Chicken & Chickpea Stew

Hmm, not much to preface this with.  Original recipe here.

Recipe

2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 lb thin chicken breast, cut into 1/2" pieces
4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2" pieces
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp smoked paprika
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp red wine (apple cider) vinegar
1/2 c water
1 15-oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 cup spinach
instant grits
more butter, salt & pepper

Heat the olive oil and butter over medium-high, then add the chicken, carrots, garlic, ginger, paprika and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.  Saute for about 15 minutes, then stir in the tomato paste, then vinegar, water, chickpeas and spinach.  Cook about 5 minutes.  Meanwhile, prepare the instant grits, and top with the stew.

Notes

This recipe uses some good ingredients without a whole lot of work...  The instant grits help - and don't laugh, they're actually pretty solid!  Gotta say, though, as delicious as the chicken smelled with my generous servings of garlic, ginger, paprika, and all, some of those flavors seemed to disappear in the finished product.  Maybe it had to do with, I carefully halved most of the main ingredients in the recipe, but when it came time to add the chickpeas, I had a brain fart and dumped in the whole can.  Thus that iteration was a bit dominated by that component.  Still good, though:

Ale-Braised Duck Sausage

Sticking with the colonial cookbook, although this one had a distinctive French theme to it...

Recipe

1 lb duck sausage
1 large onion, sliced thin
1 medium shallot, chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 tbsp butter
2 cups dark ale
1 tsp mustard
1/2 cup demi-glace

Cut shallow diagonal slices into the sausage and bake at 350 degrees for 5 minutes (if pre-cooked).  Meanwhile, cook the onion, shallot and garlic in a skillet with the butter, high heat for a few minutes.  Then add the sausage, then the ale to deglaze, scraping up bits from the pan bottom.  Cook at medium about 10 minutes, until the ale reduces to just coat the pan.  Remove the sausage and keep warm.  Add the demi-glace and mustard and cook about 5 minutes until reduced by half.  Serve over the sausage and whatever other elements you like.

Outcome

To be honest, this did not look promising at first.  I had trouble finding duck sausage, and when I did it was raw, not pre-cooked.  And I have no real idea what demi-glace is - I didn't copy that page of the recipe.  Then the big onion I had on hand was... really gross.  But I winged it - baked the sausage a while longer, used a small (backup) onion, and said forget that French demi-glace nonsense.  I also had some extra broccoli so I tossed that in there.

After all that, I was definitely pleased with how it turned out.  The end result was really rich and flavorful.  The sausage I used had, like, duck, duck liver, other animals, lots of good stuff.  Without the totally-avoidable complications, it's actually a pretty simple meal - all I had to buy was the sausage and shallot (although the beer I had on hand was more of the pale ale variety).  Served over cous cous.  Delicious and looking forward to leftovers!

Swordfish with Sherry-Cream Sorrel

In honor of our nation's 237th birthday (OK, coincidentally), I was leafing through the colonial Philadelphia cookbook and snapping hopefully-legible pictures of the recipe for later use.  First up was swordfish.

The Recipe

swordfish steaks
bay leaves
1/2 c sherry
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup shredded sorrel (or spinach)
butter, salt & pepper

Fish goes in baking dish(es) with a couple bay leaves (for the whole lot) and spots of butter on top.  Cook at 375 for about 10-15 minutes (until a cooked egg white-like film appears on top).  Remove from heat, get rid of bay leaves and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, boil the sherry, then add the cream and simmer for about 5 minutes until it thickens.  Stir in the sorrel and bring to a boil, then serve over the swordfish.

The Outcome

I liked this one because swordfish is a more highly-regarded piece of seafood, but the recipe itself is very simple.  You could just prepare the fish on its own (my one note is, as is endemic to cookbooks, it seemed to underestimate the cooking time).  Indeed, I was skeptical about the sherry-cream spinach element, but it actually came out as a kind of nice, tangy green element to the meal.  I didn't give it enough time to really thicken, but just tried to scoop out the leaves (of spinach, the suggested alternative).  Here's how it came out with a serving of sweet potato fries on the side: