recipe for the wicked

Last evening we entertained a motley crew of rogues and misfits in order to celebrate the birthday of the lovely Noelle. The main course was a creamy, mushroomy, wine-y, chicken-y concoction served over focaccia and sautéed, multi-coloured bell peppers.

As requested, kittens, here is the recipe for the chicken portion of the dinner from last night, condensed to serve 4 rogues and/or misfits, rather than 9:

What you need:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 lb of mushrooms (I used a combination of oyster, shiitake, and cremini) cut/broken down to bite-sized pieces

2 shallots, thinly sliced

1 red onion, thinly sliced

2 cloves of garlic, crushed

2 cups of dry, white wine

1 cup of half and half

1/4 cup of butter

1/4 cup of grated parmesan or romano cheese

1 cup of chopped, italian parsley

black pepper to taste

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 350 °F.
2. In a large skillet (if you have an oven-safe skillet, you can use it to cook the entire dish), brown the chicken breasts in 1 tablespoon of the butter.
3. Remove the breasts and deglaze the skillet with a quater to half of the wine.
4. Return the chicken breasts to the skillet.
5. Top the breast with the mushrooms, onion, shallots, and garlic.
6. Add the remainder of the wine and the butter.
7. Cook the lot of it in your oven-safe skillet at 350 °F for about 30-35 minutes, or until your meat thermometer registers an internal temperature of 170 °F.
8. Remove the chicken from the skillet and move to a dish that will catch any drippings while they rest, leaving the mushrooms, garlic, onion, shallots, and remaining sauce in the skillet.
9. Reduce the sauce in the skillet by about half, over medium heat.
10. Slowly stir in the cream and cheese until completely combined.
11. Stir in the parsley.
12. Return the breasts to the skillet and heat briefly until warm.
13. Serve the breasts and sauce over focaccia slices, halved lengthwise with grilled or sautéed vegetables of your choice.

Focaccia

By popular demand (or frustration, as the case may be) this will not be a recipe as much as it is a tutorial. I’ve shared this recipe with many people only to have them come back at me, after attempting it, with ‘IT DOESN’T WORK!!!’ which always has me scratching my head because it really does just work.

After pondering it for a while I’ve come to the conclusion that folks are a little intimidated by things which involve leavening agents and the fomentation process – I know I am. The temptation is to work it into the ground and that’s the only way one can go wrong with this recipe.

I believe I made my first (failed) attempt at focaccia about 10 years ago through the discovery of a recipe for it in grilled form in an LCBO Food & Drink magazine. It came off the bbq as a charred-bottomed lump of…something. I attempted the same recipe in the oven with better results but it came out with a very un-focaccia-like texture. No good that. So, I played with the ingredients and times and cooking methods until I came up with the recipe I share today:

Ingredients:
1 tbsp liquid honey
1 cup hot (but not boiling) water
2 tsp dry active yeast
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup yellow corn meal
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil

Instructions:

1. In a large mixing bowl, dissolve the honey in the water then sprinkle the yeast on top of this and allow to stand about 10 minutes until foamy.

Foamy yeast looks like this:

2. Add the flour, cornmeal, salt and olive oil to the yeasty mixture.

3. Stir with a wooden spoon. I believe this is where most people go wrong. It’s important to not overwork the dough – there’s no kneading involved. The aim here is to simply get all of the ingredients together as a gooey (and it really should be gooey) mess. Like so:

As you can see, the dough is not uniform. It’s sticky and doesn’t hold together very well. That’s exactly how it should be.

4. With the spoon work the dough into a rough ball and pour a little olive oil into the bowl. Coat the ball in the oil by rolling it loosely in it. Cover with a tea towel and let stand in a warm place about 20 minutes or until doubled in size.

5. Lightly oil whatever baking surface you’ll use to cook it on (this one is on my extra-uber-special pizza stone – we’ll talk about him another time) and turn your ball out onto it. Loosely pat it down to a circle then use your fingers to poke little craters into it:

6. Add your topping. On this one I used a very simple blend of 3 cloves crushed garlic, 1 tbsp oregano, loads of cracked multi-coloured pepper and olive oil but you can take the topping anywhere your little hearts desire. Using the back of a soup spoon helps to push the topping around and into the craters. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and allow the focaccia to rest as it heats up. Here’s what our delectable brain child looks like now:

7. Bake at 375 for 20 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.

Et voila! We have focaccia =)