Chicken

You don’t need bread crumbs in my take on chicken parm. The blend of finely and coarsely grated cheese with just a little flour creates a crunchy, savory crust. I love to serve this with Salsify in Lemon Butter (page 192).

Miso, A japanese fermented soybean paste, is the ultimate marinade. It infuses chicken with a subtle yet intense salty-sweetness. Both leafy and woody herbs add freshness to this summer cookout dish.

Every home in France has a version of this rustic dish—now my home in New York does as well. I love how the vinegar infuses the chicken with a rich tanginess. Be sure to have some good bread on hand to sop up the sauce.

Boneless, skinless chicken breasts are often derided as dry and bland. But I love pounding them and then grilling them until juicy. Their subtlety makes them perfect for a range of flavors—especially in salads. This is one I eat throughout autumn as a complete meal.

This recipe is a perennial favorite in my home. Over the years, I’ve experimented with many techniques, and this one is easily the best. Brining keeps the meat moist, and brining with konbu adds an amazing savory succulence. To get crackling skin over the juicy meat, I broil the cut pieces just before serving. The combination of textures is out of this world.

I first started selling these pies at small farmers’ markets in Vermont and quickly discovered just how many people share my appreciation for them. To this day, we still have a hard time keeping them stocked at the store. This is definitely a more labor-intensive recipe than some others (allow yourself at least 2 1/2 hours from start to finish), but it is well worth it. If you’re short on time, use an already prepared rotisserie chicken, and cook the vegetables for the pie in 2 cups of store-bought chicken stock. Best of all, this pie can be made as a single pie, or as individual pies as pictured.

It’s hard to improve upon a standard, but this recipe for chicken potpie does just that. Each individual serving is topped with a ruffle-edged round of herb-flecked dough. The filling contains all the usual, well-loved components, but the creamy sauce is brightened with lemon zest.

Grilling gives these balls a nice smoky flavor, but if you’re short on time or energy, you can also just warm them in the oven or microwave them, if you prefer. The salad comes together quickly if you use canned beans, and you should always have a stash of our apple cider vinaigrette in the fridge (it can keep for three weeks).

Packed with jerk flavor and just the right amount of spice to keep you wanting more, these balls pair perfectly with sweet Mango Raisin Chutney (page 68). If you want to take the heat up a notch, add a pinch of cayenne pepper. Serve them over some fluffy white rice with Honey-Roasted Carrots with Prunes, Walnuts, and Mint (page 89). All that’s left is to put on some Bob Marley and chill out with some friends and a cold Red Stripe.

These are the sleeper hit at the shop and star in our Chicken Parm slider. Guests are always surprised by the moistness and rich taste of these balls, and the secret is ground thigh meat. Chicken thighs are packed with flavor and are a better choice than the usual dry breast meat. Try these balls with Spinach-Basil Pesto (page 58) or Parmesan Cream Sauce (page 60). You can substitute ground turkey if you can’t find ground chicken.

These balls will definitely get any party started. Buffalo’s finest bar food minus the bones makes it the perfect food to serve up for the big game, a surprising appetizer, or even passed as a fancy hors d’oeuvre. It’s the best part of hot and spicy wings with none of the mess. If you like your balls extra spicy, you can always add an extra tablespoon or two of hot sauce to the recipe. Make one batch and you’ll know why these are a staff fave and top seller at the Shop. Serve with Blue Cheese Dressing (page 70).

A ballotine is a boneless cut of any meat, fowl, or fish, stuffed and wrapped into a bundle and braised. It is like a miniature galantine, except that a galantine is a more elaborate preparation involving the whole beast, or like a roulade, which is a simpler preparation of a piece of meat pounded thin and wrapped around something. All are a form of sausage, and the stuffing can be almost anything edible. Here, the wrap is chicken breast and the something is ham sausage. You might think of it as a sausage with a sausage filling. Fancy though it might sound, its preparation is not difficult, and the outcome is decidedly elegant. Because this is a dish where the chicken takes a lead roll, it is important to have the best-tasting chicken available: organic and with a fatty skin still on the breast. It’s the skin that makes the sausage unctuous. The cheesecloth wrap ensures that the breast remains moist throughout as it braises. I serve the ballotine warm for a main dish with the braising liquid reduced to a sauce. I also serve it chilled as an appetizer. To serve chilled, refrigerate the ballotine overnight still wrapped in cheesecloth. The next day, remove the wrap, slice thinly, and arrange on a platter. Accompany with cornichons, Dijon mustard, and baguette slices.

I first tasted this delight of Asian cooking in 1971, at The Mandarin, Cecilia Chiang’s celebrated fine-dining restaurant in San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square. It was made with squab, rather than the more standard chicken. At the time, it was an anomaly, and an eye-opener to me about a rich and varied pan-Asian fare that I was just beginning to encounter. Since then, culinary relatives of that Chinese classic have become looked-for menu choices in the Thai, Lao, and Vietnamese restaurants that pepper American neighborhoods. The Southeast Asian versions, called laab, laap, larb, or larp, depending on who’s doing the translating, are basically refreshing sausage salads, sometimes made with pork, suitable for an appetizer or a meal, depending on how you want to serve them. They’re a cinch to make at home. Ground chicken works fine if you are not inclined to mince the meat with a chef’s knife. The advantage of the latter is that the sausage has a more defined texture. The roasted rice powder is an almost-secret treasure of Southeast Asian cuisine. It keeps its fragrance and savor for weeks, waiting in the cupboard for when you would like a dash of something different, subtle and nutty, on top of almost anything.

White gazpacho is a soup from the time long before there were tomatoes in Spain for making chilled red gazpacho, a familiar and beloved paean to summer. But there were almonds, garlic, chickens, and bread. White gazpacho is essentially a mild chicken soup made forceful, filling, and hearty with a garlic-almond mayonnaise and bread soaked in the broth. To make it more sumptuous, I add chicken and almond meatballs, echoing those same ancient ingredients. It is ultrarich. A bowlful with a side dish of sturdy-leaf salad garnished with orange slices suffices for a meal. A tip: The recipe calls for a total of 3/4 cup slivered blanched almonds, divided into 1/4 cup portions for three different steps. To facilitate the division, toast the whole amount of almonds in a microwave or toaster oven until the nuts begin to brown and have a toasty smell, 5 to 6 minutes, depending on how fresh they are. Set aside 1/4 cup of the toasted slivers for garnishing the soup. Pulverize the remaining 1/2 cup in a food processor until reduced to a paste. Divide the paste into two parts, one for the sausage, one for the soup.

Uncomplicated, straight from the heart of the cook to the mouth and belly of the diner via the stove, a bowl of matzo balls in chicken soup is a sure-bet comfort food. With chicken in the matzo balls and the homemade “twice-cooked” broth, that simple bowl of comfort food becomes a substantial meal. It is a good idea to make the broth and meatball mixture the day before, so that when you’re ready to eat, there’s not a long wait. Also, that way you can use the fat that congeals on top of the broth, the schmaltz, in place of butter in the matzo balls.

Crépinettes get their name from the veil fat that is used to wrap them. They were a classic at Pigby-the-Tail, one of the most requested of our sausages for uncountable neighborhood and family potlucks and summer grilling parties. It’s no wonder. A crépinette patty wrapped in its transparent caul with a whole basil leaf showing through is a thing of beauty. Caul fat is difficult to find, though that is changing with the renewed interest in charcuterie (see page 154). If you prefer to keep it simple, here is the modified recipe, caul optional. Made without caul, the crépinettes are equally delicious, though somewhat less mysterious without the umami the caul provides, and the lovely look is simulated by pressing a basil leaf on top of the patty just after cooking.

Homemade broth makes a world of difference for the better in any dish that calls for chicken broth. Happily, a light and flavorful one can be made with only chicken backs and wings and water, no other elements—carrots, onions, celery, herbs—required, and briefly simmered for one unattended hour. It’s worth making a large amount to have on hand because it stores well in the refrigerator under the protective layer of fat that solidifies on the surface when it is chilled. If the fat seal is not broken, the broth will keep for 3 weeks in the refrigerator. If you break the fat to use just part of the broth, reheat the remainder until the fat melts completely, then cool and refrigerate it, checking to be sure the fat seals the entire surface again. The broth can also be frozen for up to 6 months. In this case, the fat layer prevents ice crystals from forming across the surface. For thrift, I use backs and wings for broth. But, you can also employ legs, thighs, and breasts, use them to make the broth, then remove them to serve as part of another dish.

Homemade stock is the foundation of all truly great soups and stews. Not everyone has the time to make it, but if you do you’ll find it really makes a difference in your cooking.

This is the ultimate “anything goes” dish. All you need is some sausage and any kind of raw or cooked meat you might have on hand. We use a tasty mix of sausage, chicken, pulled pork, and ham. The only thing you can’t skip are the chicken livers. That’s what makes Dirty Rice dirty and gives it its deep, rich flavor. We’ve been servin’ it every Wednesday as a featured side, and we’ve found that Central New Yorkers really appreciate this frugal New Orleans specialty. It’s also good as a stuffing for Cornish hens, pork chops, or turkey.

Here’s a stew that comes and goes on our menu, rotating with a couple of other meat stews. It’s lighter than the others and is simmered with ten different vegetables. It’s healthy food for your meat-lovin’ soul.