Meanwhile, boil your pasta in lightly salted water, according to packet instructions.

Slice your garlic very thinly and chop the chili pepper.

Sauté the garlic and chili in the olive oil, just until the garlic softens.  A little color won’t hurt but you don’t want to the garlic to brown.  We are looking to flavor the oil.

Remove the garlic and chili from the pan with a slotted spoon.

When your pasta is done, drain it and then toss in a huge handful of arugula or baby spinach, if you prefer.

Add in the garlic and chili and stir.  Put the lid back on the pot to keep warm.  The greens will wilt nicely, just from the heat of the hot pasta.

Heat the pan very hot and lay the scallops to fry.  You will need a mesh cover for the pan because, no matter how dry you dried your scallops, they tend to be moist and will spit at you.

After just a couple of minutes, use some tongs to turn the scallops over.  Put the spatter guard back on because now it really goes to town.

When the second side of the scallops are a little golden, turn them back to the first side and push them to one side of the pan.  Add in the pasta and swirl it around in the garlicky, spicy, scallopy olive oil.

Sprinkle with a little more sea salt, if necessary.

Serve each plate with a pile of pasta and four scallops each.

I have to say, scallops will probably be on the menu from now on.  My husband and I both loved them!  And they really weren’t hard at all.

Enjoy!

New Expeditions (Sides, Starters & Staples)

• Baked Lemon Coconut Risotto from Soni’s Food
• Easy Oven Polenta from Shockingly Delicious
• Homemade Corn Tortillas from Pescetarian Journal
• Homemade Peanut Butter from Home Cooking Memories
• Homemade Ricotta Cheese from Webicurean
• Homemade Spiced Flour Tortillas from Chocolate Moosey
• Homemade Tofu from Kimchi MOM
• Indian Moong Beans from Magnolia Days
• Naan from Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks
• Portuguese Chorizo Bread from Family Foodie  

Grand Quests (Main Dishes)

• Arepas Rellenas (Stuffed Arepas) from The Wimpy Vegetarian
• Baked Tilapia with Parmesan Basil Sauce from Growing Up Gabel
• Black Beans and Cheese Empanadas from Basic N Delicious
• Braised Lamb Brisket with Lemon Oregano Yogurt Sauce from The Girl In The Little Red Kitchen
• Caribou & Andouille Chili from The Foodie Army Wife  
• Miso-Glazed Salmon from The Foodie Patootie
• Pan-fried Scallops with Garlic Chili Linguine from Food Lust People Love
• Penne with Mustard and Chives from My Other City By The Bay
• Pork Dim Sum from Small Wallet, Big Appetite
• Rice Burger from The Urban Mrs.
• Spanish Baked Scallops from Momma’s Meals
• Traditional Pork Tamales from Gourmet Drizzles
• Vegetarian Hortobagyi Pancakes from Happy Baking Days
• Venison Steak Gyros from Curious Cuisiniere

Escapades (Sweet Treats & Spirited Companions)

• Bircher Muesli from Peanut Butter and Peppers
• Chocolate Dipped Madeleines from Big Bear’s Wife
• Dorie Greenspan’s Orange Almond Tart from Hip Foodie Mom
• Fresh Strawberry Frozen Yogurt from The Messy Baker
• Hello Kitty Rice Krispies from The Ninja Baker
• Homemade Cinnamon Rolls from In The Kitchen With KP
• Homemade Vanilla Marshmallows from Vintage Kitchen
• Macaroons from Noshing With The Nolands
• Making Macarons – FAIL! from girlichef
• Multilayer Bars from What Smells So Good?
• Ombre Mini Cakes from Daily Dish Recipes
• Rut-Busting Wines For New Cooking Adventures from ENOFYLZ Wine Blog
• Strawberry Raspberry Fruit Leather from Juanita’s Cocina
• Vegan Chocolate Mousse from The Not So Cheesy Kitchen
• Zebra Cake from That Skinny Chick Can Bake

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