Mouthing Off

Chicken Dance spotlights a fantastic Food & Wine chicken recipe every day.

Tomorrow marks the 40th anniversary of Chez Panisse, the influential Berkeley restaurant founded by seasonal-food advocate Alice Waters. A new book celebrating the restaurant called 40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering, featured in F&W’s August issue, profiles Waters’s path from a chef—so focused on freshness that her fruit plate was famous—to an activist. In an interview with Publishers Weekly, Waters noted that eating organic foods on a budget is possible if you "buy a chicken and have many meals come from it." These grilled fennel-garlic chicken legs can be cooked for dinner one night, and the leftovers can be reinvented the next day into a quick and tasty antipasto salad.

Chicken Dance spotlights a fantastic Food & Wine chicken recipe every day.

"I don't care if you're sophisticated, with a boatload of money," chef Thomas Keller once explained to Food & Wine, "roasted chicken makes you feel wonderful." America’s beloved superchef described his simple approach to home-cooking for dinner parties in the Wall Street Journal today, and Keller's recipe for Whole Grilled Chicken with Wilted Arugula fits right in with his enduring appreciation for rustic meals.

Chicken Dance spotlights a fantastic Food & Wine chicken recipe every day.

Tonight, Top Chef Just Desserts Season 2 premieres on Bravo, hosted once again by our own inimitable Gail Simmons. Each week, Simmons—with rocker pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini, master chef Hubert Keller and stylish writer Dannielle Kyrillos—will sample the contestants’ many sugary challenges, from gingerbread houses to edible interior design. Something truly savory is the best remedy for an overworked sweet tooth, like one of Simmons’s favorite F&W recipes: creamy chicken goulash with homey biscuit dumplings.

Chicken Dance spotlights a fantastic Food & Wine chicken recipe every day.

New York’s Spanish-cooking star Seamus Mullen (an Irishman by way of Vermont) opened his new spot, Tertulia, in the West Village last week. Eater interviewed the Next Iron Chef finalist this afternoon about his inspiration and the importance of authenticity when it comes to Spanish cooking. “To me, this place is authentically New York,” says Mullen, who will incorporate great local ingredients into his recipes. What’s most important to us is that his food is delicious, like this recipe for Chicken Salad With Piquillo Dressing.

Chicken Dance spotlights a fantastic Food & Wine chicken recipe every day.

Continuing a casual dining streak this summer, President Obama stopped for takeout last night while on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. He and wife Michelle picked up dinner at Nancy’s Restaurant, which sells beach-shack seafood plates with fried clams and grilled chicken sandwiches from a snack bar window. Apart from being easy, simple dishes are often deliciously crave-worthy, especially with summer accoutrements, as in F&W’s warm grilled chicken sandwiches with mozzarella, basil and deep red tomatoes.

Chicken Dance spotlights a fantastic Food & Wine chicken recipe every day.

Chef Michel Nischan—who co-founded The Dressing Room in Connecticut with the late Paul Newman—is continuing to help those in need gain access to fresh food through his Wholesome Wave Foundation. According to the Atlantic, the program, which doubles the value of food vouchers when used at farmers’ markets, now operates in 30 states. With national greenmarkets booming, in number and literal abundance, using local produce to prepare Nischan’s Skillet Chicken with Summer Succotash is an easy way to celebrate the chef’s work and culinary acumen.

Chicken Dance spotlights a fantastic Food & Wine chicken recipe every day.

“I don’t go away,” the tenacious Jamie Oliver tells his profiler in the September issue of Outside magazine. The beloved Brit, who transformed England’s school lunches with healthier, less processed foods, hasn’t quite swept across the US with equal success. But while low ratings endanger the viability of a third season of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution on ABC, Oliver isn’t giving up on the American school system. He maintains his battle cry that delicious food can be quick and uncomplicated, and his Simplest Chicken-and-Leek Stew is no different.

Chicken Dance spotlights a fantastic Food & Wine chicken recipe every day.

This afternoon, superchef Marcus Samuelsson stopped by the Food & Wine Facebook wall for a live Kitchen Insider chat. We learned his secret-weapon spice mix (berbere), and the chef even dished on what he ate last night: Fried Yard Bird at his restaurant Red Rooster in Harlem. Samuelsson previewed that preparation in this Food & Wine video, calling it “the crunchiest, the crispiest, the best damn chicken in all of New York City.” It involves an immersion circulator, a piece of serious cooking equipment used to cook foods sous vide at a consistent low temperature. Samuelsson then fries the meat, twice.

It’s probably best to try his fancy bird at the source, but home cooks without high-tech kitchens can still experiment with double-frying in this recipe for Crispy Twice-Fried Chicken, from Samuelsson's fellow NYC superchef Zak Pelaccio.

 

Chicken Dance spotlights a fantastic Food & Wine chicken recipe every day.

Among the 14 household uses for beer listed by The Kansas City Star this week (via Food Republic): trapping slugs, cleaning gold and loosening bolts—“the acids in the beer may dissolve enough rust to allow you to get them loose.” While enlightening, the list skips our favorite purpose for beer (besides simply drinking a wonderful brew), which is cooking. Grill master Steven Raichlen spotlights a Brazilian black lager called Xingu in this summery Beer-Marinated Chicken recipe, but American suds like Samuel Adams Cream Stout and Deschutes Obsidian Stout work just as deliciously.

Chicken Dance spotlights a fantastic Food & Wine chicken recipe every day.

 

Today would have been the great Julia Child's 99th birthday. The revolutionary TV host and author of Mastering the Art of French Cooking brought French cuisine to American kitchens, along with a perfect roast chicken recipe, which she shared with Food & Wine in 1997. In the article, called "Chicken Divine" (not online), Child recommended "listening to the bird as it cooks and attending to its progress, salting and basting as needed."