Rippin' Another Blog: Poulet au Riesling

Good morning darling readers!

I was thinking this morning... How often do we food bloggers - and food blog readers - prowl the internet in search of the most amazing looking, sounding, tasting recipes, only to bookmark or pin or comment on them...and then they go forgotten...?

They go unmade.

And as a food blogger myself, I rarely make the same dish more than once, even if it was fucking spectacular. The exception being of course, if I have company over for dinner and I want to share a recent culinary success story with them.

But because I need new posts, I need new recipes. New ideas. New new new! So I prowl. We prowl. We find inspiration in each other. But rarely, do we actually follow someone else's recipe. We think it makes us more distinguished if we create our own. What food masters we are! Yeaaahhh.....

That's why I love Haydn and my series, Rippin' Another Blog. I actually get the opportunity to make someone else's dish. Of course there are the odd modifications or substitutions based on availability and personal preference but generally, it's their recipe. And what makes a food blogger feel better than when someone actually makes their dish? Pretty much nothing. Except letting them know you made their dish. Comments my friends, we all love comments. We pine for comments!

Something else I pine for? More of Katie's Poulet au Riesling. Chicken? Good! Riesling? Good! And I relish the opportunity to use a sweeter white wine in savory cooking than a dry one. Why the heck not, right?

I first became acquainted with Katie's blog, So Tasty, So Yummy, through The Secret Recipe Club - another fantastic medium I participate in @ Gastronomical Sovereignty through which I make recipes from other people's blogs. And let me tell you, I'm glad I did. She's clever, inspiring and kind of hot. And by kind of, I mean the chick is smokin'.

...and so is this dish. Bland chicken? Hells no! Sweet, creamy, herby, fantastic chicken? Yes!

Poulet au Riesling

(printable recipe) - serves 4.

Recipe c/o So Tasty, So Yummy

Ingredients:

3 Slices of Bacon, chopped.

4 Pastured Chicken Thighs.

1 Medium Onion, peeled and chopped.

2 Garlic Cloves, peeled and thinly sliced.

½ Lb Forest Mushrooms, thinly sliced.

6 Medium Sized Carrots, sliced.

2 C Riesling.

2/3 C Heavy Cream.

2 Tbsp Parsley, chopped.

1/2 Tsp Freshly Ground Nutmeg.

Coarse Sea Salt & Fresh Cracked Black Pepper.

What to Do:

Heat a Dutch oven or enamel roasting pan over medium-high heat. Throw in the bacon and cook until crispy. Remove from pan and set aside.

Season the chicken well with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with nutmeg. Arrange skin side down in the bacon fat and cook until brown and crispy. Remove and set aside with the bacon. 

Discard all but 4 tablespoons of the fat. Reduce the heat to medium and sauté onions and garlic until soft. 

Add the mushrooms and carrots, stir and continue cooking until heated through, approx. 3 minutes. 

Turn the heat to high and pour in the wine. When it comes to a rolling boil put the chicken and bacon back in the pot. Turn the heat down to medium-low. Simmer uncovered until the chicken is cooked through, approx 45 minutes. 

Remove the chicken from the pan. Add cream and boil until sauce is reduced somewhat and starting to thicken. Return chicken to the sauce. Add parsley and serve.

Eat.

Do you ever actually make the recipes you find online? Or do they get lost in Pinterest land?

Rippin' Another Blog: Shepherd's Pie (Not Cottage Pie)

I don't talk too much about my romantic relationship on my blogs.

But John is instrumental in helping me get my posts done. He is endlessly supportive in his words, unquestioningly generous in his efforts to help me get the shots I need and constantly puts up with being served cold food because of said photo needs. He also eats everything. Good or bad. And he's honest too.

Honest about shepherd's pie.

I know right? In this moment you're like, wtf?

I grew up eating shepherd's pie. Or so I thought I did. Fast-forward 15 years or so and I learn that what I thought I was eating all those years was a farce. Or at the very least, a cultural hiccup.

Cottage pie V. shepherd's pie. 

Cottage pie is what we typically call shepherd's pie in North America. Ground beef, carrots, peas, onions, potatoes, baked in the oven and (hopefully) smothered in gravy. Uh, yes. Yum. Yes? Yes. 

But what this very clever and sexy beer-drinking physics-loving film-geek Brit told me was shepherd's pie must entail lamb. Hence the shepherd. Baaaahhh! (sheep noise). With beef it's simply cottage pie. And with the dish being of the English variety, he should know.

Rug. Ripped. Out. From. Under. Me.

Luckily he was there to catch me and I've been calling a spade a spade ever since - cottage pie = cows, shepherd's pie = sheep. Unless of course I want to give him a hard time... and then I conflate the two. Because I'm a bitch like that.

Speaking of bitches .... this recipe comes courtesy of a little blog titled The Domestic Man. It's okay to segue bitches because men can't be bitches. Can they? I followed his recipe to a T - actually, I followed it right into my stomach because it was Ah-mazing! Thank you Domestic Man for making my mouth happy and my blog a space to speak out about a very important issue. Baaaahhhh!

Shepherd's Pie (Not Cottage Pie)

(printable recipe) - serves 6.

Ingredients:

1.5 Lbs Ground Lamb.
3 Medium Russet Potatoes, peeled and chopped.
1 Small White Onion, diced.
1 Medium Carrot, diced.
1 Celery Root, diced.
2 Cloves Garlic, minced.
1 Tbsp Tomato Paste.
1/2 C Chicken Broth.
 2 Tsp Worcestershire sauce.
1/2 Tsp each fresh thyme and rosemary, stemmed and chopped.
1/2 C Frozen Peas.
3 Tbsp Butter .
1/2 C Heavy Cream.
Coarse Salt & Fresh Cracked Black Pepper.

What to Do:

Fill a large saucepan with the potatoes and cold water. Bring to a boil over high heat and cook until potatoes are fork tender - approx 20 minutes.

Drain and return the potatoes to the empty pot. Add 2 Tbsp of butter, the cream (starting with 1/4 C and adding more if necessary), and a good helping of salt and pepper. Mash until smooth but be careful not to over mash or you'll end up with a sticky gooey mess. Cover and set aside.

As the potatoes boil, heat a large pan over medium heat. When hot, add the lamb and brown, stirring often. When it is almost entirely cooked drain the meat, reserving the fat. Set the meat aside and add a couple of Tbsp of fat back into the pan, along with the rest of the butter. Melt and add the onion, carrots and celery. Cook until softened (approx 8 minutes).

Add the tomato paste and garlic and massage into the mixture. Saute a further 2 minutes.

Dump in the herbs, broth, Worcestershire and salt and pepper to taste. Stir and simmer until the liquid thickens slightly - approx. 3 minutes.

At this point you can turn your oven on to 450 degrees F.

Remove from the heat and reintroduce the lamb to the mixture as well as the peas.

Dump the lot into an 8" baking dish or roasting pan and spread even.

Gently top with the mashed potatoes - little bits at a time until it's even all over. Bake in the oven on the middle rack for 30-45 minutes or until the top of the potatoes gets crispy and slightly golden.

Pull from the oven, let rest 5 minutes, and then dish up! Feel free to serve with your favorite gravy recipe if you like gravy. Who doesn't like gravy?

Eat.

How do the people in your world make your life better?

Can men be bitches?