Roast Chicken with Lima Beans and Dinosaur Kale

Sunday turned into a really busy day -- lab work for most of the day, then a repair job on Amanda's kitchen cabinets, which were threatening to fall off the wall. Given that the property maintenance guys had done a pretty Mickey-Mouse job of installing them in the first place, we decided that we were better off doing the job to sure them up ourselves. One toggle bolt and a really big drill bit did the trick...

While I made a run to the hardware store in the rain for that drill bit, Melissa went back home to tend the boiling lima bans for her new dish. The chicken thighs, prosciutto and buttery lima beans paired beautifully with the chenin blanc Amanda brought over (Ken Forrester Petit Chenin Blanc, 2007; Stellenbosch, South Africa). Melissa describes the dish and the inspiration for it in detail below.

Dessert hadn't been planned, but with the bag of frozen mixed berries we try to keep on hand, Melissa can always whip something together in a flash. Strawberries, raspberries and blackberries were reduced in a sauce pan and topped with an almond-shortbread crumble (the same topping used in the apple-rhubarb cobbler last Wednesday) and nonfat Greek yogurt to make a super-tasty cobbler.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Encore**

Melissa put together a nice medley of leftover ingredients from last night's Sasso-inspired dish. Buttery lima beans and dinosaur kale with prosciutto, onions, garlic and mushrooms -- minus the chicken this time. We had a 2006 Bogle Chardonnay (CA) with this welcome encore.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Melissa's Recipes and Notes

Roast Chicken Thigh with Lima Beans and Dinosaur Kale

Passing Sasso on Huntington Ave I thought I’d check out their menu for a little inspiration on the way to the supermarket. The Irish Sea trout, fava beans, pancetta and forest mushrooms, with a grapefruit vinaigrette caught my eye. I had left for the supermarket determined to buy some ingredients I hadn’t cooked with before, and I came up with lima beans, dinosaur kale, and celery root. Tonight’s dinner didn’t include the celery root, but I thought I’d include the dinosaur kale for its greenery in the dish inspired by Sasso.

The Sasso menu is simple in that it only lists ingredients, and not how things are cooked. Though inspired by the trout dish, mine was a departure for a number of reasons:

Organic Irish sea trout….. Interesting, I thought trout was a fresh water fish. In any case I had made the Sunday afternoon trek to the supermarket to pick up some veggies to complement the freezer stocked full of meat from our 3 monthly BJs wholesale foods run. I replaced this with roasted chicken thigh, bone and skin on.

Fava beans…. Upon arrival at the supermarket I couldn’t find fava beans anywhere. Of course I was looking through the canned and dried beans selections and thinking that maybe they had another name I just didn’t know I settled on dried lima beans because they looked like what I imagined fava beans to look like. Arriving home I checked the internet to see how close I was only to find fava beans seem to be bought fresh, and it was unlikely Shaw’s had them. Apparently you buy them in a waxy pod that you have to remove sometime during the cooking process, and inside they’re green. My lima beans were white (also known as butter beans) and from the description of the taste and texture I had no problem imagining them going well with the reworked dish I’d planned.

Pancetta…. I didn’t look hard for this, but decided to replace it with prosciutto. I love prosciutto and I thought if I bought ¼ of a pound I could have some for the dish and left overs for eating any which way I liked

Forest mushrooms… Shaw’s had shiitake mushrooms as their “exotic loose mushrooms” so they stood in as forest mushrooms.

Grapefruit vinaigrette…. I’m not a fan of grapefruit so I skipped this ingredient. If it were fish instead of chicken I might have considered it.

My lima beans were pasty white, chicken is white, and the mushrooms were pretty light too… Therefore I needed something green to finish the dish. I was looking through the leafy green section of the produce aisle when the dinosaur kale caught my eye. I’ve never cooked with kale, but I knew it has a substantial texture which I was sure would suit my dish well.

So here’s the recipe:

½ cup of lima beans
a little olive oil
1 onion
4 cloves of garlic
~100g of shiitake mushrooms
~5 strips of prosciutto
50g of butter
few drops of liquid hickory smoke
1 tbsp of chicken stock paste
½ lb of dinosaur kale
3 chicken thighs – bone and skin still attached

Soak ½ cup of lima beans in hot water for 1hr and then boil them for ~1hr in heavily salted water. Drain. Coat chicken thighs with ~3/4 tbsp of chicken stock paste. Roast in 425oF oven skin side down till chicken skin is browned. Flip thighs skin side up and roast another 30 minutes or till internal temperature is greater than 160oF. During roasting slice onions and garlic. Sautee in pan used to cook beans with a little olive oil. Add sliced mushrooms and 50g of butter. Cook until mushrooms are soft. Add prosciutto cut up into little pieces. Add ~1/2 cup of water, 1 tsp of chicken stock paste, hickory smoke and cooked lima beans back. On top of pot place bamboo steamer containing dinosaur kale with excess stalks removed. Boil for ~8-10 minutes to steam kale and reduce liquid in pot with onions, mushrooms and beans etc. When I had finished steaming the kale the liquid in the pot had all but disappeared, and the bottom had turned a golden brown. A few minutes longer and it would have burned, but the caramelization provided a wonderful flavour I’m not sure I could replicate by choice.

To serve place kale leaves on plate, followed by bean, onion, mushroom mixture, and topped with crispy roasted chicken thigh.