Chicken, goat cheese, arugula and… apricot jam?

Yes, apricot jam adds a perfect unexpected note to this summery sandwich of chicken, goat cheese and arugula. Recipe below.

As anyone who spends much time in the kitchen knows, inspiration can come from anywhere. A recipe you’ve seen, a farmers market find, what’s on sale at the grocery store—even something you found in the back of your pantry. The inspiration for the sandwich above began with a photograph. Specifically, this one:

It was featured in an email from epicurious.com—the subject may have been sandwiches or quick meals or who remembers now. The photo had no caption, and I never found the recipe it was illustrating, but something about the sandwich in that picture looked fresh and invitingly complex, with multiple flavors and textures coming into play.

I am very visual. I like cookbooks with lots of photos—I don’t need to see step-by-step process images, unless the technique is difficult or arcane, but I do want to see what a dish is supposed to look like when it’s done. A good food photo can help me decide whether or not to tackle a dish; it can also send me off in an entirely different direction.

That’s what this picture did. Realizing I wasn’t going to find the original recipe for it, I moved on to thinking about what kind of sandwich I might like to make and eat. I typed up this brief note to myself and stored it both on my computer desktop and in the back of my brain:

Panini or pita or tortilla wrap with chicken or turkey or duck, sautéed apples or apricot jam and cheese—goat cheese? Gruyere? Brie?

From time to time, I would see the file on the desktop and start thinking about the sandwich. Before long, it had evolved in my head to the sandwich I ended up making this weekend, with just five ingredients: Leftover roast chicken, goat cheese, arugula, apricot jam and a baguette. Okay, six if you count the salt, which was crucial.

It. Was. Wonderful. Please indulge me as I engage in what I hope will be seen as an uncharacteristic bit of bragging. But this is more about growth in the kitchen than how cool I am. First, this sandwich was entirely mine. As virtually everyone from home cooks to rockstar chefs does from time to time, I’ll occasionally start with a recipe or recipes and adapt, tweak, substitute, etcetera until I’ve come up with something inspired by the original, but more or less my own. Not this baby. After really very little thinking about it, the sandwich kind of popped into my head fully formed, not an adaptation, but my own creation. Second, from the time I’d decided what it was going to be, I knew exactly what it would taste like. Every time I thought of making it, I could taste it. This doesn’t often happen to me. Usually when I start playing with food ideas in my head, I’ll kinda sorta know how the finished product will taste. On this one, I nailed it.

And how did it taste? Summery. Light but satisfyingly filling. Every ingredient played an important role—there was nothing you could remove and have it taste as good, and there was nothing more to add. I always enjoy roast chicken, both for its own flavor and for its blank canvas quality that makes it work so well with so many different ingredients. The sweetness of the apricot jam played off the goat cheese perfectly, each counterbalancing the other. The arugula added a nice peppery crunch. The baguette, which had been the biggest question mark for me, was exactly the right choice, crusty and chewy, but without any multi-grained assertiveness to get in the way of the other flavors. Even the lowly salt played a crucial role as I said earlier. As I mixed the chicken and the apricot jam, I was proceeding cautiously; I didn’t suddenly want some cloying sweet & sour chicken thing happening. Marion and I were both picking and tasting, and she suggested a little salt before adding more jam. Bingo. It brought the apricot flavor forward and boosted the chicken’s flavor at the same time.

Marion—not exactly my toughest critic, but the one whose opinion matters most—liked it a lot. One of the interesting things she said about it was that it was unlike anything else I’d ever made for her. And when I thought about it, I had to agree.

Bawdy chicken: Spicy Grilled Chicken Paillards

Cumin and paprika add plenty of flavor to Spicy Grilled Chicken Paillards, but not much heat, as do orange juice, lemon juice, honey, cinnamon and red pepper flakes to the sauce. Recipes below.

Marion has accused me in the past of being a culinary Francophile. And I’m the first to admit she’s right. Casting about for some grilling ideas for this week’s post, I came across a chicken recipe that called for chicken breasts sliced or lightly pounded into flattened pieces. If they’d used the modern term for this thin cut of meat, cutlet, I probably wouldn’t have given it a second glance. But no, they used the older French term, paillard [pronounced pah-YAHR], apparently named for a late 19th century Parisian restaurateur. Okay, I was interested.

I say “apparently” because, while food sources told the above story, numerous online French-English dictionaries made no mention of Monsieur Paillard or his cutlet. Instead, every last one of them defined paillard as some variation of bawdy, coarse, rude, lewd, libertine… Given the origin of Blue Kitchen’s name, I was of course totally hooked now. I had to make some bawdy chicken.

The first step was to find a recipe or some recipes to play with. After looking at a number of them, I landed on one with Moroccan influences. Considering Morocco’s French ties, it seemed like a good way to go. As with many North African savory dishes, it includes sweetness, a little heat and the ubiquitous cumin. The heat in this case is extremely subtle—mainly you notice a wonderful mix of flavors.

Paillards aren’t always chicken. They can also be made from boneless slices of turkey, veal, beef and pork. Because they’re so thin—typically a mere 1/4-inch to 3/8-inch thick—they’re meant to be cooked quickly. That makes them perfect for weeknight meals or anytime you have lots of other things you need to be doing rather than cooking.

Pounding the chicken—or any other meat—into thin slices also beautifully tenderizes it. Even cheaper, tougher cuts of meat fare well with this process. You can sauté paillards, cook them in a grill pan or actually grill them as I did here.

Gazpacho: Cold, tangy, perfect for summer

Chilled, chunky and chock full of healthy vegetables, this lively gazpacho makes a refreshing, simple first course all summer long.

Late last August, I was surprised to see that I hadn’t written about any of the cold soups we enjoy in the spring and summer, so I somewhat belatedly posted a recipe for Watercress Vichyssoise. In an effort to not make the same mistake twice [after all, there are so many exciting new mistakes to be made], I’m turning the kitchen over to Marion and her wonderful gazpacho this week.

I remember the first time I had pizza. I remember the first time I used chopsticks and the first time I made a pot roast and the first time I saw Terry and my first actual cocktail in an actual bar [it was a brandy Alexander—hey, I was an entry-level drinker—and it was Chumley’s].

I no longer remember the first time I had gazpacho. Although clearly there must have been a day when this Spanish soup came into our life, somehow I no longer remember it. Looking back it seems gazpacho has always been there for me, alongside Chinese food and raspberries and inhaling and exhaling.

Gazpacho is so much a part of our everyday life that it is a staple in our household every summer. Preparing it is so simple, almost as simple as eating it, and it is ever so useful. You can serve it to a vegan. You can make it when you don’t have electricity as long as you have a knife and a bowl and a willingness to chop. It is cooling and calming, it is reliable, it is esthetically pleasing, and it is full of healthy deliciousness.

Culinary histories trace gazpacho back to the Middle Ages in Andalusia. Originally, gazpacho was most likely pounded bread, garlic, oil, and water—the most basic sustenance, food for survival. Then came the Columbian era, and the arrival of the tomato from the New World. By 1600, tomatoes were being cultivated and devoured all over the Mediterranean. I sometimes wonder which tomato dish came first—the cooked or the raw. I can see some practical Spanish countrywoman, standing among her vines on a slow hot morning, holding the hot red fruit in her hand and thinking It seems a shame to fire up the stove.

Alice B. Toklas believed that gazpacho had inspired many cultures to create their own cold soups of chopped fresh vegetables. Actually, she regarded a host of cold vegetable-based soups—gazpacho, Polish chlodnik, Turkish cacik, and Greek tarata—as the same soup, which may be stretching things from the pragmatic side, but I get her taxonomic point.

There are many versions of gazpacho—probably more versions than there are cooks. Some call for hard-boiled, sieved eggs, some for ham, shrimp, peaches, veal broth, beef broth, red wine, aquavit, strawberries, yellow tomatoes, green tomatoes, roasted tomatoes. There are some recipes floating around online that are based on watermelon. The classic Andalusian form also calls for a paste of bread and olive oil, or a paste of pounded almonds. I want to try them all.

Spring, schming—It might as well be chili dogs

The lack of reliably warm weather this spring calls for comfort food, and Turkey Chili Dogs don’t just hit the spot—they obliterate it. Recipe below.

This week’s post was supposed to be a light chicken sandwich celebrating the flavors of spring. I’d already created it in my head, and just thinking of it now, I can actually taste it.

But spring is being especially coy this year. We should be flinging windows open, airing out the apartment and waking to birds singing. Instead, we awoke this weekend to a cold rain being blown hard against the windows. The temperature was in the 40s and not predicted to do a lot better than the low 50s, and besides the rain, there was a wind advisory.

I had to absolutely will myself out of the warm bed to get my day started. Clearly, some light sandwich celebrating spring was not going to happen. Comfort food was called for. And to my way of thinking, there are few foods more comforting than a chili dog on a raw day.

We’ve sung the praises of chili here before. And we’ve presented various takes on it—my three-bean chili, Marion’s amazing chili and even a white chili. Whatever your regional preferences—beans, no beans, meat, no meat—chili is just plain good.

Hot dogs are less universally understood. Growing up in St. Louis, hot dogs were what you got at the ball game or something you threw on the barbecue grill for the kids when the grown-ups were having burgers. So I was somewhat mystified when I moved to Chicago the first time [this is our second tour of duty here, as I like to put it] and there seemed to be a hot dog stand every other block or so [outrageous real estate prices have diminished the number of hot dog places severely, but Chicagoans can still find plenty of places to get a great dog].

Then I had one. The word revelation springs to mind. As Doug of Hot Doug’s says, “There are no two finer words in the English language than ‘encased meats,’ my friend.” Unless you live in Chicago or New York, you may not get this level of fervor for the seemingly lowly hot dog. And even if you do get them, you’ll get all kinds of takes on what makes the perfect dog, some of them regional. Here is how NPR’s Daniel Pinkwater, born in Chicago but now living in exile in upstate New York, describes a Chicago dog:

“First, it’s on a poppy-seed bun which is doughy and substantial, but not heavy. The bun is lightly steamed at the point of serving.

“The hot dog is all beef, spicier than the New York variety. It is steamed and has a natural casing. It snaps when you bite into it, and squirts hot deliciousness. A variant is the Polish sausage which the gods ate on Olympus.
This is what goes on it:
• Yellow mustard
• Bright green pickle relish
• Chopped onion
• A kosher pickle spear
• Two slices of tomato
• Two tiny but devastating peppers
• And all-important, celery salt

“All of this is fitted together with fiendish cleverness enabling the eater to get most of it in his mouth, and only a little on his shirt. If there are fries, they are hand cut, skinny and glorious.”

Chili + Dog: The whole equals waaaay more than the sum of its parts. Okay, we’ve established that these foods are wonderful in their own right. I’d heard that chili dogs were even better, but it took Marion to introduce me to their delights. It was a rainy Saturday afternoon, as I recall, and we suddenly found ourselves in the lovely semi-deserted darkness of the original John Barleycorn, a long, rambling bar and restaurant on Lincoln Avenue. I had a burger in mind, but Marion started exclaiming when she found chili dogs on the menu. I was skeptical, but even back then, I’d learned to trust her taste buds.

So we each ordered one. Honestly, it fell a little bit short of amazing. But it showed me amazing could be had. As with almost every chili dog you’ll find in a bar, restaurant or hot dog stand, there wasn’t enough chili. Here’s how you can tell: If you can pick up the chili dog and eat it without utensils, there’s not enough chili. Hell, if you can see the hot dog or much of the bun, there’s not enough chili. We bury them. In fact, for the photo above, I kind of skimped on the chili just so you could see the dog and bun.

But the wonder of the combined flavors was undeniable. Our first impulse was to order more there and tell them not to be so shy with the chili. But then we had a better idea. We hightailed it out of the bar, headed for the grocery store and then went home and cooked up the first of many chili dog orgies.

Pasta Frittata: Eggs elevated

Peppers, Parmesan and leftover pasta come together beautifully to give eggs a rustic sophistication, as Pasta Frittata. Recipe below.

I don’t know about where you are, but here in Chicago, gas has already blown past four dollars a gallon. And milk is getting close to that price. So when I saw that Ginny over at Just Get Floury had posted a challenge to make a dish that serves at least two people for five dollars or less, it sounded like an idea whose time had come.

Ginny calls her event the Dollar Dish Duel, and while she just challenges her readers to “make a dish for $5 that must feed at least two people,” I took it to mean more than a simple side dish [who can't steam some green beans for under five bucks, for instance]. To me, the challenge was to make something substantial that either stood alone as a meal or became a meal with the addition of a small salad or the aforementioned green beans or, as I chose at the last minute, some fresh strawberries.

Ginny says in her rules that you can use three staples from your pantry—salt, pepper and oil were her examples—without counting them in your budget [there's still time to enter, by the way—the deadline is May 5]. I further interpreted the rules to mean that if I only used a portion of something and the rest were saved for a later use, I could count the cost of only the portion I used against my five-buck limit.

With this wiggle room, even meat could work within the guidelines. And after all, I’ll often buy a package of chicken breasts or ground beef planning to get two meals from it. But as much as I love meat, I decided it would be more interesting to make a meal without it for this event.

Most important, though, it had to be good. I wasn’t interested in simply proving I could whip up a meal for cheap. The meal had to be something I would happily serve, if not to company, then as a family dinner. Something we would happily eat. And something I would happily make again.

Soups and scrambles and stir fry all immediately came to mind, but nothing really got me excited. Soups and I are taking a little break right now; I just feel the need to see other courses. Scrambles sounded too breakfasty. And stir fry main courses without meat almost always involve tofu. Yawn.

Then I thought of an elevated form of scrambled eggs: Italian frittatas. Specifically, a frittata Marion has made a number of times, using leftover pasta. She hadn’t made it in so long that we’d forgotten where she first saw a recipe—or even what to call it. The classic frittata is kind of an Italian omelet and doesn’t include pasta.

A little noodling around on Google, though, turned up boatloads of frittata recipes using pasta—and leftover pasta, at that. Some were baked, some were started on the stovetop and then broiled to finish [the classic frittata technique]. Some used cheese, some didn’t. Some even insisted on using pasta mixed with red sauce, which sounded more like a desperate measure than a recipe to me. But virtually all of them involved mixing the beaten eggs with the boiled pasta before any of it went into the pan. I followed Marion’s approach instead, sautéing the cooked pasta in the skillet before adding the eggs. It gives the frittata a satisfying crunchy quality we really enjoy.

The taste of spring: Seasonal fava beans and pasta

Celebrate spring with colorful, lively Fettuccine with Fava Beans, Red Bell Pepper and Bacon. Lemon juice and zest help brighten things up. Recipe below.

Fava beans have always sounded like too much work to me. I mean, you have to shell them twice—once to get them out of their pods and then again to remove the tough, waxy skin on each bean. It didn’t sound like there was an actual degree of difficulty involved, as they say in certain sports competitions, just more like a degree of pain-in-the-buttedness. But then Susan over at Food Blogga did a post that made shelling them look fairly easy, maybe even semi-fun. Okay, I was semi-interested.

Then the current issue of Bon Appétit featured a beautiful pasta dish using fava beans, Italian sausage and plum tomatoes. I was a little more interested. So I started poking around on epicurious.com, where more than one recipe compared them to edamame, the delicious protein-rich, slightly crunchy, slightly nutty Japanese soybean snack. Sign me up.

Taking my usual approach, I read a number of recipes and then came up with one of my own, a pasta dish that celebrates the seasonality of fava beans—they’re only readily available a couple/few months in spring/summer. I added red bell pepper as much for color contrast with the bright green beans as for flavor, along with some onion and garlic. Then I brightened the flavor with lemon juice and zest. And I balanced all this lively produce goodness with nature’s perfect food, bacon.

Shelling the beans. This is the elephant in the room. May as well get it out of the way right now. I’d always been put off by what sounded like a labor intensive, time-consuming task. Susan made it look easy—just blanch the beans and squirt them right out of their skins. The truth fell somewhere in the middle for me.

One food blogger called shelling fava beans almost zenlike, and I could kind of see what he meant. Simple, humble processes like this are why we cook. Why I cook, anyway, or part of the reason. The very act of making something with my hands, something I will eat and share with others, is one of the most direct things I do in the everyday living of my life. By way of contrast, my equivalent of hunting and gathering, of helping put food on the table and a roof over our heads, is writing advertising copy.

Zen, schmen. How do you actually shell them? Put a pot of water on to boil so you can blanch the individual beans for part two of the shelling process. While you’re at it, put something on the boombox or radio or TV or whatever for company. Then have at it.

Grasp a fava bean pod in one hand and twist/snap/tear off the end that attaches to the plant. Then tear open the pod and remove the beans. Sometimes the pod will split open along the seam, sometimes not.

When the water is boiling, dump the shelled beans in and blanch them for 2 to 3 minutes. Then drain them and plunge them into a bowl of iced water to stop the cooking. When they’ve cooled, remove the tough outer skin. According to Susan, you can just squeeze them at one end and the beans will pop out. That didn’t happen for me, so I was delighted to later read that even Clotilde over at Chocolate & Zucchini had not been able to do this. We both came upon a similar simple solution, though. Just pinch a little tear in the skin with your thumbnail; then when you squeeze it, the bean will indeed shoot right out.

A pound of unshelled fava beans in their pods will produce about a cup of shelled beans. While producing my cup for this recipe, I remembered wandering through my Aunt Veta’s Mississippi kitchen one summer as a boy. Three or four women were in there shelling just-picked butter beans, bushel basketsful of them, probably still warm from the summer sun. It didn’t look like my idea of fun, but they were having a high old time, gossiping, laughing and “carryin’ on,” as Aunt Veta would put it.

Ethnic Paris: Spicy shrimp from the Indian Ocean

Easy, flavorful Shrimp Rougail [Rougail de Crevette], originally from tiny islands in the Indian Ocean, is one of many exotic taste treats found throughout Paris—and in The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. Cumin, fresh ginger and a fiery little Thai pepper [whose heat can be dialed down] make it a lively main course.

Last week I wrote about crêpes, calling them the ultimate French comfort food. And they are indeed quintessentially French, as are old men in berets, accordion players on the Paris Metro and six-week vacations.

But in Paris, there’s a whole other culinary world besides crusty baguettes, café au lait and stinky cheeses. As with many major cities, Paris is a magnet to people from all over the world. And those people bring their cooking with them, giving each neighborhood or arrondissement its own special flavor.

On one visit to Paris, for instance, Marion went with our friend Marianne, who lives in Paris and who was born in Hong Kong, to the 13th arrondissement for lunch. The 13th really is a mix of things Paris was and has become—the pretty little Butte aux Cailles neighborhood, a tiny quiet 19th century enclave; and the biggest Chinatown in Paris. The latter was their destination. They perused a high-rise shopping mall and then had lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant. What impressed Marion most that day was that all of their transactions there in the heart of Paris—in the restaurant and in the mall—were conducted in Mandarin. English would get you nowhere, French and German would get you nowhere.

As further proof of the diverse wealth of Paris, just take a look at The Ethnic Paris Cookbook. Sarah over at The Delicious Life recently received a review copy and generously offered it up as a prize in an impromptu drawing. And I won!

This colorful cookbook has more than 100 recipes from internationally renowned chefs who have come from all over the globe to make Paris their home. Everywhere from Cameroon to Cambodia, China to the Caribbean.

And then there’s the delicious, lively shrimp rougail above, from the Indian Ocean islands of Réunion and Mauritius. Nominally part of Africa, these tiny specks of land some 500 miles east of Madagascar are more shaped by their inhabitants’ ancestries—Indian, African, Malagasy, Chinese and ethnic French—and by their ties with France and Great Britain than they are by their proximity to the African continent.

Rougail can be a fiery condiment or a simple, spicy tomato-based sauce as it is in this easy-to-make main course, which I adapted from the book.

Crêpes: A delicious way to always have Paris

I’ve been thinking of Paris lately, and that has me thinking of crêpes. And as wonderful as dessert crêpes may be, the savory variety is what I always crave. Recipes for these delightful, paper-thin French pancakes and a satisfying poulet aux champignons [chicken in mushrooms] filling below.

This week, Blue Kitchen is all about France. A couple of events conspired to put me in this state of mind. First, the excellent biopic of French singer Edith Piaf, La Vie en Rose, has come out on DVD [more about this at What's on the kitchen boombox?]. And just last Friday, our friend Cara Black was in town promoting Murder in the Rue de Paradis [An Aimée Leduc Investigation], the latest in her acclaimed series of Paris-based mysteries [more about this at WTF? Random food for thought]. If you’re still hungry for Paris and France when you’ve finished here, you’ll find some interesting links at the end of this post.

A movie and a book got me pointed in the general direction of “something French.” What focused me on crêpes was Ben’s post about strawberry crêpes at What’s Cooking?

For me, crêpes are the ultimate French comfort food—the humble pancake made elegantly thin and filled with all manner of delicious concoctions, both sweet and savory. In Paris, they can even be gotten as street food, an even bigger treat. You get to watch your crêpe be made right in front of you, and then it’s wrapped and ready to eat on the go, as you make your way to your next attraction.

In Chicago, my go to place for crêpes is La Crêperie. This very French little neighborhood bistro opened its doors in 1972 and probably hasn’t been updated since. It has the wonderful, slightly scruffy, tobacco-stained patina that only age can give it. Some days, the food is stellar, others merely dependably good. But given the friendly, unhurried service and charming setting, that’s plenty good for me.

La Crêperie makes two different kinds of crêpes for their sweet and savory offerings. The crêpes for savory main courses are made with buckwheat flour. So when I started looking for recipes, that was one of the ingredients I had in mind. As always, I found numerous recipes, looked for similarities and differences, then created my own.

For the filling, I just knew what I had in mind, my own take on poulet aux champignons—chicken, mushrooms, wine, cream—and winged it. One of the beauties of crêpes, though, is that they are so wonderfully versatile; La Crêperie’s menu includes 15 different fillings that run the gamut from coq au vin to scallops to a chicken curry! So while I’ll give you my recipe below, once you’ve made the crêpes, feel free to experiment away with the fillings.

Straddling seasons: Pot roast and fresh asparagus

Cooking for the calendar, this weekend saw some beautifully skinny fresh asparagus, simply prepared. Cooking for the actual weather, though, called for a hearty pot roast. Recipes below.

Before we get to the food, a quick little digression about blogging.
When I started Blue Kitchen a year and change ago, I knew it would be a way to indulge my passions for food, photography and writing. I also knew it would make me think more about food and cooking, ultimately making me a better cook. What I didn’t know is what a wonderful international network of warm, sharing friends and fellow bloggers I’d be plugging into.

This kind of welcoming environment isn’t necessarily unique to food blogging, but it seems to be more prevalent here than elsewhere. Interestingly, according to a food blogger who specializes in restaurant reviews, it’s mainly found among bloggers who write about making food, not critiquing it. My friend Ronnie writes two blogs, the wonderfully eclectic Out Of My Head and the advice-filled Work Coach. She also reads a wide range of blogs and says she hasn’t found this kind of community anywhere else.

The latest example of this comes from Lydia over at The Perfect Pantry. She was just given the E for Excellent Award—by four different bloggers, no less. She then took a turn, passing the award along to five other blogs. Including this one. Thanks so much, Lydia! I learn something new every time I read your blog, so it means a lot that you thought of me.

And now my turn. The easiest thing would be to award it to everyone in my blogroll. They’re all wonderful sources of information and great reads to boot. But I’ll try to narrow it down to five. And I’m sticking with food blogs, just because [we food bloggers are a clannish lot]. Just as Lydia was in her choices, I’m every bit as swayed by entertaining writing as I am by good food. Maybe even more so. These bloggers deliver, post after post. Every one of them has made me think—and made me a better cook in the process:

Ann, at A Chicken in Every Granny Cart; Christina, at A Thinking Stomach; Jennifer, at Last Night’s Dinner; Patricia, at Technicolor Kitchen and Toni, at Daily Bread Journal.

Okay, back to the kitchen. Here in Chicago, the calendar says spring [yeah, it says that everywhere north of the Equator, I know]. The thermometer takes a different view, often dipping below freezing. In fact, the tulips you see here were an impulse purchase, something to remind us that it is indeed spring. So when we were planning one of those Sunday dinners we don’t do enough of, I decided to split the difference. For the calendar, I made fresh asparagus, suddenly plentiful and affordable again. And for the chilly weather, I made a satisfying pot roast, complete with chunky vegetables. Let’s start with that.

I’ve been on an oven braising kick lately. Soon the weather will heat up and I won’t want to do the same to the kitchen. But for now, it’s a great way to let tough cuts of meat like chuck roast get all nice and tender without drying out. You’ll find more about the technique here. My other pot roast recipe in the archives is a more exotic take on this humble, hearty meal, made with Biryani Curry Paste and pan roasted on the stovetop. I call it Terry’s Mysterious Pot Roast. You can use the stovetop technique for the more traditional recipe below, but honestly, oven braising will keep it more moist.

Sweet fire: Chicken, chili paste and maple syrup?

East meets Nor’east in an improvised Chinese chicken dish that gets its heat from potent chili paste, its complexity from five-spice powder and its subtle sweetness from New England maple syrup. It’s paired with another improvisation, my first attempt at Szechuan green beans with garlic. Recipes below.

The first full day of spring in Chicago saw snowflakes the size of dinner plates. Lots of them. Just to the north of us, near the Wisconsin border, they got 11 inches of the heavy “heart attack” snow. Having lived here as long as I have, I’m not even surprised by this anymore. I am annoyed by it, though.

My first thought for this week’s post was something hearty—a soup, a stew—something that reflected the actual weather, not the calendar. But then I decided to turn up the heat with spiciness instead. My patented poking around—online, at the library, in our cookbook collection—got me started down the path to making something Chinese. When I found a pork dish that combined chili paste [you can also use chili sauce with garlic---see Kitchen Notes], five-spice powder—both Chinese staples—with maple syrup[?], I was intrigued. But having just served up pork here last week, I decided to adapt it for chicken.

The main course sort of nailed down, I started thinking vegetables. Just about our favorite restaurant in Chicago’s Chinatown is Lao Sze Chuan [the only reason I slightly hedge my bets here is that owner/chef Tony has recently opened two new restaurants, also wonderful, Lao Shanghai and Lao Beijing]. And one of our favorite vegetable dishes at Lao Sze Chuan is the Szechaun green beans, crisp and garlicky. I knew I wouldn’t match these, but I thought I might find a recipe to help me come close. What I found was a bewildering array of recipes, none of them even sounding vaguely close to this pared down dish. So I improvised, coming up with something very different but pretty good, if I say so myself. Best of all, the most exotic ingredient in it is soy sauce. So if the chili paste and five spice powder have put you off the chicken, give these a try.

But first, about those exotic ingredients. Living in Chicago, I have access to a dazzling array of ingredients from many cultures and cuisines. And in many cities, both these ingredients are available in Asian markets and in a growing number of supermarkets.

Chili paste or sauce is made of crushed chili peppers, oil, vinegar, seasonings and sometimes garlic. It has been accurately described as fiery hot, but you can control the heat by adjusting the amount you use.

Five-spice powder is a dry spice blend that incorporates the five basic flavors of Chinese cooking—sweet, sour, bitter, savory and salty. Used widely in Chinese cuisine, there are many variations on the theme. But a fairly standard recipe calls for fennel, cloves, cinnamon, star anise and Szechuan peppercorns. It is a very intense spice mix, not in terms of heat, but in terms of flavor. Recipes tend to call for fairly small amounts. Trust them.

I searched the Internet for what seemed like minutes for substitutes for these ingredients. Alas, no luck. The couple of recipes I found for chili paste sounded pretty dubious. And every recipe for five-spice powder called for Szechuan peppercorns. If you can find those, finding actual five-spice powder should be a breeze. And as Lydia over at The Perfect Pantry rightly points out, they’re not even really peppercorns, so substituting regular peppercorns will yield something that falls far flat of the real thing. If anyone out there has substitutes they’ve tried and like, please leave a comment.

Well, blah, blah, blah. How about some recipes?