So when we were at the Stumbling Goat the other night, one of the entrees I was eyeballing consisted of duck breast served with Bluebird Farms farro and rhubarb. I thought that sounded swell, but also rather like something I could make at home. So, the following night, I made it at home. More or less.

We didn’t have any duck, but I did have a package of chicken thighs left over from a Gretchen’s class last week. I roasted them with a sprinkling of herbed salt. I did, in fact, have Bluebird Farms farro (fantastic stuff, so nutty and chewy), which I simmered in salted water, then drained and tossed with chopped sage and orange zest. For the rhubarb, I improvised, cutting it into medium pieces, tossing them with olive oil and a bit of salt, and roasting them in the 400° oven with the chicken for about twenty minutes. The rhubarb softened but began to caramelize a bit near the end – I was very careful not to touch the pieces for fear they’d fall apart. When I took the pan out of the oven I sprinkled a bit of brown sugar on top, then balsamic vinegar over it all. I used a large spoon to carefully lift the pieces out of the pan onto our plates, along with the mixed juices.

The dinner worked really nicely – the chicken had some of the crispest skin I’ve ever achieved (not sure why), the farro was delicious, and the rhubarb was soft and both tart and sweet, going great with the chicken and the farro. Next time for the rhubarb I think we’ll use white sugar instead of brown (my husband said he felt like he was eating a rhubarb crisp with dinner) and lots more vinegar, but we’ll definitely do this again.

I’m not sure I could survive without homemade chicken stock. For my entire cooking life I’ve had a regular routine of roasting chickens or turkeys, picking the meat off them, then boiling the carcass and freezing the resulting stock in containers. For quite a while I only used stock for Chinese noodles, but then I discovered how much better all my soups were when I used stock instead of water. Then I discovered using stock to cook couscous, make pan sauces, and simmer greens (and don’t forget gravy). I go through stock at an amazing rate, and I can’t emphasize enough how much it helps my cooking. On the few occasions where I’ve had to use storebought, it just has not been the same.

The important thing to keep in mind about making chicken or turkey stock at home is, it’s really hard to mess it up. I know you’ve seen recipes in cookbooks that have you use a particular mix of vegetables, or roast the bones first, or double-boil the whole damn batch, or make little possets of herbs. You know what? You don’t have to do any of that. Dump your leftover bones or carcass in a pot. Cover it with water. Have some tired old celery or carrot tips? Throw ‘em in if you want, but don’t feel obliged.

Bring the liquid just to a boil, turn it down to a low simmer, and ignore it for a while. If you can only leave it going for an hour, that’s good enough. Three hours is great if you’re going to be around the house. If part of the carcass is floating above the water level, give it a poke now and then to submerge it. If it foams up a lot, you can skim it off. As long as it doesn’t boil over, you’re golden. And the house will smell great.

When the stock has simmered as long as you want, let it cool a bit. You can either put the whole pot in the fridge to chill, then scoop off the fat and strain out the bones, or you can strain the stock into another container and chill that. Take off as much schmaltz as you want – I like to leave some in. Then you just pour it all out into whatever size of containers you want. I use a mix of pint-size cottage cheese containers and quart-size yogurt tubs, and occasionally little single-serving cups to use in pan sauces. Up to you. Label them (very important – chicken stock is hard to distinguish when it’s frozen) and put a date on so you can make sure to use up the oldest stuff. Pop it all into the freezer, and you’re set!

Stuffing cheese into a chicken thigh doesn’t necessarily sound like a wise idea, but when the cheese in question is panir, a dry non-melting Indian cheese, all is well. We found this dish in a recently acquired cookbook, Modern Spice (on clearance at Village Books!), which is full of wonderful recipes that fuse Indian flavors with the American pantry. In this case bone-in chicken parts are stuffed with Indian herbs and spices mixed with Indian cheese, but baked in the oven instead of being simmered in liquid on the stovetop, as with so much Indian cookery. The chicken gets crispy on top, and the stuffing takes on the flavor of the bird as well as that lovely cheesy toastiness and a kick of chile heat.

Panir is crucial to this recipe, since no other cheese behaves quite like it (maybe halloumi?), but if you can’t find panir you could still make all the other ingredients into a rub for roasted chicken parts. What’s not to like about butter, chiles, ginger, garlic and cilantro?

A fusiony sort of dish like this didn’t seem to need a traditional Indian accompaniment, so we recreated a salad we invented on our Paris vacation, caramelizing finely diced fennel in a skillet and stirring in chopped ripe tomatoes. Pure essence of summer, it played beautifully off the spicy cheese and chicken. With a bright Sangiovese rosé, this was a very successful summer-to-autumn transitional dinner.

Panir-stuffed Chicken Thighs

adapted from Modern Spice by Monica Bhide

• 4 bone-in skin-on chicken thighs
• 1 garlic clove, pressed
• piece of ginger, grated
• 1 Tbsp melted butter
• 1 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1 cup finely grated panir
• 2 serrano chiles, red or green, minced
• 2 Tbsp cilantro, minced
• 1/4 tsp ground turmeric
• 1 tsp red chile flakes (our serranos were so hot we left these out)

Preheat the oven to 375°.

Combine the butter, 1 tsp salt, ginger and garlic. Loosen the skin on the thighs, then rub the paste all over the chicken.

Combine the panir, chiles, cilantro, turmeric, chile flakes and the remaining 1/4 tsp salt. Stuff this mixture under the skin of each thigh. Place the chicken in a roasting pan, skin side up.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until cooked through and the skin is crispy on top. You can either baste the thighs halfway through, or use my technique of just turning them in their juices with tongs.

It’s that time of year when those of us who grow our own garlic are getting a little antsy. I’ve long since used up my cured garlic from last year, and we’ve cut and eaten nearly all of the scapes (most of them are frozen as pesto for later). It’s still well over a month until I’ll be able to dig the bulbs for curing. 

If you don’t have scapes, or just need more of a garlic fix, though, there’s always spring garlic. My garlic patch is small, so I hate to harvest early, but I was able to raid my mother’s garden for some last week.

If you pull a garlic bulb now, before the stalks have dried, you’ll probably find that it’s nearly full size but has not put on its papery coating. The individual cloves have formed but they are still wet. You can use this young garlic as you would regular cured garlic, but it’s milder and requires little or no peeling. Keep in mind, whether you buy some at your local farmer’s market or pull it yourself – it doesn’t keep well, so treat it more like a vegetable and use it up quickly.

This braised chicken recipe, which I found in the latest Moro book, is a wonderful way to use spring garlic while it’s in season. Shallots might do as a substitute, but the garlic has such a sweet mellow flavor I’d rather wait and make this just once or twice every spring.

It’s also a great use for Pedro Ximénez sweet sherry, which is otherwise a lovely dessert wine and delicious over vanilla ice cream. The garlic and fennel really go well with the sweetness of the sherry, producing a dish which is distinctly savory but not heavy.

Some sort of starchy side dish is important here, to soak up the juices. I like rice, preferably a fairly plain pilaf or risotto (too many flavors in the rice may overwhelm the garlic-sherry sauce). The cookbook authors recommend mashed potatoes, which I haven’t tried yet.

Chicken with spring garlic and Pedro Ximénez sherry

adapted from Moro East by Sam & Sam Clark

• 4 chicken pieces, with bone and skin
• 2 heads spring garlic 
• kosher salt
• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp fennel seed
• 1 fresh bay leaf
• 1/4 cup Pedro Ximenez sherry
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 Tbsp sherry vinegar

Remove the outer layer of skin from the garlic, separate the cloves and chop them roughly.

Place a skillet over high heat and add the oil. Salt the chicken pieces well and sear them until golden on all sides.

Push the chicken pieces to the side of the pan and add the garlic, fennel and bay. Saute a few minutes until the garlic is soft and beginning to brown, then add the sherry and boil briefly. Add the water and vinegar and turn the chicken pieces in the liquid to coat. Cover the pan and simmer 15-20 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through. Add salt, pepper or more vinegar to taste.

Serve with rice, couscous or potatoes, and a green vegetable.

Ever since I discovered the word “spatchcock” in a Nigella Lawson book, I’ve wanted to try it. And not just because it’s such a great word.

It’s a method of preparing a chicken for high heat cooking such as roasting or grilling, where you remove the backbone and flatten the bird so that it’s more or less an even thickness throughout. It has the effect of getting all the skin on one side, so you should be able to get lots of crispy chicken skin, plus the flesh side is all available for seasoning. This weekend we finally got around to trying it, and the result was sort of a Win-Fail-Win situation.

We had quite good luck with the actual preparation. I bought the smallest organic chicken I could find, which was unfortunately still more than 4 pounds (what is with the enormous chickens in the store these days?) We cut out the backbone with our kitchen scissors, and Jon managed to pull out the breastbone with his thumbs just like Steven Raichlen said to (his book How to Grill gives fantastic photographic instructions for this kind of thing). I cut off the wingtips and tucked the ends of the drumsticks through slits in the thighs. The backbone and other leftover bits went into a tub in the freezer for stock.

Once that was all done, I made a sort of cutting-board pesto of fresh mint, cilantro, garlic, paprika, olive oil, salt and pepper, and rubbed it thoroughly into the chicken. It went in to the refrigerator for the rest of the day.

It was a beautiful day. We gardened until we could hardly move. We had some cocktails. All seemed right with the world. Little did we know…

Grilling the chicken was where the problems arose. Raichlen claims that the grill should be at medium heat, which is defined by being able to hold your hand over the coals for a count of 6-Mississippi. Our grill was burning a bit hot, but we got it pretty close. The chicken went on, skin side down, for about 12 minutes, then on the flip side for another 15. According to the book, it should have been just about perfect. It was not.

Another twenty minutes, and many chicken-flippings, later, the legs had fallen off the chicken and it was still barely cooked through (too big a chicken? Not warm enough before grilling? Not sure). We eventually gave up and ate the most-done parts of it, feeling more than a little put out. Not even fresh tomato salad and Breadfarm allium bread from the farmer’s market could rescue the evening from the pall cast by eating undercooked chicken – not something I recommend, definitely.

But! I’m happy to report that the whole thing was rescued the next day at lunchtime. I pulled the carcass out of the fridge and cut off the breast meat, heated it in a pan to finish cooking it, then sliced it and tossed it with the remainder of the cherry tomato salad, some sprigs of mizuna, and the rest of the allium bread which I had cut into cubes and fried in olive oil. It made an amazing lunch salad.

The rest of the grilled chicken went into the stockpot. I figure a deep, smoky, herbed chicken stock could be just the thing for a pot of green chili later in the season. So I think you could call the chicken a success, in the end. Next time, though, we’re getting a smaller bird and starting it sooner. Less pain and suffering all around.

Although the snow has melted here, the weather continues to be cold and clammy. In Sichuan province in China, the answer to this is plenty of bold spicy food, such as Kung Pao chicken. It’s hot, a little sour, and has the tingle of Sichuan pepper. It helps pep up a wet gray day.

We hadn’t bought chicken breast meat for a really long time until we made this dish. We usually use chicken thighs for everything, being cheaper and less prone to become tough, but it was actually kind of fun to use white meat for a change. The marinade and the quick stirfry keep the meat tender.

Kung Pao Chicken

adapted from Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop

• 1 pound boneless skinless chicken breast
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 knob fresh ginger
• 5 scallions, white parts only
• 2 Tbsp oil
• handful dried red chiles
• 1 tsp Sichuan pepper (she calls for whole, but I prefer it ground)
• 2/3 cup roasted peanuts

Marinade:

• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp sherry
• 2 1/4 tsp cornstarch
• 1 Tbsp water

Sauce:

• 3 tsp sugar
• 1 1/8 tsp cornstarch
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 3 tsp vinegar
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 Tbsp chicken stock or water

Cut the chicken into small cubes and combine with the marinade ingredients. Let it sit while you get everything else ready.

Thinly slice the garlic and ginger, cut the scallions into chunks, and cut the dried chiles in half with scissors and empty the seeds out.

Combine the sauce ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

Add the oil to a hot wok. Add the chiles and Sichuan pepper and stirfry until fragrant. Add the chicken. As the cubes begin to cook and separate, add the ginger, garlic and scallions. Fry until the chicken is just cooked through. Stir in the sauce and toss until it thickens and gives the dish a glossy look. Add the peanuts, mix and serve.

I like this sort of spicy meat dish with white rice and a big pile of stirfried greens, like bok choi. And lots of jasmine tea.

Somewhere along the line, North African cuisine has become one of my personal comfort foods. There’s something particularly wonderful about tagines with couscous, when it all blends together to create a bowlful of chewy, starchy, meaty deliciousness. The flavors are often pungent, but balanced, often with a good hit of fresh herbs, and I just find it so comforting on a cold evening. Last week I had a real craving for couscous with chicken and preserved lemon, and I must say it did the trick.

Of all the variations I’ve made of Moroccan chicken with preserved lemon and olives, this turned out to be a favorite. I found a recipe by Paula Wolfert that happened to use the sort of olives I had on hand and the right amount of lemon, and it was very successful. I particularly liked how it calls for braising bone-in chicken parts in aromatic broth, then taking out the pieces and roasting them until the skin crisps up and serving them with the reduced sauce. It prevents that soggy chicken skin problem that usually keeps me from braising skin-on pieces.

I didn’t marinate the chicken ahead of time (not my preference, just disorganized) and I left out the mashed chicken livers that the original recipe called for (partly because I didn’t have any, mostly because I don’t care for liver flavor). We served it with Israeli couscous. It was very rich with schmaltz, but sharp with lemon, olive and parsley. The last bottle of viognier from the basement was a perfect match.

Chicken with Lemon and Olives
adapted from Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco by Paula Wolfert

• 4 large chicken thighs (with skin and bone)
• 6 garlic cloves, pressed
• 1 tsp ground ginger
• coarse salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 1 preserved lemon
• several spoonfuls of olive oil
• 1/4 tsp saffron, crushed
• half an onion, grated and squeezed dry
• handful of parsley or cilantro stems
• 1/2 cup kalamata olives

Scrape the pulp out of the lemon (reserving the rind) and combine it with the garlic, ginger, salt, pepper and some oil (puree it first, if you feel like washing the processor afterwards – I didn’t). Rub this all over the chicken and let it sit (She says overnight, I only had a few minutes). Cut the lemon rind into one-inch chunks.

Preheat the oven to 400°.

Put the chicken and its marinade into a casserole or dutch oven, along with the saffron, onion, parsley stems and 2 1/2 cups water. Bring to a boil, then partially cover and simmer for half an hour. Turn the chicken pieces frequently. Halfway through cooking, add the olives and the lemon rind.

Fish out the chicken pieces and put them in a roasting pan. Bake until beginning to brown and crisp up. Meanwhile, put the cooking liquid back on high heat and reduce it down to a sauce. Remove the parsley stems, then serve the chicken pieces with the sauce, making sure to include plenty of olives and lemon pieces. Serve with couscous or mashed potatoes, and a good sprinkling of fresh chopped parsley.

A holiday that we like to celebrate in this household is the festival of Brigid, otherwise known as Imbolc, Candlemas or Groundhog Day. To us, it marks the break between the dark days of winter and the rise of spring, as the days get longer and the garden begins to bloom again. Even though we know it’s going to keep raining until July, just the fact of being able to walk home in daylight is pretty exciting.

Earlier in the day, I celebrated by going out and doing battle with blackberry vines and cutting back the hellebore leaves. We have hellebore flowers coming up, as well as the first glimpses of snowdrops and violets. Hurray, flowers!

Afterwards, we had a little cocktail hour. Jon has been trying to recreate a drink he had in Seattle a while back, the Dragon’s Toe – a mix of bourbon, cucumber, ginger juice and ginger ale. This batch came a little closer, I think. We finished off the last of our Mount Townsend Trailhead cheese – that stuff is good.

Dinner was as springlike as I could manage. I wanted bright flavors and lots of green, so I roasted a chicken with lots of lemon and garlic and butter, then made a risotto with fresh asparagus tips (imported from Mexico, unfortunately, but I was desperate) and a big handful of chopped parsley. We lit all the candles we could find, opened a bottle of bright, fresh sauvignon blanc from Santa Cruz, and felt that spring might actually come.

Man, this made the house smell good. I love Ethiopian food, and as far as I know the nearest restaurant is 60 miles away, so we have to make it ourselves if we want it. This is a very simple recipe for doro wat, or chicken stew, and the only weird ingredient is the berbere powder (recipe below) – which is totally worth making yourself and keeping on hand, because it’s one of the most delicious things to add to melted butter and onions ever.

The stew is very easy: chop an onion and saute it in lots of butter in a large skillet. Add a few spoonfuls of berbere paste or powder and mix thoroughly. Add some chopped fresh ginger and a cup or so of red wine, then scrape in a pound of finely chopped chicken meat. Stir until the chicken begins to cook through, then add water to just cover, bring to a boil and let simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the liquid has reduced somewhat and the chicken is completely cooked. Some people add hard boiled eggs to the stew, but I like it plain, with condiments on the side.

Serve with spiced curds, fresh bread (injera is lovely if you have it, but sourdough bread is fabulous also) and green peppers pureed with garlic and salt. Red wine is quite nice alongside.

This stuff smells so good, it’s even fun to wash out the leftover containers two days later.

Berbere

adapted from Flatbreads & Flavors by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid

• seeds from 2 green cardamom pods
• 1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds
• 1/2 tsp black peppercorns
• 1/4 tsp coriander seed
• 2 cups dried red chiles, soaked for 1 hour in hot water and drained
• 1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp fresh ginger, minced
• 2 Tbsp fresh garlic, minced
• 2 Tbsp chopped onion
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup fresh basil, minced
• 1/2 cup fresh mint, minced

Toast the whole dry spices in a skillet. Grind them to powder in a mortar or spice grinder.

Put the chiles in a food processor and puree, then add the ground spices, cinnamon and salt. Process.

Combine the ginger, garlic, onion and water in a saucepan, bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes. Add to the processor and blend, then add the fresh herbs and blend.

Keep the paste in a clean glass jar in the refrigerator, or:

Spread the paste out on a baking sheet and bake at 200° until completely dry, stirring occasionally. This takes a while.

Or, for a quick n’ dirty berbere powder, just combine dried preground spices and herbs – not as authentic, but it gets the job done.

The weather was too nasty to travel, so we had Christmas on our own. I got let out of work early on Christmas eve, and we had a nice early cocktail hour – Jon made Corpse Revivers and we finished off the sweet potato and beet chips from our last dinner party, with dangerously addictive spinach dip from the co-op deli.

In the afternoon we made a batch of salted chocolate caramels.We didn’t have enough bittersweet chocolate for the recipe, so we had to scrounge every piece of solid chocolate that we had in the house, and supplement with chocolate chips. The candy turned out really good, rather like solid brownie batter.

For our Christmas Eve supper I roasted a lovely small chicken, salted well ahead of time and stuffed with garlic, and made a farro risotto with tons of mushrooms and a bit of cream. Holy cow, it was good. We drank a Saint-Cosme cotes-du-rhone with it, which was perfect.

Christmas morning we opened a few presents. I got a copy of Nigel Slater’s Appetite, which says everything I wish I’d thought to say about food and cooking. I also got a couple of Ritter Sport Butter Biscuit bars, which just shows what a wonderful husband I have.

I also got a new macro lens for my camera. Whee!

For breakfast (after the requisite pieces of chocolate) we made buckwheat crepes with mushrooms, asparagus, gruyere and prosciutto (plus coffee and leftover prosecco).

And, later on, a ham dinner with friends and lots of good wine. I had to go to work the next day, but I definitely felt like I had had a good Christmas.