Suprême – The Breast Taste Of Chicken

Thanks to the strenuous workload of graduate courses, research and teaching. My food blog entries were as dead as Friedrich Nietzsche’s definition of God from his book “Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft (The Gay Science)”. Now that my graduate school obligations are temporarily over, it’s time to resuscitate my contributions of blog entries to Phood Journal.

Perhaps it’s an appropriate time to talk about breasts…chicken breasts…

To be honest, breasts are not my favorite part on a chicken. My order of preference when I am, say, given a half-serving of chicken or any poultry/game bird is thighs, legs, wings and breasts. I am fully aware that health and fitness buffs will contend with me but chicken breasts tend to have a very dry and bland texture. It doesn’t help too if the chicken bought from the market turns out to be an old and ailing chicken because the meat can be VERY tough. To open some gastronomic scars of my childhood, I found myself having a difficult time chewing and swallowing, and to some point would prefer regurgitating, the meat of the black chicken boiled in some weird Chinese plant extracts not because of the bitter taste coming from whatever alkaloid or natural product is found on that soup but rather the texture of the breast meat is just too DAMN dry and bland.

Then again, the chicken breast should not shoulder the blame for its taste and texture. Its prolonged exposure from the heat of braising, boiling or roasting has to compromise with the duration of completely cooking the softer, fattier and juicier red meat found on the thighs and the legs. The rule of thumb of treating chicken breasts (or any breast coming from any poultry or gamebird) with love is that you DO NOT OVERCOOK them UNLESS they come with the other parts. Plus, time is an advantage too for graduate students like me because the length of preparation can only take 15-25 minutes especially if you are aware of the “cooking parameters” that will maintain the juicy and exquisite taste and softer texture.

Paraphrasing French cuisine from Julia Child, the raw breast of a chicken is classified according to the presence of the wing, skin and the bone. If the upper part of the wing is present, then the entire slab is called a “côtelette” or simply (in English) the cutlet or the chop of the chicken. If the breast comes both skinless and boneless, then the chicken breast is called a suprême. However, a suprême is NOT ALWAYS a suprême because the definition of a suprême encompasses the cooking time and hence the taste and the texture of the flesh. If the “suprême” is overcooked, it becomes nothing more but the bland, dry and tough white chicken meat – similar to a prolonged chemical reaction that leads to an undesirable product. Instead, an actual suprême should be cooked in 205°C (400°F) for 6-8 minutes only – NOTHING LONGER NOR HOTTER.

Based on my first experience of cooking and eating a homemade suprême, the final grade that can be given to a suprême borderlines between “E” and “F” for EXQUISITE and FANTASTIC respectively. Cooking is also short and simple that the anticipation of eating can only be delayed by the preparation of the sauce. The flesh is white in color just like your white chicken meat. However, the taste is so juicy and the texture is so soft that it’s like eating the drumsticks and thighs – my conventional favorite parts on a chicken.

I think from now on, the breast (in the form of a suprême) has become my GUILTY PLEASURE.

Chicken Suprêmes Recipe (taken from “Mastering The Art Of French Cooking” by Julia Child)

Ingredients:
4 fillets of chicken breasts, boned and skinned
4 tablespoons of butter
1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice
Salt
White Pepper

1. Preheat the oven at 205°C (400°F).
2. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with lemon juice. Set aside.
3. While the chicken is being marinated, melt the butter on a skillet or a flame-proof casserole under medium to high heat until the butter starts to foam and bubble. (Optional: The foam can be removed by scraping with a spoon giving the clarified form of butter.)
4. Roll the chicken breasts in butter QUICKLY and remove the skillet or casserole from heat.
5. Cover the breast with wax paper or aluminum foil.
6. Place the skillet or casserole inside the oven and bake for 6-8 minutes.
7. Remove from oven and transfer the breasts immediately to a warm platter. The leftover butter in the skillet or casserole can be used to prepare the sauce of your liking.

 

American Comfort Food: Chicken Pot Pie

I would be the first to say that Germany is a really awesome country.  However, there are just some days where I just really miss home, you know?  Solution?  Comfort food, piping hot from my brand new mini oven.

I have really good memories of chicken pot pie, most of them with my awesome brother.  When Mum and Dad would go overseas to Asia for a week or two, Mum would always make sure to stock up the fridge before she left (this was when we were about 15, 16 or so).  We had this one spurt of time where Al and I were absolutely crazy for chicken pot pie – we were eating two or three a day – so we always had frozen ones in our freezer.  It was just so nice to open up the freezer, pop a pie onto a plate, microwave for 3.5 minutes, and open the door to smell the warm, aromatic smell of steaming chicken and vegetables in cream sauce.

And that was really, to me, the other great selling point of chicken pot pie.  It was just so easy and fast.  Usually, pies can be quite time consuming because it takes a while to make the crust if you’re going to make it from scratch.  Here, I’ve substituted blätterteig, since I made it on a Tuesday night between loads of laundry and piles of homework.  I’ve also used frozen veggies – really, I think they have an undeserving bad rap sometimes – because I just don’t have the time or patience tonight to peel and chop up fresh ones.

Materials and Methods (serves 2)

• 1 roll blätterteig (puff pastry)
• 1 box buttergemüse (frozen veggies with butter) – peas, carrots, corn, cauliflower
• 1 chicken breast
• 0.5 cups milk
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 0.25 cup flour
• 0.5 teaspoon salt

1. Cut chicken breast into 1.5cm cubes.  Smaller cubes means that the chicken cooks more evenly, and soaks up more sauce.
2. Fry chicken bits in pan with a bit of oil.
3. Add frozen veggies and stir until thoroughly heated.
4. Add butter and let it melt.  Add flour and mix so that there are no lumps.  Then thin out the roux with milk.
5. Season mixture with salt and thyme.
6. Line baking dish/ramekin with the dough and trim excess (or you can fill the pie, then fold over the excess).
7. Fill dish with chicken and veggie mixture and cover with more pastry dough.
8. Make some slits in the top of the pie to allow steam to escape.
9. Bake in oven at 200C for 40 min.  This may vary for your oven, since I have a mini oven!  A good way to know when your stuff is done is when the pie starts to turn brown at the edges – the filling should already be properly cooked, so all you’re doing is heating up the pastry dough.
10. Remove and serve piping hot!

Discussion

The thyme (which I think goes very nicely with chicken) is optional and substitutable, of course; you can also use chilli powder, normal salt and pepper, rosemary or some other savoury herb or herb mixture, or even curry powder, for a bit of a kick.  You can, of course, also substitute chicken for beef, pork, or turkey, though with beef, you might want to use gravy instead of a white roux.  For veggies, of course, you can use all sorts – onions, leeks, roasted garlic, potatoes, etc.  It’s easy to make this recipe your own, and really rather difficult to screw up (especially if you buy the dough premade…but making it is also simple enough, just time-consuming) – comfort food in a flash!

Comfort PhooD

 

How to have a Heidelberg Christmas – Part 1 of 2

After surviving an en route train change at Köln which left me bewildered and a little bit lost, I found myself safe and sound in David’s town—Heidelberg, Germany—for the initial part of the ADMU Chem-Europe Christmas reunion.

That evening, we went out and did the first slew of groceries in the nearby Kaufland for the Christmas Eve dinner (Noche Buena) and Christmas lunch.

The subsequent grocery raids happened the next day (24^th), which left David’s pantry literally overflowing with ingredients.

The afternoon of the 24^th found us back at David’s residence, cooking (I’m proud to say that it has been a privilege to be his sous chef, because I learned a LOT).  Not just for the Noche Buena, but also for the Christmas lunch (see David’s post)—bouef bourgignon and mushroom bourgignon (for the lunch party), and creamy chicken sopas and David’s version of German fiesta ham.

On to the food!

The creamy chicken sopas. Sopas is a colloquial Filipino term (derived from Spanish) for a noodle soup dish. In this case, the generous amount of milk used in this dish and the slow simmering brought out the full flavor of this comfort food.  We were delighted to taste its sweetness despite the obvious lack of added sugar. Amazing.

Materials used:

• 1 clove garlic, crushed and minced
• 1 onion
• 25g bacon, chopped
• half a carrot, finely diced
• 1 stalk celery, finely diced
• chicken pieces (2 wings, 2 legs)
• chicken giblets (liver, gizzard, neck)
• 1L milk
• 1 cup of chicken stock
• spiral macaroni noodles, approx 1 1/2 cups
• 1 Tbsp. olive oil

Methodology

• Sweat bacon.  Add olive oil, garlic and onions. Let onions caramelize. Saute chicken pieces.
• Add diced veggies.  Add chicken stock and milk.  Bring to a boil and simmer at low heat for at least 30 minutes.  Add macaroni.
• Once the macaroni is cooked, remove pot from heat. Keep warm or serve immediately.

Glazed (German) Fiesta ham. No, David did not make fiesta ham from scratch—he bought a 2-EUR bone-in ham from a Kaufland and a can of pineapple slices in light syrup.  Preparation was pretty much straightforward: line aluminum pan with pineapple slices, place ham on top, stick in oven until the ham is nicely browned.  The glaze was prepared from the canned fruit’s light syrup with a bit of sugar.

Assessment
Those two simple dishes, served with baguette rolls and Boursin (really good cheese…must grab some when I’m back in Leuven after the holidays), brought what we really missed that Christmas Eve—the memory of Christmas at home with family.  Coupled with bantering, jokes and good conversation, our first Heidelberg Christmas still had a Filipino heart.

ADMU Chem-Europe's Christmas Eve dinner should always feature Boursin...

Merry Christmas, readers!

 

Oui’s Happy Autumn Stew: Chicken Afritada

November’s almost over and I’ve finally got fed up cooking and eating adobo and sinigang (courtesy of Mama Sita’s sinigang na sampalok powder mix) for a the past few weeks. Not to mention that one time, I subsisted on party leftovers for 8 days (they were tasty, but you get tired of eating the same thing day in, day out). So, when it was my turn to cook the main dish for the girls’ Sunday lunch, I decided to pull out all the stops and challenge myself in cooking a fiesta-rated dish that I haven’t had any experience preparing on my own.

Afritada. Chicken afritada.

I had all the excuses to make this dish—one, this Sunday’s the feast of Christ the King, and two, I’ve invited Adriana (my Ecuadorian friend and labmate in the drug-discovery group) over to taste the Filipino version of a Spanish dish.

(Correction: my family’s version of the Filipino version of a Spanish dish. )

My chicken afritada with rice

Materials (serves eight)
- approx. 1 kg of chicken parts (drumsticks / thighs)
- 1 tetra pack (500 g) of tomato sauce
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed and minced
- ½ shallot, sliced
- 3 medium new potatoes (Charlotte Ros), scraped and quartered
- 1 bottle of peeled baby carrots, rinsed and drained
- 2 bell peppers/capsicums: red and green (or you may use any color), cut into strips
- some green beans / haricot verts, trimmed
- canned/bottled white beans in tomato sauce
- salt and pepper
- flour
- ½ cube chicken bouillon

Methodology
- Rinse the chicken parts in running water, pat dry, then coat them with flour seasoned with salt and pepper. Brown the pieces in hot cooking oil, then set aside.
- In a large Dutch oven / cooking pot, heat approx. 2-3 tablespoons of oil, then saute the garlic and onions with the crushed chicken bouillon. Add the browned chicken pieces and lightly toss until coated with the oil and spices.
- Add the tomato sauce. Cover pot and wait until the mixture simmers (in medium heat). Stir the chicken and the sauce, cover and time for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Add the potatoes, cover pot and let everything simmer for ~10 minutes. Stir occasionally.
- Add the carrots, cover pot and simmer for 5 minutes. Again, stir once in a while to prevent the food sticking in the pot.
- Add the bell peppers and green beans, let everything cook uncovered for 3-5 minutes (or until the beans turn bright green). Add half a bottle of canned white beans in tomato sauce, stir. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Turn off heat and serve with hot, fluffy rice!

Results and Discussion
Time allotment. This is not a quick dish (i.e., this takes around at least an hour to cook everything, not to mention that it takes me around 20 minutes to prepare the meat and vegetables for cooking), so this is best done during weekends. For today’s lunch, my original plan was to divide the cooking method into two stages—cook the chicken, potatoes and carrots the night before, then reheat and add the vegetables and beans when the girls and I come back from Sunday Mass. I still followed the two-stage cooking plan, however I did not do the first part last night since I was a bit feverish—instead, I got up at around 5AM to do it!

Cooking chicken afritada, stage 1, at 5AM

Absurdly early, I know…but I had Sunday choir-practice at 9AM, and it takes me 25-30 minutes to walk from Brusselstraat to the seminary. And with my sleep-addled (and paracetamol-stuffed) brain had to figure out what sort of cover to use for my hand-me-down Dutch oven…

Bottled baby carrots? Fresh carrots here are sold by the bushel, not by piece. Again, the solo-living dilemma—what am I going to do with a pile of unused vegetable since I can only eat as much? Another advantage in using bottled baby carrots is that I get to skip the trimming and scraping part—all I needed to do was to rinse the pieces thoroughly with cold water to remove the brine (wait, are bottled veggies brined anyway? I am not sure, but it pays to play it safe…and I don’t want any extra, “bottle-only” flavor to compete with my dish) and toss them into the stew. Reduces cooking time, too.

Canned/bottled white beans in tomato sauce?? Ah, I have revealed a family variation to the afritada—the canned/bottled white beans in tomato sauce (back in the Philippines, it would’ve been “canned pork & beans”) rounds up the rich flavor of this tomato-based stew.

Breading the chicken pieces. Another family variation—coating the meat pieces with seasoned flour does two things: prevents the meat from sticking to the pot, and the meat becomes pre-seasoned already. Notice that the “adjust the amount of seasoning to taste” is at the last part of the Methodology—in this attempt, I just had to add more pepper and a tiny bit of salt to complete the taste profile of the sauce, not of the meat.

Wrapping it up
For a PhD student, this is a time-intensive dish, perfect for weekends and for entertaining friends since it’s a stew rich in flavor AND ingredients—with one pot, everyone gets “stuffed to the gills” with protein and veggies. If there are leftovers, they would be greatly appreciated as afritada also ages well in the fridge. But this is definitely not a dish you’d like to whip up from scratch after a long day in the lab.

Although, I call this a “happy stew” because of the colors. Perfect for the grey autumn weather.