Crispy Chicken Thighs + Scallion Potato Cakes + Brussels Spouts - April 18

We're back and we're getting serious again.  We took the night off two weekends ago for Easter (okay that's a lie...we took the night off for the opening night of the MLB season) and last weekend we only made a side dish.

But this week, we're back and we mean business! What's the business we're dealing in?

Crispy Braised Chicken Thighs with olives, lemon, and fennel (p 30)
Scallion Potato Cakes (p 230)
Brussels Sprouts with Brown Butter and Sage (here)

We also brought in some muscle in the form of the cookbook-gifter herself, Annie! There were three of us in the kitchen and three dishes.  We'd split up and each take on a dish and meet at the end of the road with our dinner plates and appetites on the ready.

Hunter took on the Scallion Potato Cakes and christened our new mandolin slicer. The potatoes were peeled, jullienned, and fried into their ultimate glory.

No, I'm not exaggerating.  Tell me what the best way to prepare potatoes is.  That's right...fried in crispy, delicious cakes.

Annie took on the brussels sprouts.  Why didn't we use the brussels sprouts recipe in the Ad Hoc book?  Well, we couldn't find Kohlrabi (apparently it's akin to cabbage) so we tried out a different recipe we recently stumbled across.

This was our last hurrah with the brussels sprouts before they go out of season. They started out a brilliant green and became even more vibrant after a quick blanche and swim in an ice bath.

The brown butter sauce was simple and extremely tasty. The recipe yielded twice as much sauce as we needed. I saved the sauce and will be enjoying it with pasta later this week.

The sage was fried up and added atop as the finishing touch.

I took on the chicken thighs, which were unfortunately devoid of their skins. Even so, they browned nicely in the pan.

Next step was to create the braising sauce with a base of garlic, onions, and fennel. Once they were nicely softened, we added some white wine, chicken broth, lemon peels, and green olives. The colors looked great together!

The chicken thighs went back into the fragrant sauce and the dish went into the oven for a nice braise and came out looking and smelling delicious.

Our final presentation:

To finish our meal, we treated ourselves to mini cupcakes from Kumquat Cupcakery, a fantastic vendor at the Brooklyn Flea.

All in all, this was a glorious return back to our Ad Hoc Sundays. drool...

Yuck or Yum:
Crispy Braised Chicken Thighs with olives, lemon, and fennel (p 30): d-"A solid recipe that will definitely be repeated. The chicken was so tender and flavorful...and tasted even better the next day as leftovers." h-"Really tasty, especially the sauce, but I bet I would have loved it more with the skin. Eating chicken thighs with bones was a new experience." a-"Delicious! The chicken was perfectly cooked and flavorful."
Scallion Potato Cakes (p 230): d-"so glad we were able to finally use my new mandolin slicer! a good side, though we probably should have drained them on paper towels after taking them out of the pan."h- "A little oily and I preferred the thicker cakes better. The mandolin slicer really made them the perfect consistency." a-"Nice and crispy, perfect with the chicken."
Brussels Sprouts with Brown Butter and Sage: d-"I love me some brussels sprouts, but I could have done without the fried sage leaves and the butter sauce, though delicious, masked the true delicious flavor of the brussels sprouts." h-"The sauce made these awesome. Perfectly paired with the chicken." a-"Lots of extra sauce, which wasn't a bad thing, because it was so good. I didn't think the fried sage added much, so if I made again I would probably skip it."

Summer Vegetable Gratin- April 11

This past Sunday, Hunter and I were invited over to Anne Marie's new, beautiful, "i'm-ridiculously-jealous-of-how-much-sunlight-and-space-you-have-in-nyc" apartment. We were having a pot luck dinner to celebrate her birthday.

Hunter and I signed up to bring a side dish and prepared a bright, colorful dish to match the bright, colorful personality of our dinner party: Summer Vegetable Gratin (p. 202)

Now, we were a little nervous about preparing and blogging about this dish because:
1- Thomas Keller accompanies this recipe in the book with a brilliant, glossy two-page photo spread of this dish broken down (talk about some pressure to make our dish look good)
2- Our friends, Phil & Marie (who decided to purchase this cookbook after hearing me rave about it for weeks) cooked up this dish successfully the week before (that would be embarrassing if after all my talk about blogging through this cookbook this ended in the same demise as our aioli attempt).
3- We were going to be sharing this with our friends and frankly, were going to be cutting it close on time.  There was no room for error on this one.

Luckily, our dish turned out beautifully.

I've never found it difficult to get lots of veggies into my diet, but with Hunter it's the other way around.  He was a little skeptical whether he'd really enjoy a dish made with so many veggies, included tomatoes (definitely not high up on his list), and had so little cheese.

We hand-sliced all of the veggies: roma tomatoes, butternut squash, zucchini, and japanese eggplant.  I was excited about using my brand-new mandolin slicer only to realize with utmost disappointment that its settings sliced veggies that were too thin for this dish.  At least I got to work on my knife skills.

Hunter carefully layered the veggies in our baking dish and topped each layer with parmesan cheese and fresh breadcrumbs we made from a loaf of duckfat-garlic-bread (yes...duckfat).

...we threw it in the oven, et voila! DELICIOUS summer vegetable gratin!

Over at Anne Marie's, we popped open some bubbly, sat down at her new dining table, and enjoyed our dish with Anne Marie's flavor-packed sausage and peppers and asparagus.  yum.

 

Yuck or Yum:
Summer Vegetable Gratin (p 202): d- "really incredible. definitely a dish I'd make when entertaining company. I'd probably include more onions and watch them more closely so they don't come as close to burning!" h-"surprised how much i liked it.  i could have done without the tomatoes. maybe we could have replaced them with another veggie."