Chicken | Gourmandistan

Thigh-Mastering Taiwanese General Tso’s Chicken

October 26, 2012 by Steve

When it comes to chicken, Michelle takes a dim view of dark meat. She admits the flavor is better than breast meat, especially from our local birds. But the lurking presence of fascia, tendons, cartilage and other “icky” pieces of non-contiguous chicken flesh always give her pause. Chicken thigh meat is one of the metrics Michelle uses to rate Asian restaurants (“This will tell the tale,” she reportedly once said while cutting into a piece of deep-fried Chinese restaurant chicken […]

Categories: Chicken, China, Cooking, Food, Recipes

Naked breasts: no longer a bore.

July 1, 2011 by Michelle

We’ve become quite attached to chicken bones. Not simply because in Gourmandistan most of them find their way into the stock pot. We’d also become convinced that boneless, skinless chicken breasts had no taste. We turned away from scallopine and piccata, towards baked or braised bone-in, skin-on breasts with garlic, wine and other good things. But a few recent purchases from Shannon Young of Stone Run Farms turned us around to the bare breast, and allowed us to revive a […]

Categories: Chicken, Cooking, Food, Recipes

Paella and surviving the Gourmandistan cookbook gauntlet

March 10, 2011 by Michelle

Hundreds, if not thousands, of cookbooks have seen their way in and out of Gourmandistan. The kitchen’s multiple shelves are nearly full, even though scores upon scores of volumes have been given away to friends and charities over the years and at least 50 others currently sit in an upstairs bookshelf purgatory, waiting for a decision on whether they stay or go. (We’re looking at you, Lee Brothers.) Gourmandistan’s general cookbook-keeping metric is simple: to keep a place in our […]

Categories: Chicken, Cooking, Food, Peas, Pork, Recipes, Restaurants, Rice, Spain

Modernity vs. nostalgia vs. pot pie

January 16, 2011 by Michelle

While Gourmandistan’s borders are stuffed full of scanners, digital cameras, electronic readers and other delightful devices of our electronic age, our population still clings to print, especially when it comes to cooking. Shopping lists are usually written on scraps of paper (although Steve sometimes transcribes them to his iPhone). Our shelves groan with heavy cookbooks, which Michelle recently reorganized to make room for more. As we had a lot of leftover poultry flesh from Steve’s recent rescue of the little […]

Categories: Chicken, Cooking, Food, Meat Pies, Old cookbooks, Recipes

Stock & eggs — the circle of life is complete.

October 17, 2010 by Steve

Faithful readers may recall that before Gourmandistan left for Gascony our nation’s population declined by 18—at least in spirit. The flesh of our flock remains in freezers, awaiting our final tribute to our former chickens. Steve is eager to try coq au vin, but he’ll have to wait for a visit from his friend Bill because Michelle has no interest in tenderizing tough yard birds. She thinks the best way to use them is simply making very delicious batches of […]

Categories: Basics, Chicken, Chicken keeping, Cooking, Food, Recipes

Because sometimes you get the carrot.

May 15, 2010 by Michelle

Friday night, Gourmandistan served chicken and dumplings for dinner, along with a little watercress salad. The salad we threw together in a trice—Michelle’s high leaf-selection standards were the biggest delay. The chicken and dumplings? Getting that dish together took a bit over a year. We started with several baby chicks, which grew into heritage French Houdan hens running around the yard with the rest of the flock. Actually, these Houdans spent much of their time running from the rest of […]

Categories: Chicken, Chicken keeping, Cooking, Food, Recipes, Soups & Stews • Tags: Chicken keeping

Birthday Soup

April 27, 2010 by Michelle

Recently, Michelle had a birthday. Since Steve’s is only a week after Michelle’s, the usual practice is to have a joint celebration of some sort. (This year we’re going back to Alinea in Chicago—and, in keeping with chef Grant Achatz’s direction, the only self-indulgent table shots will be a couple discretely taken with an iPhone.) But on her actual birthday, Michelle decided to cook a variation of Thomas Keller’s Chicken Soup With Dumplings. After a full day of work, she just […]

Categories: Chicken, Cooking, Food, Recipes, Soups & Stews