Thursday, July 11, 2013

Iraqi Yellow Spice Rubbed Chicken

Photo by Todd Coleman for Saveur
What do you get when you combine 17 spices, a kosher chicken and a Big Green Egg? Djaj Bil-Bahar Il-Asfar (Iraqi Yellow Spice Rub Chicken). This fun recipe from Saveur magazine produced a dish that can be described with two words you rarely hear in connection with chicken: intensely flavorable.

I followed the recipe exactly, right down to the rose hips, which I had to look for at the co-op, and the sumac, which I've had on my shelf for some time. You toast and grind some of the seeds -- cumin, coriander, cardamom, allspice, among others -- and mix with other powdered spices, such as curry, cinnamon, sumac, ginger -- to produce a rich rub for the chicken overnight. The kosher chickens from Wholefoods are young and small, so the two halves were right about at the 3 pounds called for in the recipe. The Egg seemed just the right way to go for the 45-minute grilling time. I served it with basmati rice rather than the flatbread suggested, and we had a wonderful Gruner Veltliner from Austria that paired perfectly with the spicy chicken.

The fragrant dish reeked of the exotic Orient. It was truly yellow early in the grilling time, turning a rich, charred rust by the end (mine looked exactly like the Saveur photo, shame I didn't take a photo for comparison). The chile gave it just a little kick and there was a hint of sweetness, perhaps from the cinnamon.

I bought a copy of Saveur -- their grilling issue -- after Kathleen Flinn mentioned during my food writing workshop last month that many of its articles were culinary travel. I was very happy with this recipe and the other articles and will certainly subscribe. Andrea already gets Food and Wine and Bon Appetit, so we will be well furnished with magazine recipes.

Friday, July 05, 2013

Fiesta Paella with Chicken and Shellfish

We celebrated the Fourth of July with that traditional American feast -- paella. As my brother quipped, "That and a Bud Light and you're ready to go." I've been wanting to do another paella for a long time and it is truly a festive dish, so we used the excuse of uncertain weather to plan a meal indoors and depart from the usual fare.

Paella, which has more than a dozen ingredients and cooks in 45 minutes, is all about prepping and mise en place. This worked like a charm with the recipe I adapted from Janet Mandel's My Kitchen in Spain (recipe follows). Prepping involved cutting up the chicken to get 8 pieces from the legs and breasts (wings and back went into the freezer for stock); slicing the meat off the bone of the pork loin chop and cubing it; washing the squid, removing the skin and head and little clear tab, then slicing it into rings; shelling the medium shrimp for cooking in the paella; cleaning and dicing the green pepper; peeling, seeding and chopping the tomatoes; shelling the peas; steaming the mussels; boiling the jumbo whole shrimp for decoration; slicing the pimento for decoration; quartering the lemon for garnish; crushing the saffron and mixing it with pimenton, food coloring and water; thawing out the frozen homemade chicken stock. What fun!

When I started the sofrito, following Mandel's carefully described steps, everything was ready in an assortment of bowls, pots and pitchers, so that after 20-some minutes of sauteeing the meat, vegetables and seafood, I could pour in the stock, bring it to a boil, pour in the rice, dribble in the saffron mix, add the salt and bay leaves, stir and let the chemistry begin. As Mandel says, the important thing is not to stir the rice again and release the gummy stuff that makes a risotto creamy but is not desirable in a paella.

I interrupted the process when the sofrito was done, probably for too long, because the meat came out a little dry, but on the whole it was big success -- a true fiesta. It needed to be a little spicier. Next time I would salt the meat separately as it's cooking, up the pimenton and use fresher saffron (I won't tell you how long I've had the saffron I used). A special hat tip to A&H Gourmet and Seafood Market in Bethesda. The Portuguese owners not only have a great selection of fresh fish (many restaurants buy there), but everything you need for paella. I especially appreciated the abundant squid, so that I could include the calamari called for in the recipe.

Keeping to the Spanish theme, Andrea made two really great appetizers from Joanne Weir's From Tapas to Mezes -- a summer vegetable flat bread ("Catalan pizza") with Swiss chard, zucchini, green pepper, and tomato; and a caramelized onion omelette from Andalusia that involved cooking 3 lbs of chopped onion for an hour and a half, which made them incredibly sweet. For dessert, she used Mandel's recipe for caramel flan that was truly light and delicate -- not too eggy or custardy -- just like in Spain; we served fresh berries with that. To drink, a surprisingly good red wine sangria from Claudia Roden.

RECIPE FOR FIESTA PAELLA
(adapted from Janet Mandel's My Kitchen in Spain)

Mandel's recipe serves 4 to 5, so I increased ingredients by about 50% to serve 6 to 8. I don't have a paella pan but always use a cast iron wok (which she lists as an alternative), which certainly was at its maximum capacity with this amount. I used to follow the recipe from a cookbook I brought back from Spain, puzzling through the Spanish enough to figure it out, but Mandel's Fiesta Paella was pretty similar. I added chorizo because it was in the other recipe. I used fresh peas instead of her fava beans or frozen peas.

12 mussels, scrubbed
6 jumbo shrimp, heads on, for decoration
1 pound medium shrimp, heads off, shelled and deveined
6 tablespoons olive oil
2 pounds chicken legs and breasts, cut into small pieces
6 ounces pork, cut into 1-inch cubes
4 ounces chorizo, cut into pieces
1 pound squid, cleaned and cut into rings
1 green bell pepper, diced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
1/2 cup shelled fresh peas
6-1/2 cups chicken broth mixed with cooking liquid from shellfish
3 cups Cebolla rice
1/2 teaspoon saffron threads, crushed
1 teaspoon pimenton
Several shakes powdered yellow food coloring
Pepper
2 bay leafs
3 teaspoons salt
1 preserved red pimento, cut into strips
1 lemon for garnish

1. Prepare the mussels by steaming for 3 to 4 minutes in 1/4 cup water, shaking pan over high heat. Strain the cooking liquid to add to the broth. Discard the empty half shell.

2. Cook the jumbo shrimp in water to cover. Add the liquid to the broth.

3. Heat the oil in the pan over medium heat. Saute the chicken, pork and chorizo until slightly browned, 10 minutes.

4. Add the squid and saute for another 5 minutes.

5. Add the green pepper and garlic and cook for 2 more minutes.

6. Add the tomato and turn up the heat so that it loses its liquid quickly.

7. Stir in the peeled shrimp and peas and saute another 5 minutes.

8. Pour in the broth mix and bring to a boil.

9. Add the rice, dribble in the saffron, pimenton and food coloring mixed together with 3 tablespoons of water, add the salt and bay leafs; stir once to mix ingredients.

10. Cook at high heat for 5 minutes, then reduce to simmer for 10 minutes. Place mussels, jumbo shrimp and pimenton on top of rice and cook another 5 minutes. Let the rice set 5 to 10 minutes before serving. Garnish with lemon quarters.

Wednesday, July 03, 2013

2Amys toujours

(Photo: Ra Boe / WikipediaOriginal; License: CC by-sa 3.0)
The first, and probably only, time I ate the genuine mozzarella di bufala was in the courtyard of the Castel Nuovo, a medieval castle in the heart of Naples, Italy. There was a press reception during the 1994 G-7 summit in Naples, and smart young women dressed in special Missoni knits were bringing around large bowls filled with creamy white balls of cheese swimming in cloudy liquid, which prompted me to abandon all the other hors d'oeuvres and focus on the mozzarella.

Real mozzarella is supposed to be made the same day from the milk of water buffaloes, and particularly those in Campania, the region surrounding Naples. A fresh cheese, mozzarella is by definition somewhat bland and I can't recall after all this time the nuances of flavor that cheese in Naples might have had. But the scene itself, twilight on the cobblestones of this medieval courtyard with all the glamour and power of the heads of state of the seven biggest economies in the world, has left an indelible memory.

This memory came back when we went to 2Amys and I ordered one of the specials of the day, a white pizza with buffalo mozzarella and the house sausage, garnished with eggs and chives. I am sure it is real buffalo mozzarella -- there are several U.S. producers -- and this yielded a melted cheese that was stringy but delicate, with just a hint of earthiness. The sausage was rich, tasting of fennel, and the chives set just the right accent. The egg set perfectly in the center of the pizza and breaking the yolk created a mix of flavors that went far beyond your typical breakfast sandwich. The marvelous pizza dough had its usual yeasty, smoky flavor from the wood-fired oven.

We go to 2Amys only once in a while. It is always crowded and there is always a wait. The downstairs is high decibel as the tile walls reflect the chatter and clatter from dozens of tables squeezed into a space that is too small for them, and families and kids talk loudly to be heard over the noise. This time, even the bar was too crowded for waiting, so we passed the brief 15 minutes outdoors (fortunately no rain). We were quite happy then to be shown upstairs to a corner table that was an oasis of quiet. Another time upstairs we were seated at the table right at the top of the stairs, with no shelter from the coming and going of the runners and busboys, so it was not altogether pleasant. This time we were comfortably isolated and even discovered there is a window, which currently offers a bird's eye view of the big building site where Giant used to be.

We always like to say that 2Amys has the best pizzas in town but is also one of the best restaurants in town because the wide variety of starters, small plates, salumi are all equally outstanding. I had the salt-cured sardines with bread, which once again took me to the shores of the Mediterranean with a taste that had as much ocean as fish in it. The crusty Italian bread -- if only we could get some of that at home -- soaked up the olive oil and salt to make a very satisfying appetizer. Andrea's roast corn and aged goat cheese was also delicious. The kernels had grown quite tiny with roasting, which concentrated the fresh corn flavor, and they were dressed with a spicy vinaigrette that had just a little kick to it. The dense, flavorful cheese set off the corn nicely.

Part of being one of the best restaurants in town is the efficiency and professionalism of the service. Servers in black T-shirts take the orders, check on on your needs and bring you the bill. Runners in white T-shirts bring up the food not only to the right table but set it in front of the right person. Drinks were brought, water was filled, plates were cleared with an easy informality that made you forget about service and freed you to enjoy the meal -- not something every restaurant can claim.

2Amys makes a lot of their DOC pizzas -- certified authentic -- but they don't need a label to tell you you're getting a genuine slice of Italy.