Back again, with peach-whiskey chicken

And then, after nearly two weeks of eating alone, Sean came home. Hurrah!

And there was nothing else to do but make a man meal. You know the kind of meal I'm talking about. It's rich, it's meaty, it's probably filled with all sorts of things (ample butter, pounds of pasta, maybe a little meat-on-meat action) that you'd shy away from making on an average Monday.

And I must have missed him because I picked a doozy of a recipe to make for dinner. Instead of pulling a cozy favorite of the shelf (Silver Palate, or The Barefoot Contessa at Home), I cracked open The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier.

Let it be known, that although I have a deep affection for the pioneer life (born and raised in Utah, deeply devoted to sun bonnets and Laura Ingalls Wilder), I'm not a Pioneer Woman fan girl. But I can say this: Thank you, Ree Drummond, for making me believe that it is okay to start a week with a dinner that requires chicken legs, whiskey, a jar of jam, and four cups of BBQ sauce. Not to mention butter laced mashed potatoes.

Of course, I had to make this recipe my own. I started by making a double batch of my Grandfather's BBQ sauce. Once the chicken was cooking, instead of adding a jar of store bought peach jam I added homemade nectarine preserves. Fresh sliced peaches? There are none to be found in March. The chopped parsley garnish was replaced with cilantro. And I just didn't have the time to make mashed potatoes. Baked Yukon Gold, split, and topped with a healthy dollop of butter seemed to do just fine.

I'm enclosing the original recipe, both to give credit where credit is due, and to encourage going-with-the-flow. There's a lot of craziness in my life right now, and I find it helps to not have too many grand expectations -- or to stress too much about the little details. No peaches? No problem. Preserved nectarines will do just fine.

Peach-Whiskey Chicken
Recipe from The Pioneer Woman. Recipe presented in Pioneer Woman style, with step-by-step photos.

2 Tablespoons olive oil
2 Tablespoons butter
12 chicken legs, skin on
1 yellow onion, diced
1 1/2 cups whiskey
4 cups BBQ sauce
1 cup peach preserves
2 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
4 peaches, pitted and sliced into 8 slices each
Mashed potatoes, for serving
3 green onions thinly sliced
Chopped fresh parsley

Pre-heat the oven to 300 degrees. Heat the olive oil and the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the chicken pieces until golden brown on all sides, about 5 minutes. Remove from the skillet and set aside.

Add the onion to the skillet. Stir and cook over medium heat for about 3 minutes, or until translucent. Pour in the whiskey, taking care if you're cooking over an open flame. Cook for 3 minutes or so, allowing the whiskey to cook and reduce. If it seems appropriate, use that 3 minutes to pour some more whiskey and make a cocktail.

 

Grab your favorite bottled BBQ sauce and add it to the pan. Add the peach preserves, Worcestershire sauce, and 1/2 cup water, then whisk to combine. It won't look like much, but it will smell amazing.

Add the chicken back to the pan, then throw in the fresh peaches (if using).

Cover the skillet with a lid or aluminum foil and place in the oven for 90 minutes. When it emerges, the chicken will be tender and falling off the bone... the sauce will be beautiful, thick, and rich. You'll know it's done.

 Serve the chicken over a big mound of potatoes, spooning sauce over the whole thing. Sprinkle with green onions and parsley.

Make sure the table is set with paper napkins, you're in for a saucy night.

Dinner Parties and Lentils

Oh, M.F.K. Fisher. How right you were when you wrote that "sharing food with another human being is an intimate act, which should not be indulged in lightly."

Eating is intimate -- very intimate. But so often we make it public. We sit at communal tables or against large windows where the people outside can walk by and wonder exactly what's on our plate, and if it tastes as good as it looks. 

Occasionally at a restaurant you're seated so close to strangers that you can't help but eavesdrop. Only rarely is the conversation very exciting, but it is thrilling to hear what strangers have to say about their new shoes, the fights they have with their mother, or how they never really learned to like beets.

Then there's the dinner party. The true intimate act; the one that should not be indulged in lightly. The other day I heard someone say that the dinner party has gone out of fashion -- that thanks to the fervor over food, it's widely believed that you simply can't have a "special" dining experience in someone's home.

I shake my head with wild disagreement. I believe there's nothing more intimate, nothing friendlier, sexier, or more loving than inviting people into your home and cooking for them. Sure, there's an element of trouble (must clean bathroom, pick clothes up off floor, vacuum) and expense (flowers for the table, a lovely bottle of wine, and oh my -- how much was that bundle of herbs?) but lingering over a dinner at home with friends old or new is one of life's great pleasures.

When a dinner party is good, it's good. And by good I mean clean plates, multiple wine glasses, empty bottles of wine, laughter, music, droopy eyes, missed bedtimes, and forgotten worries.

I'm talking about the kind of evenings where you want to linger, where no one wants to say goodbye, where you wish -- if only for a moment -- that your dinner party could turn into a sleep-over just so you could wake up and do it again over coffee and eggs and piles of toast. Those are the kind of parties I want to have all the time.

I had one the other night, and it was good, so good. There was champagne, and deep red dahlias, and these funny little olives that managed to be dried and wrinkly and beautiful and delicious all at the same time. There was whole-wheat walnut bread from Acme Bakery which, just like the olives, seemed to be both the most ordinary and revelatory thing.

There was pork dressed in fresh herbs and red wine from the Jura, and fresh peach-strawberry crisp with a healthy plop of vanilla ice cream.

Oh, and there was lentil salad, the recipe found in The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. In classic Chez Panisse fashion, there was nothing revolutionary about these lentils, but man-oh-man were they good.

Dinner parties and lentils. Who'd have thought they'd have similar alchemy but they do. Both begin with a very simple equation, but depending on ingredients, flavors, and how everything adds up, they can become magical.

Lentil Salad a la Chez Panisse
Sort and rinse 1 cup lentils (French green or beluga are best)
Cover with water by three inches and bring to a boil. Turn down to a simmer and cook until tender all the way through (adding more water if needed), about 30 minutes. Drain and reserve 1/2 cup of the cooking lentils. Toss the lentils with:
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar [essential! and pleas do this while the lentils are warm]
Salt & fresh ground pepper
Let sit for 5 minutes. Taste and add more salt and vinegar if needed. Add:
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons finely diced shallots or 1/4 cup finely chopped red onion
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
Stir to combine. If the lentils seem dry and are hard to stir, moisten them with a bit of the reserved cooking liquid.

Add to the salad as you like from here. I toss in a cup of baby tomatoes sliced into halves, a zucchini that I sliced thin and pan fried just a bit to soften it up, and handfuls of crumbled goat cheese. Cucumber would be nice, so would yellow or red pepper.

Chocolate Dump-It Cake

This cake is the reason my skinny jeans are now feeling a little more like hipster tight denim. This cake, plus the homemade ravioli, the shrimp burrito, the chocolate croissants, and the six (seven?) course pasta tasting menu at Mozza in L.A.

It was a carbohydrate fueled train into a new decade for my now-forty-year-old mate, and I happily climbed aboard.

Let's rewind a bit, though. I stressed over this cake long and hard. At moments the dessert, which had to serve at least two dozen people and be transported, by foot, to the party site, was imagined as mini chocolate mousses, cupcakes, lemon bars, and -- at one bad moment-- rubbery flan with a single candle on top purchased from the Mexican join that was housing the party.

There were so many considerations. 95% of my belongings, and 100% of my cooking things are still in storage from my impromptu move last year. Thus, I had no cake pans, no cupcake pans, no hand-held mixer. Dessert had to be made with a mixing bowl, IKEA spatula, and set of mixing bowls and spoons. If I purchased new cookware it had to be just that: new! An addition to my existing collection, not a replacement.

I thought about making my mother's famous Texas Sheet Cake, but wasn't sure if it would do well in a layered version -- the batter is thin and the frosting poured on hot. I could just picture it all sliding off onto the dirty Mission sidewalk.

Next, I scoured the internet for two hours and, after asking the birthday boy what kind of cake he wanted, finally decided. I would bake Amanda Hesser's Chocolate Dump-It Cake from her book, Cooking for Mr. Latte.

I own this book, but it's in storage (sniff), so I was sure the recipe would be good. The cake and frosting were both very simple, nothing special required. Megan had baked the cake too, which looked towering and chocolate riddled, two requirements for the cake.

I made two versions of it last week-- one layer, one sheet -- and in the seven days since, have gotten several emails gently querying for the recipe. So, here it is, with a few minor tweaks and one warning: find your stretchy jeans.

Chocolate Dump-It Cake
Adapted from Amanda Hesser
A note: The sifting here is important. Don't forget to sift!

2 cups sugar
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1/4 pound unsalted butter (1 stick), plus more for greasing the pan
2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting the pan
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon semi-coarse sea salt or kosher salt
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups sour cream, at room temperature
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions
1.    Preheat the oven to 375 degrees, and place a baking sheet on the lowest rack, to catch any drips when the cake bakes. Put the sugar, unsweetened chocolate, butter and 1 cup of water in a saucepan. Place over medium heat and stir occasionally until all of the ingredients are melted and blended. Remove from the heat and let cool slightly, 15 to 20 minutes.

2.    Meanwhile, sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In a small bowl, stir together the milk and vinegar. Grease and flour a 9-inch tube pan. (If you prefer, you can grease it, line it with parchment and then grease and flour it. This is not necessary, but parchment does make getting the cake out easier.)

3.    When the chocolate in the pan has cooled a bit, whisk in the milk mixture and eggs. In several additions and without overmixing, whisk in the dry ingredients. When the mixture is smooth, add the vanilla and whisk once or twice, to blend. "Dump" the batter into the tube pan and bake on the middle rack until a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean, about 30 minutes. I baked this cake in two 9 inch rounds with great results. The cake was done in about 25 minutes. I also baked it in a 9x13 pan, and it was marvelous -- done in about 40.
If you bake it in the tube, let the cake cool for 10 minutes, then remove from the pan and cool on a rack. (This can be tricky, so if someone is around, enlist them to help. Place a ring of wax paper on top of the cake so you have something to grab onto when turning it out.) Let cool completely.

4.    Meanwhile, melt the chocolate chips in a double boiler, then let cool to room temperature. It is very important that the chocolate and sour cream be the same temperature, otherwise the icing will be lumpy or grainy. (Test it by stirring a little of the sour cream and chocolate together in a bowl; if it mixes smoothly, it's ready.) Stir in the sour cream, 1/ 4 cup at a time, until the mixture is smooth. Taste some! It's good. If you prefer a stiffer frosting, add 1/2 cup powdered sugar till you have the chocolate peaks you desire. If you want to add a whisper of cinnamon, now is a good time.

5.    When the cake is cool, you may frost it as is or cut it in half so that you have two layers (when I do this, I use 2 cups chocolate chips and 2 cups sour cream). My mother uses any leftover icing to make flowers on top. She dabs small rosettes, or buttons, on top, then uses toasted almond slices as the petals, pushing them in around the base of the rosette.

Makes 10 servings. (My mother kept it in the fridge, and it is sublime even when cold.)

The Perfect Dessert?

We had a little dinner party last night. This is what we served:

Butter lettuce and watercress salad with pears

Garbanzo beans, chorizo sausage, and squid

Manchego, kumquats, and muscat grapes

It was a lovely night. We ate early, watched the sun set and the lights of the city come on, and didn't turn on the lamps until the last possible moment.

But it is the dessert I keep thinking about: the sweet, tart, bitter of the tiny orange kumquats and the over-the-top floral ripeness of the plump grapes.

Spring is here and I think it is divine.