Garlic Supper Club: Entrée & Support
After two consecutive garlic-less courses, it's time for the main event.
Rustic Garlic Chicken
Serves 4
2 tablespoons cooking oil
1 chicken (about 3 to 3 1/2 pounds), cut into 8 pieces
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
3 heads garlic, cloves separated [we used 8 total]
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup canned low-sodium chicken broth or homemade stock [we'd use all of our stock up on the soup, so we used store broth]
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1. Heat the oven to 400°.
2. In a Dutch oven, heat the oil over moderately high heat.
3. Sprinkle the chicken with 1 teaspoon of the salt and the pepper.
4. Cook the chicken until well browned, turning, about 8 minutes in all, and remove from the pot.
5. Reduce the heat to moderate, add the garlic, and sauté until it is starting to brown, about 3 minutes.
6. Sprinkle the flour over the garlic and stir until combined.
7. Return the chicken to the pot, cover, and bake in oven for 15 minutes.
8. Remove the pot from the oven and put it on a burner. Remove the chicken pieces from the pot. 9. Over moderately high heat, whisk in the wine and simmer for 1 minute.
10. Whisk in the broth and the remaining 12 teaspoon salt and simmer until starting to thicken, about 3 minutes.
11. Turn the heat off, whisk in the butter, and pour the sauce over the chicken.
12. Sprinkle with the parsley.
This recipe came from Food & Wine. We made a double batch. We don't own a dutch oven and I didn't realize we needed one until too late to borrow one from the ample cellars of our friends, so I cooked the chicken in a soup pot and then transferred it to a lasagna pan for baking; then the sauce went back into the soup pot for steps 8-11 before rejoining the chicken in the lasagna pan for serving. The pan was completely full, so instead of serving it family style everybody grabbed their plate and trooped into the kitchen to load up.
One of the reasons the pan was full was that in the interest of ease of cooking, I opted to spend a little more money to get boneless breasts and boneless thighs. Given the five million other things that needed to be done to prep for the meal that day, this seemed reasonable. One thing I failed to notice was that the recipe called for about 6 pounds of chicken INCLUDING BONES. So when I get 6 pounds of boneless chicken, the end result was that we had a lot more meat than intended. Cynthia, Carol & gieves took home leftovers and we still had enough left over for two or three lunches.
The chicken tasted good, and it was amply garlic with six full heads of garlic. It takes forever to peel six full heads of garlic, by the way, but fortunately I didn't have to dice or crush them or anything else beyond peeling. I'm not sure it was quite good enough to justify the tremendous effort it took to prep all the garlic or to transfer the sauce back and forth between pans multiple times, but people seemed to like it. The sauce was very thick and rich and went well our first side:
Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Serves 8
4 pounds unpeeled red potatoes, quartered [new potatoes = YUM]
10 ounces butter, room temperature
1/4 pound Romano cheese, grated [we used a lot more than that]
3 tablespoons and 2-1/2 teaspoons chopped garlic
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
2. Add potatoes and cook until tender but still firm, about 45 minutes; drain. [30 minutes was plenty]
3. Stir in butter, cheese, garlic, salt and oregano.
4. Mash with a potato masher or with an electric mixer. [did it by hand]
This recipe originally came All Recipe, where it was originally designed for 100 servings. That's not a typo; apparently it was a restaurant recipe or something. Fortunately, All Recipes let you scale the number of servings so we bought ingredients for 8. We also threw in all the chives we had leftover from the cupfakes recipes, as well as a healthy dose of garlic powder (at least 4 tablespoons).
These were even better than the mashed potatoes we made for Thanksgiving. Everybody loved them, and the sauces from the chicken tasted great with it. 10/10; would make again. We even had a little left over, but that was because everyone was saving room for desert; if we'd failed to provided that I'm sure it would have been finished off.
Broccoli with Toasted Garlic and Hazelnuts
Serves 8, roughly
2 pounds broccoli florets
1 cup large raw hazelnuts
1 head garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 lemons, juiced
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1. Use a 4 quart crockpot for best results.
2. Wash and trim broccoli, and add to crockpot.
3. Peel garlic, and add with salt and pepper. Add hazelnuts. Squeeze lemon juice evenly over the top. Toss with wooden spoons.
4. Cover and cook on high for 2 hours, or on low for about 4.
5. This is finished when broccoli has reached desired tenderness.
I found this recipe on the blog of a woman who decided to cook with a slow cooker every night for a year. In the end, she got a cookbook deal out of it. This particular recipe had some positive comments and looked promising. Great, we thought. We need one more side, this looks easy enough, and prep is limited to "cut everything up and throw it in the crock pot." What could go wrong? And we've been meaning to try to cook with the crock pot more (we used it once in 2009). And really, from that perspective it didn't go wrong. Everything fit in our 3.5 quart cooker, barely, and we stirred it occasionally. The hardest part was probably finding hazelnuts out of season.
The broccoli was the desired firmness, but the color had gone slightly off, and the garlic pieces were bluish. It didn't taste very good. Everybody tried some, we all agreed it was sub-par, at best, and probably 1/2 of it went in the trash. It's easily the worst thing we've made in three times hosting supper clubs, and arguably ever. Suffice it to say that if this had been the best thing on the table instead of the worst (by far) we would have invoked the Supper Club pizza clause, wherein the hosts order takeout for everyone.
I'm not really sure what went wrong. We followed all the directions (they weren't hard), and I don't think we overcooked it. Maybe the crock pot was too small? Maybe the broccoli wasn't good? Maybe the recipe just sucks? I don't know. That's ok, we had plenty of mashed potatoes.
The Stump Jump - South Australian Sweet Red - 2009
An annoyingly sweet red wine. I didn't much care for it. The guy at Rozi's recommended it and it fit the limited booze budget remaining, but it didn't work for me. We served it up in wine glasses generously provided by Alex & Cynthia. There were a good two glasses left in the bottle at the end of the night, which I attempted to drink the next day but ultimately dumped.
Heads of Garlic Used So Far: Eighteen, plus a lot of garlic powder.
Wow, that's a lot of food. But there's still desert coming...
Rustic Garlic Chicken
Serves 4
2 tablespoons cooking oil
1 chicken (about 3 to 3 1/2 pounds), cut into 8 pieces
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
3 heads garlic, cloves separated [we used 8 total]
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup canned low-sodium chicken broth or homemade stock [we'd use all of our stock up on the soup, so we used store broth]
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1. Heat the oven to 400°.
2. In a Dutch oven, heat the oil over moderately high heat.
3. Sprinkle the chicken with 1 teaspoon of the salt and the pepper.
4. Cook the chicken until well browned, turning, about 8 minutes in all, and remove from the pot.
5. Reduce the heat to moderate, add the garlic, and sauté until it is starting to brown, about 3 minutes.
6. Sprinkle the flour over the garlic and stir until combined.
7. Return the chicken to the pot, cover, and bake in oven for 15 minutes.
8. Remove the pot from the oven and put it on a burner. Remove the chicken pieces from the pot. 9. Over moderately high heat, whisk in the wine and simmer for 1 minute.
10. Whisk in the broth and the remaining 12 teaspoon salt and simmer until starting to thicken, about 3 minutes.
11. Turn the heat off, whisk in the butter, and pour the sauce over the chicken.
12. Sprinkle with the parsley.
This recipe came from Food & Wine. We made a double batch. We don't own a dutch oven and I didn't realize we needed one until too late to borrow one from the ample cellars of our friends, so I cooked the chicken in a soup pot and then transferred it to a lasagna pan for baking; then the sauce went back into the soup pot for steps 8-11 before rejoining the chicken in the lasagna pan for serving. The pan was completely full, so instead of serving it family style everybody grabbed their plate and trooped into the kitchen to load up.
One of the reasons the pan was full was that in the interest of ease of cooking, I opted to spend a little more money to get boneless breasts and boneless thighs. Given the five million other things that needed to be done to prep for the meal that day, this seemed reasonable. One thing I failed to notice was that the recipe called for about 6 pounds of chicken INCLUDING BONES. So when I get 6 pounds of boneless chicken, the end result was that we had a lot more meat than intended. Cynthia, Carol & gieves took home leftovers and we still had enough left over for two or three lunches.
The chicken tasted good, and it was amply garlic with six full heads of garlic. It takes forever to peel six full heads of garlic, by the way, but fortunately I didn't have to dice or crush them or anything else beyond peeling. I'm not sure it was quite good enough to justify the tremendous effort it took to prep all the garlic or to transfer the sauce back and forth between pans multiple times, but people seemed to like it. The sauce was very thick and rich and went well our first side:
Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Serves 8
4 pounds unpeeled red potatoes, quartered [new potatoes = YUM]
10 ounces butter, room temperature
1/4 pound Romano cheese, grated [we used a lot more than that]
3 tablespoons and 2-1/2 teaspoons chopped garlic
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil.
2. Add potatoes and cook until tender but still firm, about 45 minutes; drain. [30 minutes was plenty]
3. Stir in butter, cheese, garlic, salt and oregano.
4. Mash with a potato masher or with an electric mixer. [did it by hand]
This recipe originally came All Recipe, where it was originally designed for 100 servings. That's not a typo; apparently it was a restaurant recipe or something. Fortunately, All Recipes let you scale the number of servings so we bought ingredients for 8. We also threw in all the chives we had leftover from the cupfakes recipes, as well as a healthy dose of garlic powder (at least 4 tablespoons).
These were even better than the mashed potatoes we made for Thanksgiving. Everybody loved them, and the sauces from the chicken tasted great with it. 10/10; would make again. We even had a little left over, but that was because everyone was saving room for desert; if we'd failed to provided that I'm sure it would have been finished off.
Broccoli with Toasted Garlic and Hazelnuts
Serves 8, roughly
2 pounds broccoli florets
1 cup large raw hazelnuts
1 head garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 lemons, juiced
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1. Use a 4 quart crockpot for best results.
2. Wash and trim broccoli, and add to crockpot.
3. Peel garlic, and add with salt and pepper. Add hazelnuts. Squeeze lemon juice evenly over the top. Toss with wooden spoons.
4. Cover and cook on high for 2 hours, or on low for about 4.
5. This is finished when broccoli has reached desired tenderness.
I found this recipe on the blog of a woman who decided to cook with a slow cooker every night for a year. In the end, she got a cookbook deal out of it. This particular recipe had some positive comments and looked promising. Great, we thought. We need one more side, this looks easy enough, and prep is limited to "cut everything up and throw it in the crock pot." What could go wrong? And we've been meaning to try to cook with the crock pot more (we used it once in 2009). And really, from that perspective it didn't go wrong. Everything fit in our 3.5 quart cooker, barely, and we stirred it occasionally. The hardest part was probably finding hazelnuts out of season.
The broccoli was the desired firmness, but the color had gone slightly off, and the garlic pieces were bluish. It didn't taste very good. Everybody tried some, we all agreed it was sub-par, at best, and probably 1/2 of it went in the trash. It's easily the worst thing we've made in three times hosting supper clubs, and arguably ever. Suffice it to say that if this had been the best thing on the table instead of the worst (by far) we would have invoked the Supper Club pizza clause, wherein the hosts order takeout for everyone.
I'm not really sure what went wrong. We followed all the directions (they weren't hard), and I don't think we overcooked it. Maybe the crock pot was too small? Maybe the broccoli wasn't good? Maybe the recipe just sucks? I don't know. That's ok, we had plenty of mashed potatoes.
The Stump Jump - South Australian Sweet Red - 2009
An annoyingly sweet red wine. I didn't much care for it. The guy at Rozi's recommended it and it fit the limited booze budget remaining, but it didn't work for me. We served it up in wine glasses generously provided by Alex & Cynthia. There were a good two glasses left in the bottle at the end of the night, which I attempted to drink the next day but ultimately dumped.
Heads of Garlic Used So Far: Eighteen, plus a lot of garlic powder.
Wow, that's a lot of food. But there's still desert coming...