All the dishes in this chapter are made with chicken thighs, because I unashamedly love them. They’re succulent—so much better than breasts, which can dry out, in fact it’s hard to overcook chicken thighs—they all cook at the same time (and quickly), and there’s no carving. If you like a mixture of thighs and drumsticks, the recipes will will work with those, too, just replace half the thighs in any dish with drumsticks.
The flavors of a tagine without the fuss. This dish is quite sweet, because of the prunes, so it does need the preserved lemon to cut through that. If you don’t like prunes (I know they divide people), use dried apricots or pitted dates instead.
Rosemary Fried Chicken recipe by Fernay McPherson of Minnie Bell’s Soul Movement, with introduction from We Are La Cocina.
This might be the ultimate lazy recipe. Short ribs, generally reserved for braising, are seared (because their perfect thickness and ridiculous marbling of fat just might make them the best cheap steak you can buy), and kimchi, which is fermented for basically forever, is made in 5 minutes (okay, so it’s more slaw than kimchi—that lactic acid tang just can’t be replicated, no matter how much salt and vinegar you use). The results are not the same, but that’s more than okay, because the results are still great.
Spatchcocking chicken, also called butterflying, calls for cutting the bird along its backbone, then opening it up so that it can lie flat in the pan. Spatchcocked chickens cook quickly and evenly, turning gorgeously brown in the process. You can ask your butcher to spatchcock the chicken for you, but it’s not a hard thing to do yourself (see instructions below). Good, sharp poultry shears are all you need.
Whenever it’s served, a scalloped potato gratin is usually the best thing on the table. With tender potatoes suffused with cream and herbs, and a burnished lid of melted, buttery cheese, there are few things more delicious. That’s why I think you should make potato gratin the centerpiece of your meal, rather than as a side dish to a juicy steak or a roast chicken. Or, if you really want both meat and potatoes, why not mix things up and make the steak the side dish to the gratin?
FESTIVE MEATBALL AND CHICKPEA STEW | TIKLİYE
Region: Şanlıurfa, Southeastern Anatolia
We think fried chicken is something that few people dislike (and if you hate it, we don’t want to know you anyway). Even when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good. Out in Cleveland, koji master Jeremy Umansky is working on a game-changing koji-cultured fried chicken that uses the mold as a crust. We're not nearly as crazy (or as cool), but we still wanted to take advantage of the amazing tenderizing and flavor-boosting properties of shio koji, a mixture of rice koji, water, and salt. So we marinated a bunch of chicken in the stuff and even incorporated some dried granular rice koji into the coating itself to produce juicy, meaty, deep golden-brown, crunchtastic chicken.
Recipe provided by chef Kwame Onwuachi of Kith and Kin in Washington, D.C. Francis Lam talks with Onwuachi about the dish and many more topics in their inteview from our episode "Kwame Onwuachi - Notes from a Young Black Chef."
This comforting soup is wonderfully creamy, with warm and satisfying hits from coriander, cumin and, most importantly, fresh turmeric. When in season, fresh turmeric is available from many supermarkets and Indian grocery stores, and you may well be able to find it online. You could use ground turmeric for this recipe if you can’t find fresh, but bear in mind its flavour is more powerful than that of fresh. The lentils and chicken work very well together, but if you prefer you can make a vegetarian version by omitting the chicken and doubling the quantity of lentils. And, as a change from soup, you could try this dish with rice and a dollop of yogurt on top.