Weeknight Cooking:
Hoppin' John with Andouille

"Eat poor that day, eat rich the rest of the year.
Rice for riches and peas for peace."
– Southern saying on eating a dish of Hoppin' John
on New Year's Day






How Hoppin' John, a Carolina low country dish with Carribbean / African roots, found its way on the pages of the "Weeknight Cooking" section of Food Network's magazine might not be as unusual as it first looks.  Beans, rice, and super food greens are trending upward on the American culinary scene at

a fast rate.  Beans, legumes, rice and greens add complex nutrients to our diets while also providing in some cases fairly substantial proteins.  What used to be eaten as a festive southern dish thought to be bring good luck for the coming year, now offers the eater a dish of great variety, health and substance.  At the base of the dish is a combination of black eyed peas, a 10-oz bag of frozen okra, white rice and celery; at the top of the plate is the sausage (I chose Polish as a family-friendly option, but recipe calls for the more spicy Andouille), cut into 1/4

inch thick pieces (I cut the slices into quarters, which spread the sausage out nicely), and two plum tomatoes, seeded and chopped.  To begin, the sausage and okra is cooked together in a pan, just long enough so that browned but remembering that when okra is cooked too long it becomes gooey as it

contains soluble fiber.  Set aside, then cook a diced yellow pepper, scallions and three stalks of celery in skillet.  Add three minced garlic cloves, a pinch of thyme, salt then 1 cup white rice to coat.  Stir in black-eyed peas and two cups of water, allowing to boil then reduce for around 18 minutes.  Once you re-top this panful with the sausage and okra, even though it resembles something like a true hodgepodge of ingredients, the result is a sort of comfort food stew which is dynamically textured and 'hops' with each forkful of sausage.

Coq Au Vin

"Woe to the child who tried to pass off a substitute hen from the one Maman wanted! Inevitably, after a morning of scrambling up haystacks or crawling through the woodpile to find the hiding place, the old hen was caught and brought to her just reward."
– Monique Hooker, from Cooking with the Seasons







Monique Hooker tells us in the introduction to her wonderfully personal Cooking with Seasons that "I learned early and well that the hand of the seasonal cook is the link between the good earth and family.  The important lesson was taught to me while I was growing up on our family's farm in Brittany.  There, my mother's daily call of 'table!' was a welcome summons to meals celebrating the bounty of each season."  Each spring Monique and her siblings would be asked to track down a chosen hen, which they did, and their just reward "came the next day, as a pot of coq au vin proudly took center

stage on the dinner table."  As I tried her particular recipe (have tried at least two others), it struck me that the most obvious thing in the world is true about this symbolically French recipe named "chicken in wine" – be sure to pick a proper red cooking wine!  Although the recipe does simply call for 4 cups of red wine, the type I chose to execute the dish with, Cupcake Red Velvet,  did not work as intended.

The rest of the ingredients were quite beautiful and the chicken itself turned out tender and complex to taste.  It calls for 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed, 1 leek trimmed and coarsely chopped, 1/2 pound mushrooms quartered, diced onion, and one half an onion studded with 4 cloves. Place a 3-lb chicken (in 8 pieces) in a pan with these ingredients, leaf and thyme, the bottle of wine and let sit in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours or overnight.  Some of the next steps will be to pull out the chicken from marinade, pat dry, brown the chicken on both sides, and eventually add some flour back into the pot with all the ingredients for thickening and stir in the wine marinade plus enough chicken stock to cover the chicken and simmer for at least an hour.  This process, as chef Hooker so wonderfully conveys, reveals an earthy kitchen aroma virtually unrivaled.  However, and this is a big however....choose the correct red wine!  Elizabeth David, the virtuoso French culinary writer, recommends in her own recipe for Coq Au Vin French Provincial Cooking, a Burgundy or Beaujolais red.  I used what I thought might be appropriate but the Cupcake, it turned out, was far too purple, of all things.  A combination of Zinfandel, Merlot, and Petite Sirah, the Red Velvet, although a considerably adorable red to sip, was not a well chosen cooking wine, which I should have known.  The chicken, yanked out of the pot of more than pleasant French

vegetable, was visibly purple to the skin – it had similarly bizarre features as we see pictures of a human heart!  We peeled the skin away and, not necessarily to our surprise, the interior of the chicken was the kind of tender that cooks dream of, juicy, not in the least over done, moist and yes, tasting of leek, clove, a pinch of bay, etc.  Would I love to make this recipe again with a different red?  Yes.  And I will, yet I will remember that it is the heat and the marinade that makes a chicken, not its color.

Weeknight Cooking:
Glazed Chicken with Dried
Fruit and Parsnips

The end product of this fairly easy recipe is the most wonderfully textured chicken dish I have yet made.  For a couple of years now, I have tried to figure out the fine art of roasting chicken.  For the most part, simple chicken roasting comes down to buying a good batch of chicken thighs and considering using whatever fresh vegetables you might have on hand.  Almost anything will do: carrots, celery, potatoes, onions, toss in some peas, other roots vegetables, whatever.  For classic roasting I chop up the veg and let them roast on their own in some olive oil at something like 425 in the oven to soften while I brown the thighs in the skillet.  Place the thighs in with the vegetables, place in the oven, and wait for it all to cook and you have one of the great stand-byes possible.

The glazed chicken had some real similarities, but in this case it was the fruit that made all the difference and turned what tends to be a more crisp meal into one that is nearly creamy.  The recipe starts with a sauté of shallots and four diced parsnips, softened and browned but not yet fully cooked.  For cooks new to parsnips, think zingy potatoes, to the point that the root vegetables take on entirely new meaning (may be my own favorite vegetable).

On the side, meanwhile, whisk together good apricot preserves, some whole grain mustard, a pinch of ginger and cumin in a bowl, then essentially dredge your salted chicken pieces (thighs and half breasts) in the apricot glaze.  Eventually, it is the potent zing of the mustard up against the softness of

the fruits that makes this a special roast.  At this point, scatter cut dried apricots and cut dried prunes into the skillet with the parsnips and shallots; place the chicken on top along with a bit of water until it boils and cooks for six minutes.  Place this full skillet in a 425 oven for around 25 minutes.  This is one of those kitchen recipes that fill the house with an aroma that is both hard to pin down yet succulent.  Is it the sweet of the apricot, the root of the parsnip, the grain of the mustard, or the skin of the chicken that you smell at minute twenty of roasting in the oven?  The bottom layer in the pan is a sort of cooked jam, the chicken pieces blistered brown from the oven.  Spoon up parsnips over the chicken. Serve with rice, a good bread, on a crepe?