Hunger Games - Chicken with Orange Beurre Blanc and Caramelized Peas and Onions

During her first meeting with Cinna, her stylist, Katniss has a meal of chicken in orange sauce with peas and onions. As she watched this perfect plate of food rise from within the table at the push of a button, Her life had been so hard all her life and with the slightest effort, Capitol residents had a first class meal brought before them. She imagined herself trying to recreate this meal back in District 12. Katniss realizes that after a hard day of hunting. gathering and trading, her version would still be a lesser version of Cinna's lunch. With that realization, Katniss's hate for the Capitol grows.

Though the book does not specify what type of orange sauce is used, I'd like to think it was a decadent buerre blanc usually used with fish and seafood.

Ingredients:

1 lb boneless chicken thighs, cubed
2 oranges
1/2 cup white wine
2 teaspoons shallots, minced
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup couscous 
2 cups frozen peas
1/2 cup frozen pearl onions
Salt & Pepper

Directions:

Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Heat a pan over high heat and brown the chicken pieces and remove from pan.

Saute shallots in the chicken drippings for a minute. Add the juice of 1 1/2 oranges (save last half for orange segments) and white wine to the pan. Lower heat to medium and reduce the liquid to half its original volume. The sauce should be syrupy by this point.

Lower the heat of the pan to low and slowly whisk in little pieces of the butter. Stir continuously to avoid the sauce breaking and do not let it boil. The result should be a smooth pale orange sauce that can easily coat the back of a spoon. Add the chicken back with the remaining orange segments and allow the chicken to finish cooking over low heat.

Using the water-couscous ratio reccommended on your package, allow the couscous to cook and fluff with a fork. Place the peas and onions in another pan and let them heat up with a dab of butter. Season with salt and pepper. Serve chicken over a bed of couscous with the peas and onions as a side.

Ultimate Romantic Dinner - Fondue

In lieu of Valentine's Day tomorrow, I was thinking about a truly romantic dinner. What should that entail exactly? Is it having someone cook you a great meal? Is it cooking together? Should it be extravagant and complicated? I think there needs to be a delicate balance between cooking and enjoying on a sensitive day like V-day. Someone cooking for you is nice but that would require spending some time apart. Cooking together and doing it well is a romantic notion to me but it can go awry when trying to do something overly complicated.

The answer... FONDUE! It's simple to prepare and it just requires 15-20 minutes of prep work. While one person melts the cheese into a sauce, the other can prepare all the dippers. Team work people!

Ingredients:

1/2 lb Swiss
1/2 lb Gruyere
1 cup white wine
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (optional)

Suggested Dippers:

Bread
Apples
Chorizo sausage
Baby potatoes
Broccoli

Directions:

Grate the cheeses into a bowl and toss with the cornstarch.

Heat your fondue bowl (read the directions on your specific fondue bowl, some can be heated on stove while others need to be transferred) or a pot over medium low heat. Rub the inside of the pot with garlic. Discard the garlic for a subtle garlic taste but I don't think there is ever enough garlic. I mince the garlic and put it into the pot with wine. Bring the wine and garlic up to a simmer.


Add cornstarch coated cheese slowing to the simmering wine a little at a time until all the cheese is melted. Add pepper and nutmeg. The cheese sauce should have the consistency of a thick sauce that coats the back of a spoon but drips smoothly. If the cheese sauce is a little thick, add a bit more wine. If too thin, sprinkle in some more cornstarch.

Prepare all the dippers into a good dipping size. Boil the potatoes until fork tender. Blanch the vegetables for a couple minutes before eating. 

Cafe Boulud - Restaurant Week

Restaurant Week in NYC is coming to an end this week and I've taken the opportunity to try a few of New York's restaurants at a severely discounted price. Lunch is only $24.07 and Dinner $35. Restaurant week is a great opportunity for people to enjoy great food, restaurants, and renowned chefs at an affordable price. I can think of many meals where I paid much more than the prix-fixe prices which proved incomparable to the elegant delicious food off the restaurant week menus at New York's finest restaurants.





One hot ticket for restaurant week is Cafe Boulud who only partakes in lunch service for restaurant week; their dinner menu remains the same. I have tried getting a reservation for their restaurant week menu since last year and this year was lucky enough to stumble onto a cancelled reservation. With 24 hours of notice, I recruited my friend Niko to play hooky and take an extended lunch hour to try this french restaurant owned by distinguished chef Daniel Boulud in the Upper East Side.

 Amuse Bouche - Truffle Oil Arancini Stuffed with Fontina Cheese
 

 Appetizer - Duck Terrine with Frisee, Onion and Cranberry

 Dessert - Rum Raisin Bavariose with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

 Complimentary Madeleine Cookies at the end of the meal

From their famous end-of-the-meal Madeleine cookies to the arancini amuse bouche it was a fantastic meal start to finish. The server even told us that customers have come back to the restaurant specifically for the Madeleines and ask if they can pay to have them at the beginning of the meal as well as the end. And as someone who does not particularly enjoy sweets, I have to say they were pretty good. Subtle lemon flavors in the fresh-out-of-the-oven warm cookies with powdered sugar dusted on top for the perfect amount of sweetness. In addition to their fantastic $24.07 three course prix-fixe menu, Cafe Boulud also has a special $24 bottle of wine (white and red option) to accompany their restaurant week menu. The cherry on top!

Note*: I had the blackened flounder over creamy polenta and braised collard greens for my entree. However, I was overly excited when it came out and forgot to snap a picture of it; but believe me, it was delicious.