Chicken with Blueberry Chipotle Sauce

I’m a big fan of dishes that combine sweet and savory with a touch of salty or spicy, like poultry or pork with fruit. In the winter I’m likely to use apples, pears or dried fruits, as in Pork Roast with Prunes, Rosemary and Red Wine. Now that summer is here, I’m turning to berries.

A pork tenderloin recipe inspired this dish, but I used chicken breasts instead. I thought the rosemary sitting out on our deck would go well with blueberries so I sprinkled a little on the chicken before it went into the pan. To give the sauce some background heat I added chipotle, one of my favorite staples, to the mix. I also added a bit of honey to deepen the sweetness and reduced the vinegar a bit. All my changes worked! It’s always a relief when that happens.

Take advantage of blueberry season (and store sales) by working them into your menu: breakfasts (smoothies, bagels with cream or ricotta cheese and blueberries, Blueberry Coffee Cake, Blueberry Muffins), snacks, dinners and desserts (Blueberry Buckle). Blueberries are little nutritional powerhouses, high in Vitamin C, fiber and anti-oxidants. If you can get your hands on really fresh berries, spread them out on a sheet pan, freeze and then dump them into freezer bags to enjoy throughout the year.

Maine blueberries (photo by Bill Comstock)

Chicken with Blueberry Chipotle Sauce

You’ll need a saucepan and a skillet.

• 2 cups blueberries
• 1/2 cup water
• 3 teaspoons white wine vinegar
• 2 teaspoons molasses
• 1 teaspoon honey
• 1 chipotle en adobo, minced, (if you’re not a fan of heat, use only 1/2 chipotle), or ground chipotle or cayenne to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2-3 large boneless skinless chicken breasts
• Salt, pepper and minced fresh rosemary
• 1-1/2 teaspoons olive or canola oil

Add blueberries to a sauce pan with the water. Bring to a boil, and then reduce heat to a simmer. Add vinegar, molasses, honey, chipotle and salt. Cook 25-30 minutes or until liquid has reduced by half. 

Meanwhile, sprinkle chicken with salt, pepper and rosemary. Heat oil in a pan over medium-high heat. Add chicken to pan and cook thoroughly until both sides are browned and chicken is cooked through. Cover the pan with a lid to speed it along.

Serve chicken with the blueberry sauce. 

Adapted from: Pork Tenderloin and Savory Blueberry Sauce, Savor NC

Strawberry Dumpling

I can’t stop buying strawberries! They’re difficult to resist, especially when North Carolina strawberries are in the market. Plus, May is Strawberry Month in North Carolina so I must celebrate and support my local industry.

My skin should be turning pink. I add strawberries to breakfast cereal, toast with ricotta cheese and frozen banana smoothies. I snack on them straight from the frig. I even served them for dinner one night, topping a spinach and arugula salad with strawberries and grilled spiced chicken. I’ll get my full share over the next few weeks and won’t probably buy them again until next season. Unless I cave and buy long-distance strawberries, but I really hope I can hold out.

This recipe has been tempting me since last year’s strawberry season when I found it on The Kitchn blog. It’s originally from Gourmet magazine. I finally made it last weekend. It’s quick and easy to put together, only requiring a small amount of hands-on time, mostly to make the “dumpling” portion of the recipe.

It looks like a mess but is delicious. If your strawberries are really sweet, you could probably reduce the sugar a bit. And please, don’t forget to buy some good French vanilla ice cream to add to your bowl of steaming strawberry dumpling. I can also vouch that it’s fantastic for breakfast, but not advised if self-control is an issue for you.

Strawberry Dumpling

You’ll need a 4-qt heavy saucepan with lid, medium bowl, whisk and pastry blender (optional).

• 1 quart strawberries, trimmed and thickly sliced (about 4 cups)
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
• 2/3 cup whole milk
• heavy cream or ice cream

Stir together strawberries and sugar in a 4-qt heavy saucepan and let stand, stirring occasionally, until juicy, about 15 minutes. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Blend in butter using a pastry blender or your fingertips until mixture resembles coarse meal with some roughly pea-size butter lumps. Stir in milk until just blended, then add mixture to boiling berries and stir once or twice.

Tightly cover saucepan and reduce heat to low. Cook undisturbed until dumpling looks dry on top, 16 to 20 minutes. Let stand off heat, uncovered, 5 minutes before serving.

Original recipe: Stovetop Strawberry Dumplings, The Kitchn and Strawberry Dumpling, Gourmet, June 2009

The Sunday Table: January 23, 2011

I’ve always wanted to be a butcher, not as a permanent job, just for a little while. I have no idea why, some sort of peasant survival skills instinct maybe. It’d be really cool to know how to break down a side of beef, wouldn’t it? That’s why I’m totally entranced by Lindy and Grundy, two twittering lady sustainable butchers in Los Angeles. I wonder if there are adult butcher camps…

I occasionally go to Walmart for groceries because Jim keeps saying it’s cheaper, but it’s crap. The produce selection can be as bad as Food Lion’s –old yellowing wrinkling vegetables from thousands of miles away. They only sell frozen fish, which isn’t necessarily so bad, but most of it’s from Asia. However, there may be brighter days ahead. Walmart has announced they will:

• reduce unhealthy fats, salts and sugars in their Great Value packaged food line;
• lower prices on fresh fruits and vegetables; and,
• serve only Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certified sustainable fish.

I’m not interested in lower prices on inferior produce; I’m still not going to buy it. How about fresher and/or organic produce at a decent price, not cut-rate, just decent? I’m not the only one who worries about the effect of Walmart’s price slashing on our food economy.

photo by Linda Tanner

Need a new career? Ever consider the bison business? There’s a shortage because of the rising demand for bison meat, and that’s causing prices to rise. Boo. I love bison. I’m so happy when I encounter a menu that includes bison burgers – a lower fat alternative with a heck of a lot more flavor than turkey burgers, no comparison really. If you have a lot of land and a yearning to be a rancher, the National Bison Association is recruiting.

Long ago my remote control parted ways with the Food Network. I still like Rachael, Ina, Giada and Alton, but most of the network line-up leaves me cold, particularly at night when I’m more likely to tune in. So it’s not surprising to learn they’re losing viewers. I wonder how many of them moved over to their sister network, Cooking Channel, or back to good old PBS. I love food but I want to watch cooking shows, not cake and cupcake challenges.

Holy bogus blueberries, Batman! Kellogg’s, Betty Crocker, General Mills and others have been using “a concoction of sugar, corn syrup, starch, hydrogenated oil, artificial flavors and — of course — artificial food dye blue No. 2 and red No. 40” instead of the real berry. Keep it real by purchasing a pack of frozen wild blueberries.

photo by Roger H. Goun

Blueberry Coffee Cake

In my beach fantasy, I wake up early before the rest of the house, make a pot of coffee and start baking. Everyone wakes up to the aroma of the delicious goodies I whipped up. This idyllic scene is repeated every day in that dreamy world.

In reality, we stay up too late, the bed is too cozy and the coffee is already made by some kind soul by the time I wander downstairs. But despite my sloth, I did throw together a coffee cake for breakfast brunch one morning. I guess croissants will live only in my fantasy world.

My faithful companion, Fannie Farmer (aka Marion Cunningham), accompanied me to the beach and inspired me to make this Blueberry Coffee Cake. It’s quick to make and quick to disappear.

Blueberry Coffee Cake

Cake:

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened (1/2 stick)
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup milk – I used 2%
  
• 1-1/2 cups blueberries

Streusel topping:

• 1/3 cup flour
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
  

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour an 8” square pan. 

Add butter and sugar to a bowl and beat until thoroughly blended. Add egg and vanilla and mix well. In another bowl, add flour, baking powder and salt and mix well. Add dry ingredients to the butter/sugar mixture along with the milk. Beat until the batter is smooth. Spread evenly in the prepared pan and sprinkle the blueberries evenly over the top.

For the streusel, add flour, butter, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg to a bowl or food processor — I use a food processor, it’s much quicker. Work them together with your fingertips or a pastry blender, or use the pulse function of the processor, until you have a mixture of light, dry crumbs. Spread over the berries. Bake 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean.

Watch the time, I didn’t have a toothpick, was relying on a knife and overcooked it just a bit. This recipe doubles easily. Seriously consider that.

Serve warm from the pan and get a piece while you can.

Blueberry Buckle

Are you like me? Do you have file folders full of recipe clippings from newspapers and magazines? For decades I’ve been thinking about organizing them but it hasn’t happened yet. I know there are treasures in there.

One stained newspaper clipping from the Washington Post is titled Blueberry Bonanza. The Post has always had an excellent Food section. This article with recipes is by Elinor Klivans who wrote frequently about baking for the Post when I lived in the DC area. I’m sure my folders hold other clippings by her. Based on the mention of a cookbook she was launching, I’m guessing this article was published in 2001.

She describes a buckle as “typically a moist, fruit-filled cake, often with a crumb topping.” Pretty accurate. Richard Sax, in his wonderful Classic Home Desserts, defines the various fruit pastries – cobbler, crisp, crumble, pandowdy, buckle, grunt and slump — in his Extended Family of Cobblers and Crisps chapter. There’s a good definition of all these fruit desserts on the From Karen’s Kitchen to Yours blog, thank you Google!

Elinor makes her buckle in a 9×9 pan but I must have left mine somewhere so I used a 7×12, pretty close in volume. I kept an eye on the time just in case it was done early.

Blueberry Buckle

For the crumb topping:

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature, plus extra for greasing the pan
• ½ cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• ¾ cup all-purpose flour

For the cake:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 7 tablespoons unsalted butter at room temperature
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ½ teaspoon almond extract
• ½ cup milk – I used 2%
• 2 cups (about 1 pint) blueberries

Preheat oven to 325. Grease your pan (9×9 or 7×12). For the crumb topping, with a mixer on medium speed, beat the butter, brown sugar and cinnamon until smooth and well-blended, about 1 minute. Reduce the speed to low, add the flour and mix just until the mixture forms crumbs, about 15 seconds. Set aside.

For the cake, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside. In another bowl, with a mixer on medium speed, beat the butter and sugar until smooth, about 1 minute. Add the eggs, vanilla and almond extract and beat for 2 minutes. Reduce the speed to low, add half of the reserved flour mixture and mix until just incorporated. Add the milk, mixing until just incorporated. (She said the mixture may look slightly curdled, mine didn’t). Add remaining flour and mix until just incorporated (sensing a theme?) and the batter is smooth, making sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl as you go. Gently fold the berries into the batter.

Spread the batter evenly into your pan. Sprinkle the crumb topping evenly on top. Bake for 30 minutes. Rotate the pan 180 degrees to ensure even baking and bake 20-30 minutes more, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.

Transfer to a rack to cool completely. Serve at room temperature. You can store it covered for up to 2 days. Enjoy!

Jordan Marsh Blueberry Muffins

I grew up in Massachusetts — land of Filene’s and Jordan Marsh department stores, both chains now long gone. The Jordan Marsh in Braintree in the South Shore Shopping Plaza had a counter where you could buy their famous blueberry muffins. I’m not sure if the muffins were baked there or at their downtown Boston store, but they were the best blueberry muffins to be found in Massachusetts.

Long ago I cut out a recipe for these muffins from the Boston Globe. That clipping is long gone but the recipe is still on an index card. Now that local blueberries are plentiful, this is my go-to recipe for blueberry muffins — a taste of my childhood.

Jordan Marsh Blueberry Muffins

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 2 cups unsifted flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2-1/2 cups fresh blueberries
• 1-1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 tablespoons sugar (for top of muffins)

photo by flickr/stevegarfield

Preheat oven to 375. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition.

In a second bowl, combine all dry ingredients. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar mixture along with the milk and vanilla.

Mash 1/2 cup of the blueberries, and stir in by hand (this will turn batter a light shade of blue and add a touch of blueberry flavor, but this step may be skipped, if you wish). Add the remaining whole berries and stir in gently by hand.

If you have trouble with blueberries settling to the bottom, toss them in flour before adding to the batter. It may just be that your batter is too thin. Another trick is to fill muffin cups 1/4 full with batter that hasn’t had blueberries added to it yet; then stir the blueberries in and continue to fill the muffin cups.

Spray a 12 muffin baking pan. Fill greased muffin cups 3/4 full. Sprinkle sugar on top of unbaked muffins.

Bake for 25-30 minutes. Cool in pan. Run a knife around the edge of each muffin after several minutes to free it from the pan and cool on wire racks. Muffins may be brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with sugar, if desired.

Strawberries Galore!

It’s strawberry season in North Carolina. I found a farm stand close to my house – Porter Farms in Willow Spring on Hwy 42. They have all sizes of containers for sale, and it’s even cheaper if you pick your own.

from the Porter Farms website

That night we had (store-bought) angel food cake with strawberries and whipped cream on top. Easy.

The next day I made fruit salad with a heavy emphasis on the strawberries. I added bananas, orange segments, pineapple, pear, apple, grapes and some peach nectar and sugar. I meant to top it with coconut flakes when serving, but forgot.  It was also good on the angel food cake with whipped cream, for breakfast.

The fruit salad starred again in white wine sangria. I didn’t add any other type of liquor to the wine as many recipes suggest. I put some of the fruit in the bottom of the glass and then added the wine with a bit more peach nectar. Oh boy. I have a feeling I will be making fruit salad a lot more often if it means sangria is on the menu.

flickr photo by ~MVI~

Next up to try is this Strawberry Dumpling recipe from The Kitchn (who got it from beloved and departed Gourmet). Check out the photos on their blog — how can you resist that? I’ll report back on how it turns out.