I love preparing Chicken Galantine because it is so much more of a technique than it is a recipe.
The end goal here is to butcher a chicken such that you can open it up flat with all its bones removed and have a relatively even layer of chicken meat and skin throughout. You then proceed to stuff the chicken with whatever your heart desires, tie at together neatly and cook it however you wish.
I chose a mushroom, olive and herb stuffing because I love that the mushroom and the salty briny olives play off each other and the herbs complement and elevate the dish altogether.
This is supposed to be a kind of elegant, refined dish with a very beautiful presentation. Mine did not end up looking very pretty, but damn is it delicious!
Chicken Galantine atop a bed of arugula.
Recipe
You will need:
A whole chicken
butcher string
Ingredients for a stuffing, below are the ingredients I used
~15-20 white button and/or small portobello mushrooms
A handful or two of olives
mint, basil, cilantro, thyme
butter
We'll begin by preparing the stuffing since we want it to be at room temperature before we stuff the chicken.
Mince mushrooms and sauté in 2 tablespoons butter until nicely browned. Transfer to a bowl.
Roughly chop cilantro and olives then add to sautéed mushrooms. Chiffonade (roll the leaves up and slice) basil and mint leaves then add to sautéed mushrooms. Strip thyme leaves from stalk and add to sautéed mushrooms. Stir to combine the stuffing.
Rolled basil leaves for chiffonade.
Chiffonade of basil
Alright, the next part is the hard part.
Rather than give you a wall of text on how to properly debone a chicken, i'll give you a link to the video I used to learn how.
iPad in my spice cabinet with Jacques Pepin to walk me through butchering this chicken.
Take your time when doing this. I rushed a bit while following along and unfortunately punctured the chicken meat and skin near the legs on both sides. Also, if you chose to have a phone or tablet guide you during this process, I recommend wrapping it in clear plastic wrap so that you don't get raw chicken juices from your fingers all over your device.
A whole chicken, un-butchered. If you can find a small, young chicken at the grocery store, i'd opt for that!
All of the following steps up to the point of cooking the chicken are outlined in the video I've linked above.
Here is the whole chicken, un-butchered. A paring knife will get 99% of the work done here, but you'll need a hefty chef's knife later on to crack the chicken's leg bones.
Chicken with carcass removed.
Here, the carcass has been removed (reserve that for stock) and the fillets are on the left. Once you flip the chicken over, there will be an area between the legs and the breasts where there isn't much meat. Here you'll lay the meat from the fillets down to make the thickness more uniform.
Add the mushroom, herb and olive stuffing evenly.
Flip the chicken over, salt and pepper the meat evenly and spread the stuffing around. Be sure to stuff some inside of the legs.
Roll up the chicken with stuffing inside.
Unfortunately, the legs got messed up!
Part of my message of keeping it light in the kitchen includes taking mistakes in stride and never giving up! Naturally, my man instincts kicked in and the solution I thought of was "bacon bandage!" If you want, you can also use some aluminum foil to create a dam... but that's no fun.
Here is the chicken bandaged up with bacon strips and tied up neatly.
Assuming you're more careful than I, you can avoid the delicious bacon bandages and skip ahead to tying up the chicken as Jacques Pepin demonstrates wonderfully in the linked video.
There were no cooking instructions presented by Jacques so I roasted my Galantine in the oven for 20 minutes at 400 F and then turned on the broiler until the skin became browned.
Finished product!
I really hope that you all give the Chicken Galantine a try! The stuffing is really what makes the dish special and, if I may toot my own horn, the combination of mushroom, olives and herbs was really awesome!
Abracadabra Coffee Co. is a relative newcomer to the VT coffee scene. They began roasting coffee out of Cavendish, VT less than a year ago. I was ecstatic to find their coffee at the Healthy Living Market in South Burlington, where Abracadabra's gorgeous packaging really caught my eye. It's always exciting to see the coffee community grow and to find new roasters.
Right now, there are 3 offerings from Abracadabra available at Healthy Living and I chose the Las Nubes honey process* El Salvador. (* - for a note on what "honey process" means, check out the bottom of this post.)
I brewed Las Nubes in a Chemex, Kalita Wave, and Aeropress. I had the best results with the Kalita Wave by far.
Tasting Notes:
Interestingly, I spent more time with this coffee because cups came out distinctly 1 of 2 ways while brewing.
When my Kalita Wave brew finished between 2:45-3:00 minutes, I tasted an exceptionally sweet dried mango sweetness. Perhaps some berry notes. As the coffee sits on the palate, the sweetness fades and I notice the brightness becomes more citrusy. The finish is dry and tart.
When I let my brew time stretch to 3:30, however, the sweetness becomes much more subdued while the berry notes remain. This tart berry character really reminded me of cranberry as the package's tasting notes suggests.
Overall, this coffee is fantastic. Bravo to Abracadabra on a stellar first impression. I'm excited to continue trying their coffees.
Cheers,
David
Note:
*"Honey process" coffees, also known as "semi-washed" coffees, are processed by first placing whole coffee cherries into a water bath where the mucilage acidifies and some, but not all, of the fruit is removed from the coffee seed. Kind of like a peach with the fruity flesh still stuck to the pit. The coffee seed with the remaining mucilage still attached is then dried on raised beds or patios. During this time, a fermentation process breaks down the remaining mucilage allowing it to be mechanically removed. The important part here is that "honey process" does not mean the gooey, golden sweetener in your pantry was ever involved in the coffee's processing. Nor does it mean that the brewed coffee will taste like honey - if it does, it isn't thanks to the processing.
I recently picked up a tripod for my iPhone so that I could play around with recording video. I also had too many tomatoes on hand. This video is a result of those circumstances!
Fresh, delicious salsa
Regarding the salsa, I used
7 tomatoes, diced
1 large onion, diced
Handful of cilantro, minced
5-7 garlic cloves, minced
5 basil leaves, minced
10 mint leaves, minced
2 limes, juiced
Salt and pepper, to taste
Feel free to adjust the ingredients to your liking.
Some thoughts on improving this salsa are:
Roasting the tomatoes, onion, garlic and limes before chopping them up for a more complex flavor.
Cut the limes up into slices and muddle them up for 2 minutes so that you get an interesting flavor from the oils in the zest along with the juice.
The mint and basil aren't very detectable to me, feel free to add more or omit altogether.
There's a great multi-roaster cafe in town called Scout & Co. that features some of the best roasters in the country. I recently picked up the Peru San Fernando roasted by Heart Roasters out of Portland, Oregon.
Heart Coffee is available at Scout & Co. in Winooski and Burlington
Peru isn't a country of origin I drink coffees from very often. I'm generalizing, but many coffees from Peru aren't outstanding due to agricultural/processing practices at origin. For that reason, you don't see specialty coffee shops with Peruvian offerings on their retail shelves nearly as often as you'll find an Ethiopian, Guatemalan or Costa Rican coffee.
Nevertheless, when I saw a Heart Peru available, I jumped at the chance to try their take on it. Heart has a reputation for sourcing and roasting phenomenal coffees from less sought after origins.
I brewed up the Peru San Fernando in a Chemex and Aeropress to evaluate it.
Tasting notes:
The San Fernando has a strong chocolatey aroma and chocolate-forward flavor profile. My first impressions as I sipped it were positive. I tasted sugary sweetness, cacao nib, hazelnut and subtle stone fruit acidity on the sides of my tongue.
As usual, Heart roasts in such a way as to minimize harsh, astringent and unpleasant characteristics and highlight sweetness. If you're looking for a comforting everyday drinker I'd highly recommend this coffee!
I've always felt cooking was fun - it's just that there are so many obstacles.
Who wants to go grocery shopping for a long list of ingredients they'll probably use once, spend way too long imperfectly hacking away at vegetables, measure out all these wet and dry ingredients and wonder if they're even following instructions correctly; all at the chance of messing up and the promise of a pile of dishes! After the whole endeavor, you're dodging the kitchen for weeks until you run across some titillating recipe and remind yourself of the trouble all over again.
Sounds like a nightmare, right? Okay, bear with me guys, this is important.
Imagine this scenario instead.
You're hungry. You put a pan on the stove and heat up some oil. No recipe, just the confidence that you'll have a hot, satisfying meal in 10-15 minutes with ingredients in the 'fridge and pantry. Veggies in. Rice/pasta in. Meat in. Salt, pepper and seasonings to finish. You're done cooking when the food tastes and looks good. Your meal is delicious and the dishes are minimal.
Here's a meal that came together simply by 'cooking by feel.'
This is where you want to be. Your intuition is the only recipe you need. It is so important to lighten up and let yourself be creative. When I finally learned to trust myself I learned to enjoy cooking.
I'll be writing soon with tips on how to get to this point!
I know someone out there is saying, "Dave! I have, like, expired milk, peanut butter and instant ramen at home..."
To that I say, "Stop bein' a scrub and get yo ass some groceries fool!"
If you know me personally, you know I can get a bit obsessive about hobbies and tend to dive in head-first.
I'm not that way about all of my interests but certain things just click with me. I'm here to discuss and share my explorations of two of those hobbies: coffee and cooking.
A Chemex pourover
I'd like to make this blog useful to my readers and have some ideas on how to do so. If you've got any suggestions please feel free to drop a line in the comments.
I'm David and I'm here to share my explorations in home cooking and specialty coffee.
Although I'm fairly new to home cooking, I've been a specialty coffee enthusiast for years and have worked as a barista in a specialty café before. My mission is to follow my passions and to share them with others along the way. Kitchen it with Dave, I hope, will be one channel for me to achieve that.
