Four Great Chicken Dishes

We have had a streak of successful chicken dishes recently, so I thought I'd put them together into a theme post.

First up, a colorful Asian-inspired grilled chicken salad. Here, Melissa has marinated skinned, boneless thighs in soy sauce with sesame oil and sambal oelek, then broiled them under the oven element. The salad is a bed of mixed greens with sliced red capsicum and enoki mushrooms. Melissa made a delicious dressing by mixing the chicken drippings with a small amount of balsamic vinegar. Great salad with a light Kiwi sauvignon blanc.

For a dish more suited to cold winter evenings, Melissa made roast chicken thighs with curry-spiced green peas and garbonzo beans (chick peas). For these types of dishes Melissa always uses bone-in chicken thighs -- it's a tiny bit more trouble and a little extra fat, but all that gets you an infinitely better flavor and texture in the cooked meat. She first pan-fried the the chicken thighs to get that nicely browned skin, then moved them into a covered sauce-pot with frozen green peas, canned chick peas, chopped onions and some curry spice mix. This was cooked on medium heat until the chicken was done, and served as shown. Simple, hot and satisfying.

Another great winter dish: chicken thighs with garlic and zucchini (courgette). Melissa first rubbed the skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs with chicken stock paste for extra-rich flavor. In a medium wok-style Calphalon pan, she browned the skin of the chicken in olive oil with chopped onions, then added a half-cup of chicken stock and sliced garlic cloves, and covered to cook the poultry through. Finally, she added large slices of zucchini and finished in the covered pan to soften them up and soak in the flavor from the broth. The chicken was plated on top of a smattering of zucchini and broth and served with a glass of 2006 Black Mountain Gravel Bar chardonnay (Napa, CA). Not a bad drink for a $6 chardonnay; nicely balanced oak and fruit.

The final entry in this series of chicken dishes is a stuffed, turkey-wrapped chicken thigh with green peas. We recently hosted a poker night at our place, for which we had bought deli meats and cheese for sandwiches -- after all, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich invented the food in the mid-18th century so he could eat with one hand while continuing to play cards without getting them all greasy, or so the story goes...

At any rate, Melissa made great use of the leftover deli fare for this dish. The chicken thighs were skinned, boned and beaten out flat, then rolled up with a stuffing made of fresh chopped tomato, onion, dried sage, chopped deli slices of smoked turkey and swiss cheese, bread crumbs, salt and pepper to season and a bit of water to bind. The rolled chicken was then wrapped up in a thin slice of said turkey and cooked in the oven in a deep casserole dish. When these were finished, they were set aside so the frozen peas could be cooked in the leftover juices and bits of stuffing that had escaped during the cooking process. The stuffed chicken was served with a scoop of peas on the side. The tomato from the stuffing makes a nice visual contrast with the peas.

We had a bottle of 2005 La Patache Medoc cabernet sauvignon with this dish, which was quite nice after decanting, but we certainly could have done well to leave it on the shelf another few years. Alas, we are not yet well practiced at leaving wines on the shelf -- they tend to meet their end in our glasses in relatively short order...