I love food magazines! I love drooling over recipes and pictures and reading about other people's experiences at restaurants or eating in a different country. Two of my absolutely favorite food mags are "Fine Cooking" and "Saveur." They are both quite different but appeal to me for their beautiful pictures, content and recipes.
Having said that, I'm sorry to say that I'm no longer subscribed to either. No, it's not because I don't like the magazines, it's mainly because I have many back issues as I've been subscribed for many years and I don't cook enough with the ones I already own (yeah, I'm one of those who can't get rid of old issues).
Fine Cooking Magazines on Bookshelf
Nate is always accusing me of wanting to buy more magazines but not using them enough in my cooking. After having Nate tell me yet again that I have so many magazines and I should cook more from them, I decided one day to flip through my entire stack of Fine Cooking magazines.
I started to make a list for myself of all the recipes I plan to try. I actually started a document with different headings for beef/lamb, pork, chicken/poultry, veggies, starches, appetizers, desserts, and miscellaneous. I only made it through a third of the stack, and I already had enough on my list for weeks of cooking without repeating any dish. Scary! And a little exciting as well.
Change up
I realized I had all the ingredients for one of the chicken recipes I was reading. I had waiting for me in the fridge a defrosted whole chicken that I was originally planning to roast. I also had lots of garlic. The rest of the ingredients I happened to have handy as well.
So I scrapped my original idea of a roast chicken and changed up my menu in favor of this braised chicken. The only thing we needed was a baguette to soak up all the goodness of the braised liquids and the oh-so-buttery garlic. Nate was ordered to pick one up on the way home from work.
Braised Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic
(recipe taken from Fine Cooking, Vol 92)
Ingredients
3 1/2 to 4 lb chicken
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
One-half lemon
1/4 tsp. sweet Hungarian paprika
2 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
40 cloves unpeeled garlic, separated and any loose papery skins removed (about 2 large heads)
1/2 cup dry white wine
2 sprigs fresh thyme
2 sprigs fresh rosemary
2 sprigs fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 cup lower-salt chicken broth
Toasted baguette slices for serving
Method
Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and heat the oven to 400F.
Trim any excess fat from the cavity of the chicken. Pat chicken really dry and season inside and out with 2 tsp salt and 1 tsp. pepper. Squeeze the juice from the lemon half and set the juice aside. Put the juiced lemon half in the chicken's cavity. Cross the chicken legs and tie them together; tuck the wings under the chicken. Using a small sieve, dust the breasts and legs with the paprika.
Heat the oil in a 3- to 4-quart Dutch oven (large enough to fit the chicken snugly) over med-high heat. Add the chicken, breast side down, and cook until the skin is browned, about 2 mins.
Cook Chicken in a Dutch Oven
Turn and cook the the back and sides until browned, 2-3 mins per side. Transfer the chicken to a plate and pour off and discard the oil left in the pot. Return the pot to med-high heat. Add the garlic and wine to the pot, stirring to deglaze the browned bits from the bottom. Return the chicken to the pot, setting it breast side up on top of the garlic. Add the herbs to the pot, pour the broth over the chicken, and bring to a boil.
Braised Chicken in Dutch Oven with Wine, Garlic and Herbs
Cover and transfer the pot to the oven. Cook, basting the chicken every 20 mins, until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thigh registers 160F, 45 mins to 1 hour.
Uncover and continue to cook the chicken until the thermometer registers 165 to 170F in the thigh and the juices from the thigh run clear, about 10 mins more. Transfer chicken to cutting board and the garlic cloves to a serving platter; cover both loosely with foil to keep warm.
Strain the braising liquid from the pot into a small saucepan; discard the herbs. Spoon off as much fat as possible. Bring to a boil over med-high heat. Simmer until reduced to 3/4 cup, about 5 mins. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and some of the reserved lemon juice.
Carve the chicken and transfer the pieces to the serving platter with the garlic. Serve with the sauce and the baguette slices.
Braised Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic
Turns out, this is actually a pretty easy recipe and very tasty! The chicken was moist and flavorful and the garlic was mellow but so mouthwatering! Don't forget to squeeze out the garlic from the cloves and spread it on your bread like butter. Soooo good!
Braised Garlic is Like Buttah
Enjoy!
Now, I'm more motivated to try even more new recipes from my magazines. I'm looking forward to jotting down more recipes to try as I work through the rest of my stack. Nate will be happy that I'm using my magazines and maybe if I work through enough of them, I'll want to reinstate my subscriptions.
Which cooking mags do you have too many of? Leave us a comment and tell us about it!
Cheers, Annie
More "Fine Cooking"-Inspired Posts:
Sweet Corno di Toro Peppers in Mexican Chopped Salad
The Best Cream Scones Recipe Ever
18 Comments:
I'm letting all of my cooking magazine subscriptions lapse now. The amount of paper coming into the house was becoming embarrassing, and with recipes available online, it seems more eco-conscious to reduce the magazine subscriptions. I do miss the monthly pile-up of Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Saveur, Fine Cooking, and, for its very short lifetime, Chow, which would have been my all-time favorite.
I love Fresh by Fine Cooking and Saveur, but if one looks good for a particular month, I have to pick it up. I just picked up Bon Appetit. I started making a journal of restaurants I have tried, and cut outs of recipes I want to make, and then I throw the magazine out. I don't have a bunch of magazines lying around. This chicken looks amazing.
I am a foodie magazine junkie too. I get Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, Gourmet and Saveur. Plus the Canadian quarterly Food and Drink. And no, I never throw out a back issue either.
The chicken looks great. Just like something Ina would make...
Beautiful! The garlic harvest is coming in and this looks like the perfect dish to prepare in honor of it.
oh wow 40 cloves of garlic, I bet it tastes heavenly. I want your magazine collection hehe
ahh. cant get enough of good magazines too-and they are very inspiring. 40 cloves of garlic sounds heaps but I think it certainly add to the flavour!
I usually just roast chicken when I have a whole one, so I'm also in a roast-chicken-rut. This recipe looks excitingly different. . .will try this soon. Thanks!
I love that recipe, yours looks better than mine usually does. Yes, the garlic on a nice crusty loaf of bread, a total must do.
Well I just might have to try this chicken recipe myself. I am never really satisfied with the results when I cook whole chickens at home. They always seem to come out underdone. So usually I stick to recipies that call for pieces. But I haven't tried braising... and all that garlic! How can I resist? Maybe as the weather cools down a bit. -Melissa
@Lydia - online is probably for the best. Only thing is you can't lay in bed flipping through recipes unless you have a laptop.
@Abby - less clutter is good.
@Natashya - which magazine do you like best?
@Jenny - what kinds of garlic do you grow?
@Noobcook - how hard is it to get these food magazines there in Singapore?
I made a variation of this recently too. And roasted a chicken with 40 cloves of garlic. I liked the roasted version much better. But then, I can never resist a roasted chicken.
@daphne - the trouble is you almost don't know where to start!
@JS - Do you have a dutch oven?
@Robert - just smush it on and chomp!
@Melissa - the braising ensures that the chicken stays moist while cooking completely through. Do try it out!
we loved garlic and this is so nice!
I definitely have way too many cooking mags. I have a pile of Fine Cooking magazines and a pile of Bon Appetit. I should probably go through them and try and reduce that pile.
That chicken with the braised garlic is making me drool all over my keyboard right now lol
That is really good. I am going to try to this soon. Although the garlic kinda shocked me a bit. I don't have an oven, so I will use the small toaster oven and not bake the whole chicken. Maybe just half ...
@Wandering Chopsticks - I looove roasted chicken!
@babe_kl - thanks!
@judyfoodie - How to reduce the pile? So many good recipes to cook...
@Selera Gourmet - The garlic is nice.
Will you be able to do a braise in the toaster oven?
I can easily recycle fashion or gossip magazines when I'm done with them, but never a cooking magazine. I did have a years worth of cooking light magazines that I cut apart and made into my own little cookbook. I just put the recipes onto paper and put them in a binder with plastic covers for each page. It's a great resource now, and way less clutter than other magazines I have lying around!
This sounds like an amazing recipe; I must try it sooon!
@Erin - a scrapbook of magazine recipes! Far better than a file folder.
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