Chicken, mushrooms, and bricks

I think that chicken sometimes gets a bad rap.  I like chicken.  A really good roast or rotisserie chicken has a rich, deep flavor and there are braised chicken dishes in North African cuisine that are simply amazing.  Yet chicken can also be a staple of bland diets and when someone samples a kind of neutral meat like alligator or rabbit or frog’s legs and says “it tastes like chicken,” they mean it doesn’t taste like much of anything except a vehicle for sauce.  I get that.

The thing is, until recently the recipes I’ve found that really developed the flavor of chicken took a long time to cook. A good Moroccan tagine can take hours and a you can’t decide to roast a chicken at the last minute either.  A few months, ago, though, I came across Patricia Wells’ Trattoria, a book of simple Italian trattoria cooking.  She has a recipe for chicken under bricks that I tested and immediately adored.

The brick itself is optional but only if you have a substitute heavy (10 lb, 5kg) weight.  The idea is to heat up some oil or butter in a skillet and place the seasoned chicken pieces skin side down in the oil and then a heavy weight on top of the chicken to press it into the skillet.  I have a cast iron 10 lb weight but Wells suggests a brick wrapped in aluminum foil.  Let them cook until the skin is nicely browned, then turn them over and finish cooking.  Remove to a serving platter, let rest for a few minutes, and serve.

The results are amazing.  If you can reserve the temptation to peek at the skin while it is cooking (and thus remove the possibility of tearing partially seared skin off the chicken), the skin will be perfectly browned and crispy and the meat will be moist, fully cooked, and full of rich, chicken flavor. As a bonus, you’ll also have a skillet full of chicken fat just begging to be repurposed. This is also a great way of cooking chicken for one or two, or cooking mixture of breasts and dark meat (add the dark meat to the skillet a minute or two after the breast).

At this point, we take a brief diversion.  A few weeks earlier, we visited Krakus Market, a Polish grocery store in Philadelphia’s Port Richmond neighborhood, in search of the perfect Easter ham (remember?).  Well in addition to kielbasas, pierogis, gołąbki (usually galumpki in English translations), and babka, Polish grocers feature a great selection of dried mushrooms.  Even better, these dried mushrooms are generally much less expensive than the ones you’ll find at upscale supermarkets.

I’m becoming a big fan of dried mushrooms.  They not only give you a much wider range of flavors than the traditional button or cremini mushrooms, but the water used to reconstitute them becomes an ingredient in its own right. The technique is pretty basic.  Most envelopes of dried mushrooms have 1-2 oz of mushrooms, depending on the type.  Empty the envelope into your smallest saucepan and cover with water.  Bring to a boil and then turn off the heat and then let everything just sit for about 30 minutes.  Drain and you’re ready to go.

So to bring this all together, I had been rehydrating a package of capes while the chicken was cooking.  Before taking the chicken off the heat, I drained the mushrooms (saving the water), chopped them up, and then added them back to the liquid.  When the chicken was ready, I moved them to a serving platter to rest and drained all but a couple of tablespoons of fat from the skillet to use at a later date.  Then, without adjusting the heat under the skillet, added the mushrooms and their liquid, some white wine, butter, and rosemary and kept stirring until the butter thickened and browned.  Then poured this pan sauce over the chicken and served.

That mushroom sauce was the crowning glory on some already fabulous chicken.

Recipe – Chicken and mushroom sauce (for 2)

Ingredients

2 pieces of chicken (this recipe can easily be scaled up or down, as long as the number of pieces of chicken will fit in your skillet)

1 tbl olive oil

salt and pepper

1 package dried mushrooms

1 tbl fresh rosemary, chopped

2 tbl butter

1 tbl dry white wine

Directions

Trim any excess fat from the chicken and then season with salt and pepper.

Put the mushrooms in a small saucepan and cover with water.  Bring to a boil and then turn off the heat, letting the mushrooms simmer in the warm water.

Heat a skillet with olive oil to medium high.  When the skillet is hot, add the chicken skin side down and then add a weight on top of the chicken.  Let the chicken cook undisturbed for 12 minutes, then turn over using tongs and taking care not to tear the skin.  The skin should be a deep brown color.  Cook on the other side for 10 minutes, then remove the chicken pieces to a serving platter.

Shortly before the chicken is done, drain the mushrooms (saving the liquid) and chop them.  Add them back to the liquid.

Drain all but 2 tbl of fat from the skillet.  Add the mushrooms, mushroom liquid, butter, wine, and rosemary to the skillet and keep stirring until the butter thickens and turns brown.

Pour the pan sauce over the chicken and serve.