Chicken and Smoked Sausage Gumbo

Our city had some uncharacteristically crummy winter weather last weekend, which was all the motivation we needed to stay in and cook up some Chicken and Sausage Gumbo. This recipe comes from one of our favorite celebrity chefs, John Besh. You may remember Chef Besh from last week's king cake, and this is one of our other favorites from his NOLA cooking bible, My New Orleans.

This is another one of those low-maintenance, leisurely meals, so if you're looking for something quick, click elsewhere! The sense of satisfaction you'll get from the first spoonful, however, is worth it. Your guests will rave about its rich, smoky flavor and plentiful carnage - and by the way, invite a crowd, because this recipe serves 10-12 hungry people.

If you're intimidated by Besh's use of a cut whole chicken in this recipe, don't be. For one thing, the gumbo cooks so long that the meat falls directly off the bone - yeah, we had visions of our guests fishing drippy drumsticks out of the stock pot, too! And if you're put off by the thought of portioning a whole chicken, just go buy a package of breasts, a package of thighs, and a package of legs.

The first step is to prepare a roux, which, for the uninitiated, is an oil and flour mixture that forms the silky basis for many rich Cajun dishes. A cup of oil and a cup of all-purpose flour are combined in a very large, heavy stock pot and are whisked continuously for 15 minutes over medium-high to high heat.

Your roux will take on a luxurious dark brown color as it's heated. If at any point in your whisking the mixture begins to smell burned, move immediately to the next step, which is to add 2 large, diced onions and dial the heat back to medium low for 10 minutes. The onions will introduce some moisture back into the roux, which, along with the reduced temperatures, will keep it from scorching.

While the onions are simmering in the roux, the chicken can be seasoned. Besh recommends his signature blend of Cajun spices, which we make periodically and store in an airtight container in our pantry. If you don't have time to blend these, or aren't sure if you like them, some Tony Chachere's or any other bottled Cajun spice mixture will work just fine.

Sprinkle the chicken with your choice of spices and incorporate it into the roux, allowing each piece of chicken to brown along the bottom of the pot.

Next, add the smoked sausage, celery, bell

peppers, tomatoes, and garlic. Allow those flavors to meld for 3 minutes before adding the thyme, chicken stock, and bay leaves. (The photo at left is pre-chicken stock.) Raise the heat and bring everything to a boil, then reduce the heat to medium low and allow the gumbo to simmer for 45 minutes.

As the gumbo cooks, bits of the chicken skin will begin to float to the surface. No one wants to eat soggy chicken skin (well, no one we know, at least!), so drag your spoon through the mixture periodically, fishing out the fat and skin.

When the 45 minutes is up, you can incorporate the andouille, okra, and Worchestershire sauce. Andouille isn't something that most stores around the country keep stocked, so any sort of smoked or pre-cooked pork sausage should suffice.

Once those ingredients are incorporated, more seasoning is added - because if there's one thing good Cajuns do, it's add flavor! (Now do you understand why we're such flavor snobs when we review dishes?)

After the seasoning is added, the gumbo must simmer for another 45 minutes. (It can go even longer than that if you need it to.) While you're waiting, it's a good time to prepare the rice over which you're going to serve your wonderful feast. Besh offers his own special recipe for Basic White Rice in his book, but any long grain white rice will work just fine.

Get a load of that gumbo, will you? We dare you to eat just one bowl, it's that good. Perfect for a rainy (or snowy) weekend day, and it should yield some great lunch leftovers, too!

Usually we don't offer the Yuppie Test Kitchen Favorites crown to dishes that take a long time to prepare, but for this masterpiece we're comfortable making an exception. The truth is, as much as we love quick and easy cooking, we love plain old cooking even more, and learning from the masters is sometimes worth a little extra effort.

We suppose you could make a quick "gumbo" somehow, or let one simmer all day in a crock pot, but you probably wouldn't be able to taste the love that comes with a good roux.

Chicken and Corn Chowder

Our first foray into Williams-Sonoma's Month of 30-Minute Meals feature is Chicken and Corn Chowder.

We had to make a few substitutions this time because our grocer had run out of required ingredients:

• We used chicken tenders instead of boneless, skinless chicken thighs


• We subbed in 1 tablespoon of dried thyme instead of fresh

We should also point out that the carton of half-and-half we used provided us with only 2 cups worth, whereas the recipe calls for 2.5 cups. We didn't notice anything wrong with the texture of the chowder, though, so it was a great way to save ourselves a few calories.

The recipe called for dry white wine, and because we're often at a loss for what that means, we did some research. Savignon blanc and chardonnay are the most notable of the dry whites; pinot grigio and riesling are considered "medium-dry" whites, and can also be used. We had two bottles of savignon blanc hanging out in our wine cabinet, so we went with that.

First, the bacon is prepared in a large stock pot or dutch oven and set aside. Three tablespoons of the bacon fat are retained in the pot and are used to sautee the potatoes, corn, and red bell pepper. (Those with an aversion to bacon fat could substitute an equal quantity of canola or extra virgin olive oil.) We happen to love all things bacon, so we stuck to the recipe there.

After sauteeing the vegetables at medium heat for 5 minutes, the broth and wine are added and the mixture is brought to a boil. Once boiling, the pot is covered and cooked for 5 more minutes.

Then, the chicken is added and cooked, covered, for 5-7 more minutes.

The green onions, half and half, thyme, salt, and pepper are added, and the mixture is brought to a simmer, at which point the heat is reduced to medium low and cooked for one last 3-minute segment. The chowder can then be ladled into bowls and topped with (delicious) bacon.

Although advertised as a 30-minute meal, this took slightly longer (45 minutes) to prepare. Still, it was a low-maintenance dish and perfect for a weeknight meal. It received rave reviews from our tasters, and is definitely something we'd look to make again (although not very often - it's so rich that we're sure it's not waistline friendly!). All-in-all, a solid, easy to prepare dish to fend off the winter blues!

Kung Pao Chicken

What's the opposite of traditional American Thanksgiving food? Without a doubt, the furthest you can get is halfway around the world in Asia. That's why, after a long weekend spent gorging ourselves on turkey, stuffing, and mashed potatoes, we decided to whip up some more Chinese food. Reaching into our pile of torn-out pages from Cooking Light, we found a recipe for Kung Pao Chicken (Cooking Light, Dec 2010).

Cooking Light claims that this recipe only requires 40 minutes prep and cook time. We're happy to say, since we chose this recipe for a work night, that they were right! The chopping of the vegetables is probably the most labor intensive part of the prep, so if you want to speed things up even more, we recommend taking care of that the night before you plan to cook.

A note on ingredients: This recipe calls for 1 pound of boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Normally, we don't mind a well-cooked piece of dark meat chicken, but for some reason, the taste in this dish was just off, in a slimy way. We'd recommend using cubed chicken breast instead, for a fresher, lighter taste.

Back to the recipe...

This one was a cinch to put together. The first step is to saute the onion in sesame oil for several minutes, then the garlic for 30 seconds, and then the chicken is added and cooked until it begins to brown. The recipe states that the chicken will take approximately 3 minutes to brown, but in our experience it took a touch longer. (We're also somewhat paranoid about undercooked chicken, so your mileage may vary.)

Next, we made the sauce, combining water, cornstarch, soy sauce, brown sugar, minced ginger, and crushed red pepper. The sauce was then added to the chicken and brought to a boil.

Finally the veggies were added in. Here's where, as with most stir fried dishes, improvisation can occur. This recipe called for bell peppers and snow peas, but other sturdy vegetables could be swapped in or added. These are cooked along with the chicken until crisp-tender (about 2 minutes) and then the entire mixture is removed from the heat and sprinkled with chopped peanuts.

There wasn't anything wrong with this dish, but it was far from outstanding, as some comments on CookingLight.com might have you believe. To quote one commenter, "With so many other good Cooking Light recipes to try, I doubt I'll come back to this one." Indeed, litgourmet - we concur.

Ginger-Soy Chicken Thighs with Scallion Rice

It's time for another quickie entree! This time, we're tapping Cooking Light's immense library, where we found Ginger-Soy Chicken Thighs with Scallion Rice (Cooking Light, Nov 2010).

You'll notice that our ingredient line-up is sparse, with a solid pantry-staple-to-fresh ingredient ratio. Although this dish wasn't advertised as a budget meal in the November issue, it certainly can be pulled together with very little cash. Combined with the relative quickness with which this dish can be assembled, we've got some serious recipe virtues tonight.

Call us snobs, but we've decided we're not big boil-in-bag rice people. We've tried it a few times now, and we tend to find it a little mushy. For the sake of authenticity, we used it per the directions; if we make this again, we'll probably go back to our standard basmati.

After getting the rice going, it's time to cook the chicken. If you're using a pan that lacks non-stick properties, be sure to take your chicken out of the refrigerator ten minutes before you're ready to cook it. Allowing it to come closer to room temperature will generally prevent it from sticking to your pan.

Next, the chicken is removed from the pan and the remaining ingredients (ginger preserves, soy sauce, and garlic) are added to the pan and boiled for 2 minutes until thickened to form a sweet, tasty sauce. The chicken is dunked back into the sauce to coat, and then it's chow-time!

We enjoyed this dish for what it was: quick and easy to prepare. It's not winning you any awards, and it's probably not the kind of dish you make for company, but it is good and a good change of pace from your normal routine.

Also exciting was the opportunity to discover a new ingredient tonight: ginger preserves. The preserves, which we found in the "jams and jellies" section of our grocer, lent a subtle sweetness to the dish, and we're excited to find other recipes that use them. Three cheers for learning!

Chicken and Rice Casserole

Let's start today's dish with a disclaimer: we are not casserole people. Neither of our families made casserole dishes frequently (if at all), and it's possible that they are wonderful and we just don't have a taste for them. Bear that in mind as we dig in to this Chicken and Rice Casserole, from Cooking Light's August 2010 issue.

The first thing you should know when considering this recipe is that it takes a lot of (mostly active) time to prepare. The casserole itself bakes for just 20 minutes, but it took a whopping hour and a half, start to finish, to prepare.

You'll notice from our ingredient shot that we chose to make a few substitutions. We had some cooked boil-in-bag brown rice in the fridge from a recipe misfire the previous day. We had also used up all of our chicken broth this weekend for a batch of red beans, so we subbed in some veggie broth that was hanging out in the pantry. (We tell you this in the interest of full disclosure, because it's possible that our substitutions may have impacted the final quality of the dish.)

There are a lot of discrete steps to this dish: sauteeing, then boiling, then shredding, followed by reducing, more sauteeing, even more boiling, some baking, and some broiling. There's a little down time, but you'll probably spend the bulk of it cleaning up after yourself!

The good folks in the Cooking Light comments section have offered some time-saving tips, such as cooking the chicken and rice the night before, or just using rotisserie chicken instead. Some also threw in some additional vegetables, like carrots, to vary the texture.

And it looks like some of the earlier commenters agree with us that the dish lacks seasoning and just isn't special or exciting enough to offset the time it requires to prepare. Overall, it was a little soggy, a little needy, and just not good enough to merit making again.

Pasta Stackup with Chicken Sausage

Get a load of this hot mess:

This is what happened when we attempted the Pasta Stackup with Chicken Sausage recipe from Better Homes and Gardens. No you're right, it's not terrible, but now take a peek at how it's supposed to look. So plump and whimsical and fresh, isn't it? And ours? Not so much.

On the bright side, it does taste good, and they're right, it did only take the advertised 25 minutes to prepare, but we're left wondering where in those 4 simple steps we managed to go wrong. (Personally, I think it's the tomatoes we bought.)

We'd recommend this dish with a couple of caveats:

• Instead of slicing the sausage lengthwise in half, consider thirds or quarters instead. The results will be more easily stackable and less wobbly.
• Make sure that everyone you're preparing this for will be present and ready to eat when it comes time to serve. If your family runs on varied work and school schedules and you're planning to make up a plate for someone to enjoy later, you may uncover it to find it a little...wilty.

Good evening, fellow aspiring chefs! It’s Monday, which, if you’re like us, signifies a full, busy day capped off by a lazy night as we catch up on our favorite Sunday night programming.

With that in mind, we’ve selected a recipe marketed by Cooking Light Magazine as quick-to-prepare: Walnut and Rosemary Oven-Fried Chicken. Their test kitchen claims just 30 minutes start to finish – let’s see how we did.

Given the quantity of ingredients, you might think this dish is complex; in fact, it’s very straightforward. The prep work requires a little fine chopping, but nothing your food processor can’t handle in seconds. Furthermore, the chopped items (walnuts and rosemary) are going to the same place at the same time, so you can just toss them in and process them together if you want to save a step.

The chicken is wonderfully flavorful and the buttermilk and Dijon mixture keeps things nice and moist. Overall, we liked this dish, and – bonus! – it took exactly 30 minutes to execute, but we have a few suggestions for anyone trying it at home:

1. Use chicken tenders. If they’re readily available at your grocery store, nab them. It makes for thinner pieces that, to us, work better on salads.
2. Make extra breading. We followed the directions exactly and ran out too soon! Maybe it was due to the aforementioned chicken tenders and their additional surface area, but by the time we realized our error, our hands were too coated in raw chicken to make more.
3. Skip the recommended DIY dressing. The garlic and olive oil accompaniment recommended in the June 2010 issue is good, but not worth the extra fuss of peeling garlic. (Seriously, can anyone do that without making a huge, sticky mess?) Toss your greens with a bottled garlic-infused olive oil, or just use your favorite dressing instead. We won't tell!
4. Add some extra elements. The finished product was good on its own, but after a few bites we threw some halved red grapes and sunflower seeds on top to add a little more oomph.

With those few tweaks, this one might have to go in our standard rotation!

Ginger-Garlic Chicken with Fresh Fig Pan Sauce

Tonight in the test kitchen, we whipped up a chicken entree, paired with sauteed baby bok choy and long-grain rice. The chicken recipe, Ginger-Garlic Chicken with Fresh Fig Pan Sauce, comes from Cooking Light Magazine's August 2009 issue.

Now, typically, we'd link to the recipe in our post, but it's not available online yet. Instead, we'll provide it here along with our notes.

Ingredients:
4 (6-ounce) skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
1 teaspoon grated peeled fresh ginger
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1 large garlic clove, grated
1 tablespoon canola oil
2 tablespoons thinly sliced green onion bottoms
1 pound ripe Kadota or Brown Turkey figs, cut into 1/4-inch thick wedges
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 teaspoon dark sesame oil
2 tablespoons thinly sliced green onion tops
1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds, toasted

This recipe goes fast once you start it, so it's worth investing time upfront to prepare all the ingredients. My fiance gives me a hard time about using so many prep bowls, but I think it's worth the extra dishwashing to avoid rushing around the kitchen like a mad woman. Here's what you need to do before you start:

1. Toast the sesame seeds in a small, non-stick skillet. No oil is required; just put them in the pan over medium heat and keep 'em moving for about 3 minutes, until they start to brown.

2. Peel and grate the ginger. To save on time, we used bottled grated ginger, which resulted in less of a paste and more of a rub. We still got a great tangy ginger taste, so I wouldn't sweat the fresh ingredients on that one.

3. Grate a garlic clove. Again, to save on time and fresh ingredients, you could feasibly just used bottled minced garlic. The flavor is the same, and that's the important part.

4. Slice the figs. We nabbed 1 pound of black Mission figs on sale for $3.99; I'm not up on my fig varieties enough to tell you whether Mission figs are any different from the Kadota or Brown Turkey figs called for by the recipe, but the Mission figs sure were tasty!

5. Slice the green onion. I think it's great that this recipe utilizes the bottoms and the tops of the green onions. Usually I don't make it through a whole bundle in a week, but between this and Monday's dinner, those onions were toast.

Okay, now you're ready to go. Just grab those pantry staples and put them someplace that's easy to access from your stove.

Step 1: Place each chicken breast halfway between 2 sheets of heavy-duty plastic wrap; pound each chicken breast half to 1/4-inch thickness using a meat mallet or small heavy skillet.This brings us to our first modification. We had some chicken thighs laying around, so we used those instead of chicken breasts. The swap left no real discernable impact to taste, but the thighs do have a more slippery texture.

Step 2: Combine ginger, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and garlic in a small bowl; mash with a spoon to form a paste. Rub paste evenly over chicken; cover and chill 20 minutes.

One thing about the dishes I've tried from Cooking Light is that some - not all, but definitely some - are lacking in the seasoning department. We sensed this would be one of those, so after applying the rub to the chicken thighs, we sprinkled another 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt over them, then tossed them right into the pan.

If you want to wait the 20 minutes to let the flavor soak in, now would be a good time to start preparing your long-grain or jasmine rice. Typically, stove-top rices need about 20 minutes to simmer, which means they'd be complete right around the time your sauce finishes. Perfect!

Step 3: Heat a large nonstick skillet over meadium-high heat. Add oil to pan; swirl to coat. Add chicken to pan; cook 2 minutes on each side or until done. Remove chicken from pan; keep warm.

Now that the chicken's done, it's time to make the sauce.

Step 4: Add green onion bottoms to pan; saute 1 minute, stirring frequently. Add figs; saute 2 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, vinegar, and sesame oil; remove from heat.

At the same time we started the onions, we also began the bok choy side. We took one baby bok choy, previously sliced, and added it to a small, non-stick skillet on medium heat with about 2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil. We stirred in 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt and 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper and let it saute right along with those green onions and figs in our other pan. Baby bok choy is so tender that it was done in the three minutes it took to finish the sauce.

Plating: Spoon sauce over chicken. Sprinkle with green onion tops and sesame seeds.

The verdict: This dish was delicious and mildly sweet, and, aside from the upfront prep work and the wholly optional chicken-chilling time, took almost no time to prepare. Excellent!