Saturday Night - Chicken de Paola

Not sure what the name means, but this dish has oodles of possibilities. Also a good one to freeze.






1 10oz box frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
4 oz cream cheese, room temp or softened
1/4 c sundried tomatoes, chopped
1/4 c fresh basil, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
2 T pine nuts, toasted
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, pounded to 1/4 inch
1 sheet, frozen puff pastry, defrosted, rolled to 16" square, cut into 1/4s
1 egg beaten with 2 t water

Preheat oven to 475. Combine first 6 ingredients in bowl. Line baking sheet with parchment or nonstick aluminum foil. Top 1 chicken with 1/4 of spinach mixture. Roll up to enclose. Put chicken breast on 1 square of puff pastry, with chicken seam down. Fold up edges of pastry to enclose chicken, gently pinching edges of pastry to seal. Transfer to baking sheet. Brush with beaten egg. Repeat with remaining chicken/pastry/spinach mixture.

Bake 30 minutes.


This would be good with spinach/cream cheese/feta/kalamatas/sundrieds. Or duxelle. Or caramelized onions. Or any veggie ragout. Basically anything you'd cook chicken in or top it with would be good in this pretty package! Went well with the leftover Waterstone Chardonnay which tasted much better tonight than the night before.

Olive Oil Poached Fish

Olive Oil Poached Sablefish with Lemon and Thyme http://www.gildedfork.com/recipes/jul06/olive-oil-poached-sablefish.html

We had it the other night, and I was surprised at how delicate the flavor was. I thought it would be strong and oily (the dish, not necessarily the fish) but it was really mild, in fact not enough flavor for my taste! I tried it with a chard and a sauv and the sauv was much better go figure! But I didn’t like that particular chard very much. (Waterstone, Carneros 2005). The sauv was the one the liquor store guy recommended from Tillman in Napa Valley 2005. Never heard of it and couldn’t find anything on it on the internet. It was good and only $9 here so that would probably be 25¢ in California ha ha. I had a recommendation from another personal chef who makes the dish a lot to try an Albarino from North West Spain, or a reisling. Or a French or Spanish rose. Yikes. I’m still trying to get to know domestics.

Another thing that didn’t wow me about this dish is that sablefish has a line of bones that you can’t really remove before cooking because they’re very brittle. Of course The Husband bitched about this the whole time while eating. I've seen other recipes for oil poached salmon that call for infusing the oil with the flavorings. Maybe that will help. I tasted wild salmon against farmed salmon this week too. The wild was much more ‘salmony’ but the farmed was fine too.

Also had broccolini and broccoli rabe (rapini). Liked the broccolini but the broccoli rabe was too bitter for my taste. If I wanted bitter greens, I’d just have bitter greens and not mini broccoli bitter greens. But that’s just me.

I’ve been watching WAY too much foodnetwork.

The technique on the sablefish is oven for an hour at 250, and VERY easy. The salmon recipes call for infusing the oil, and then poaching on the stove while monitoring temp for about 20 minutes. The tenderness and moistness was GREAT with this cooking method.

Olive Oil Poached Salmon with Orange Fennel Puree and Mediterranean Vinaigrette http://www.salmonoftheamericas.com/chef_tramonto.html

Olive Oil Poached Salmon and Braised Artichokes with Sauvignon Blanc http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/232832