Claudia Roden Persian Chicken w Apricots, Pistachios, Pomegranate Syrup

This beautiful recipe was featured in Hadassah Magazine. It's perfect for Sukkot. I've made it several times in Chestertown, since it keeps well for winter shabbatot when you cook in advance. 

I have made some changes, like adding rice for the last stage, making it a kind of arroz con pollo. The biggest task in this recipe is browning the chicken, which I find is hard to do. But, it pulls the juices into the pan for the sauce and, I think, prevents the chicken from getting soggy?

2 T sunflower oil
2 onions, chopped
8 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs (they are usually sold six to a package. 8 barely fit in a big skillet.)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
7 oz soft dried apricots, chopped
1 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground coriander
1 T pomegranate molasses
Juice of 1/2 lemon

optional: 3/4 c. of rice plus extra water
Generous 1/2 cup pistachios, coarsely chopped

1. Warm the sunflower oil in a large sauté pan (with a lid) over low heat. Add the onions and cook, with the lid on, stirring often, for about 10 minutes, until soft and golden. 

2. In a second saute pan, with a lid, put the chicken thighs into the pan, skin-side down, add salt and pepper and cook over medium heat, with the lid on, for about 10 minutes, until the skin releases its fat and the chicken pieces are well browned. Turn them over and cook the other side for 10 minutes, until browned, adding more salt and pepper. 

3. Add the apricots and add the onions to the pan, lifting the chicken pieces so that they sit on top of the apricots and onions.

4. Measure 3/4 cup water into a liquid measuring cup, stir in the cinnamon, coriander, pomegranate molasses and lemon juice and pour over the chicken.

5. Optional: add 3/4 c. rice plus the appropriate amount of liquid (can be a little less than for just cooking rice, since you're also adding the 3/4 c water in Step 4.

Cook, covered, over low heat for 25 minutes, until the chicken is very tender and cooked through and the liquid is reduced.

5. Serve the chicken sprinkled with the pistachios. It's not super-colorful but very, very delicious!

Fritzie's 60s OJ Onion Chicken

Zach is amused by 20th Century recipes with shortcut ingredients. The most famous (and maligned!) is  greenbean casserole with cans of mushroom soup and onion rings, but people do love it.

This chicken was my mom's recipe. It's on the Lipton Soup website as just OJ and the soup powder, but I add others things.

I have made it many times, and Abba asks for it. Frozen OJ is basically 100% juice, so not really processed at all. The onion soup powder does have some additives, but none I would avoid except MSG, if you have a guest who is allergic to it.

Heat oven to 375

2 chickens, cut in 8ths (or thighs, or breasts)
1 can frozen OJ (12 oz)
1 packet onion soup mix. (It's about 1.4 oz, if you buy a jar of it)
a few oz. raisins
optional: soy sauce to taste, garlic to taste, sliced scallions for the last few minutes

Pack the chicken into one large pan, skin sides up. 

Mix all the ingredients and spread over the top. Baste a few times. 

Bake for about 1 1/4 hour. Turn off the oven and leave in the chicken. It's most delicious when the sauce has nicely glazed. You could add the scallions and then turn off the oven. They will add some flavor and visual appeal.

Jane Brody's Unstuffed Cabbage

I don't know if this is in her cookbooks - I found it in a magazine.  It is perfect for sukkot, since it is a one dish meal, basically.  Add challah, salad, dessert - good to go.
I can't find any ground turkey this year so I may make it with ready-to-go veggie meatballs.  This is perfect for cooks, like moi, who don't like to spend a lot of time making stuffed cabbage.
A nice accompaniment is a bowl of boiled red bliss potatoes.  Or you could peel baking potatoes, chop them in eights or so, and cook them in the stew.

Ingredients

• 1 large onion, diced
• 2 lbs cabbage, sliced
• 1 (8 ounce) cans tomato sauce
• 1 (28 ounce) cans chopped tomatoes, with juice
• 1 cup water
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/4 cup lemon juice

• 1 lb ground beef

• 1/2 cup white rice, raw

• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

  
  

  or substitute 2 pkg vegetarian meatballs

• salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup raisins (optional)

Directions

1. In a large, heavy pot combine the first 7 ingredients; bring to boil.
2. Meanwhile make meatballs with beef, rice, Worcestershire sauce and add to pot; reduce heat to low and simmer for 2 hours.
3. If desired, add raisins and cook an additional 15 minutes.

You Call This a Recipe Chicken Pasta

Clipped it out of a magazine decades ago.

I made this pretty frequently when you guys were kids because of its flexibility.  If someone didn't want the tomato sauce, I put aside the cooked chicken.  If someone didn't want to eat chicken, I could  heat the tomato sauce first,  put that portion aside, and then add the chicken.  Not like anyone in our house was a picky eater or anything, of course.

Basically the ingredients are a bottle of parve spaghetti sauce, or if you have time and inclination, any marinara sauce you'd like to make, a few tablespoons of flour, seasoned to your liking, and a pound or so of boned chicken, cut in small chunks.  Put the flour in a small bowl.  Heat oil in a large skillet.  Toss the chicken chunks in the flour and drop them in the skillet.  Cook until lightly browned.  Add the spaghetti sauce.  Like I said, you call this a recipe?

It is actually very good!

Matzah Stuffing

I have the real recipe for this somewhere, but in the meantime, you don't really need a recipe.  You can make it vegetarian, and use some for a turkey and some for a veg side dish.  You could leave out the egg and make it vegan, too.

One box matzah, crumbled into small pieces, or a box of matzah farfel.  I use whole wheat matzah

Onion/s, chopped

Celery, chopped
mushrooms, chopped

Margarine or oil

Apples, chopped (don’t need to peel them)

Walnuts, chopped
Chopped chestnuts would be an awesome addition.

Egg

Broth

Seasonings

In a large frying pan, sauté  the onions and celery in either melted margarine or oil until soft.  Add the rest of the ingredients to create a moist mixture.  I usually bake some and stuff the turkey with the rest.  If you are a stuffing regular, you can figure out the proportions and seasonings you like.  

Chopped chestnuts would be an awesome addition.

Easiest Shabbat Dinner Ever: Roast Turkey Breast & Galil Potatoes

We named these
Galil Potatoes because Zach described how much he liked that when he was a camper.  Really soooo easy.
The trick with these potatoes is that you need to cook them at a very high temperature for about 45
minutes, and you need to turn them once and manage to do it

Different colored potatoes make a nice presentation

without burning yourself.  I didn't turn the ones pictured here, and they burned a bit.  The other trick, if you are also roasting a turkey breast, is that the the turkey will take about a half hour to 45 minutes longer, so hold off before putting in the potatoes.  This isn't really a recipe so much as a technique.

3 to 4 larger potatoes, your choice, including sweet potatoes and/or
1 container fingerling potatoes
other vegetables you feel like roasting: red onions, carrots, parsnips

• Spray a flat baking pan with olive oil.  
• Wash the potatoes if needed, but do not peel.  (makes it easy!)
• Slide potatoes into eighths or so, shape really doesn't matter
• Toss the slices in the pan, spray with olive oil, and sprinkle with pepper, salt or whatever you like.
• Bake at 450 for about 45 minutes, turning once to prevent burning, taking care not to burn yourself :-).

If you also do a turkey breast, here is how I do it.  Don't know where the honey mustard idea came from, but the aluminum foil pocket method is in The Settlement Cookbook on page 300.

1 Empire Turkey breast, under 5 lbs. (a half turkey breast works, too) - best to thaw first

~ ¼ c mustard

~ ¼ c honey
or use pre-mixed honey mustard, about 4 T.
(for Passover, you can use ketchup and honey, if you don't have mustard.)

seasonings to taste

Use a large piece of HEAVY weight aluminum foil. Shape it into a large roasting pan, creating a leak-free lining with sides and leaving extra for covering the turkey.  Squirt the bottom with honey. Same with the mustard.  

Gently place the turkey in the foil, turn it once so the honey/mustard coats both sides.  Season.  

Carefully close the foil over the breast, folding the sides over and sealing, leaving no open areas where juice can leak - at 450 it will burn and make a mess of the pan.  Seal the foil.  Poke a few holes for steam to escape.

Bake about 1.5 hours at 450.  The sauce is very tasty, so you can pour it into a small bowl w/ a gravy ladle, or serve in a small pitcher.  The fancy solution: a gravy boat.

If it does leak, be sure to soak the pan - a lot of the burned juice will come up in pieces, after a bit.

Chicken Diablo

This is an easy chicken recipe for which you will often have all the ingredients on hand.  My version came from the Teaneck Jewish Center Cookbook which Epsie Gerstle gave me when I was newly-wed.  A little research online shows the recipe source as Family Circle's Great Chicken Recipes - 1968.

1 chicken, cut in 8ths, or chicken breast (on the bone)

3 T olive oil

1/2 c. honey or agave
1/4 cup prepared mustard - any flavor seems to work
1 t. salt (go easy when preparing kosher chickens, since they already have a high salt content)
1 t. curry powder

Heat oven to 375°.
In a large measuring cup, add the honey, mustard, and olive oil, then the salt and curry,  stirring to mix them thoroughly.
Arrange chicken meaty size up in the smallest pan that will allow all the pieces to fit.  (This makes it easier to baste, with less of the sauce accumulating on the bottom of the pan.)  The picture below is a larger quantity - one chicken + one container of chicken breasts, so I made a larger version of the recipe.

Pour the sauce over the chicken and if time permits, cover and refrigerate to marinate for a few hours, or even over night.

Bake, basting a few times to promote glazing.
Bake about 1½ hours, until richly glazed.
This is a good dish to leave in the oven while you're at Kabbalat Shabbat!

Chicken with Wine & Mushrooms / Coq au Vin

This is a really delicious chicken dish, basically schnitzel baked in a wine mushroom sauce.
It's from the SSDS cookbook, from Ivy Cohen.  Do you remember her?

It's enough sauce for 3 lbs of chicken schnitzel.  You need a large casserole to bake it all.

*Alternative is to just make a gluten free mushroom sauce for plain old schnitzel and not bake it.

3 lbs. chicken breast prepared as schnitzel.

Prepare sauce:
1 c. water
1 c. white wine
3 T. flour
3 T. oil
2 T. Israeli parve bouillon powder [you can buy an MSG-free version online]
1/2 lb sliced mushrooms
Salt, pepper to taste

In 2 quart sauce pan, bring all ingredients except the mushrooms to boil.  Simmer 5 minutes and add the mushrooms.  Sauce will thicken.
Place the schnitzel in a large casserole and cover with the sauce. Cover and bake at 350° for 30 minutes, uncovering for the last few minutes.  If you have an electric oven with a delayed bake setting, this is an ideal dish to leave for a few hours (while at shul) and come home to a delicious dish.
This is a pretty forgiving prep.  It will stay moist in the oven, handy for holiday meals when you set your oven on timebake.

Bobbi Breitman loves this dish. When she was sick, and I signed up for bringing a Shabbat dinner, I asked her what she wanted. She didn't miss a beat: this schnitzel with wine mushroom sauce.

* Gluten free sauce: Saute 1/2 lb sliced mushrooms in a good slug of olive oil until soft. 
Take 3/4 c. wine or so, and add 1/4 c water. Add 1-2 t. bullion powder and 1 T of cornstarch, and stir til the cornstarch dissolves.

Cook with mushrooms over medium heat. It keeps thickening. If you turn off the burner and let is sit, it will congeal but still tastes great. 

I presume this sauce would also be good with vegie schnitzel but you can't bake vegie schnitzel very long.

Schnitzel

When Abba went on a low fat diet in his 40's, he wouldn't eat any chicken skin or dark meat, so schnitzel became the chicken prep of choice. The thinner the chicken breast, the better. You can buy them thinly sliced at House of Kosher, or slice thick chicken breasts into thinner slabs. They cook faster, and the portions are smaller. When we have company, I have learned that people will take a big chunk and leave a lot of it, so smaller portions seem to help people take what they can eat. Partially frozen chicken is easier to slice, by the way.

There's no recipe for schnitzel, it's really just a technique. One egg is about right for 1½ lbs of chicken, but chicken breast usually don't come in that amount, so you generally are short on eggs. These freeze well, so it's handy to make extra.

For Passover, you can use matzah meal seasoned with whatever you have.  You can use matzah meal during the rest of the year, too, obviously.

1 to 2 lbs. chicken breast - I prefer thin-sliced if you can find them.
Olive oil
Egg
Dijon mustard*
Flavored (parve) bread crumbs (or matzah meal)
Lemon and parsley for garnish

• In a large flat non-stick fry pan, add ~ one T of olive oil and heat over medium.
• Take 2 flat bowls.  Break an egg in one and beat lightly.
• Fill the bottom of the other with a small mound of bread crumbs.
• Put the package of chicken breast (chicken is grown in packages, right?) on a large plate, with the egg dish closer to the chicken.  
• Dip each cutlet in the egg, covering both sides.  
• Then drop it in the breading, turning it over, so the crumbs cover both sides.  

*One beaten egg is often a little scant for 2+ lbs of chicken breast. I recently read an odd book called "Recipes of Holocaust Survivors" and one of them adds Dijon mustard to the egg. This works well. Less than a teaspoon.

Set it in the hot frying pan.  It cooks fastest in the center, so start by putting the cutlets around the perimeter.  Depending on the size of your pan and the amount of chicken you may need a second pan. I didn't buy a second pan until I was about 50 years old, so hope you catch on quicker.
Fill the pan and brown the schnitzel.  The first side takes longer. They absorb a lot of oil, so you may need to add more to the pan before you flip them.  If you make them smaller, you have chicken nuggets, more or less, much less junky than the packaged kind.

Miriam Leventhal, Doda Rochelle's mother and truly one of the worlds tsadikot, taught me a trick when she visited us once in New York.  If you have extra egg and extra breading, you can combine them and make a little pancake, which she called a latkelah.  Just fry it along with the schnitzel. Make like it's a treat, some kid will eat it!

But lately I tried an experiment - I toasted the leftover breading in the 2nd frying pan, tossing the cooked schnitzel together in fry pan #1.  You don't need even keep the burner on. The breading absorbs the oil left in the pan, and just toss it evenly and let it cook.  I froze a small jar of browned breading and just added it to rice to get rid of it. It was great! It adds a crunch to the rice.

Lemon slices are a nice touch, but it doesn't seem like people actually use them, so don't worry if you don't have them!

When it's just David and me, I almost always make us chicken schnitzel. We have had them 100s of times and never get tired of them. They are great cold, for shabbat meals.