Spice (51 page)

Place a few sausages in a skillet over medium heat. Add water to cover the bottom of the pan. Cover and steam the sausages until they are plump and the liquid evaporates, about 5 to 6 minutes. Pierce the sausages with a fork or the point of a knife, and lower the heat to low. Brown the sausages slowly in their own juices for approximately 8 minutes. They are cooked thoroughly when pinkness disappears.

Cassie’s Important Tips

1. Don’t forget to test the sausage for proper seasoning and texture before stuffing it. Cook a small amount wrapped in plastic wrap in boiling water for about 6 minutes or until cooked through.

2. Casings are easier to work with when they have a little time to soak in warm water after they are washed.

3. When stuffing sausage, always keep one hand on the extruder, while pushing down the meat mixture with your other hand. You will have more control of the stuffing process if you feed a small amount of meat through, keeping the mixer on slow speed.

Roast Chicken Stuffed with Basturma and Kasseri Cheese

Stuffing flavors under chicken skin before cooking turns a simple roasted chicken into something very special. Sometimes I use butter and lemon confit (slow-braised lemon slices in olive oil) as a stuffing, which makes the chicken rich and lemony. Sometimes I use herbs, garlic, and black truffles. Basturma and good kasseri cheese in this recipe make the stuffed chicken taste salty, nutty, and bittersweet with just the right amount of heat from the chilies on the basturma.

Kasseri is Greek-or Turkish-style grating cheese usually made from sheep’s milk. It melts wonderfully and has a slightly nutty flavor. Use Gruyère or Asiago cheese as a substitution if you can’t find kasseri at a local Greek or Middle Eastern market or specialty cheese shop.

I like to use whole, bone-in chicken breasts for a moister chicken. Serve this chicken with Rice Cakes (page 65) or Mashed Potatoes with Fenugreek (page 216) alongside it.

It’s worth trying to find a Chateau Musar from the Bekka Valley in Lebanon to drink with this dish. Their unique, biodynamically cultivated reds are a blend of cinsault, carignan, and cabernet sauvignon that are grown in limestone. The result is a medium-bodied wine, full of rustic, earthy flavors that express Lebanon’s terroir. See Theresa’s note on biodynamic farming on page 225.

S
ERVES
4

2 whole bone-in chicken breasts (skin on), split into 4 half-breasts

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley plus a little extra for garnish

1 1/3 cups grated kasseri cheese

12 paper-thin slices fatty basturma

Salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup white wine

½ cup water or chicken broth

¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 1½ lemons)

1.
Preheat the oven to 375°F.

2.
Run your fingers underneath the skin of each chicken breast, loosening it up and creating a deep pocket between the skin and the meat for stuffing. Make sure that you don’t poke all the way through to the other side of the skin.

3.
In a small mixing bowl, combine the parsley and kasseri cheese.

4.
Place 3 slices of basturma under the skin of each half breast, in as even a layer as possible.

5.
Fill the rest of the skin pocket with about 1/3 cup of the kasseri cheese mixture, packing it down so that it’s flat enough to sear on the skin side. Season the breasts on all sides with salt and pepper.

6.
In a medium sauté pan over high heat, melt ½ tablespoon of butter with 1 tablespoon of oil, until the butter begins to brown. Add 2 of the chicken breast pieces, skin-side down, and cook for about 4 minutes on one side, until browned. Remove the breasts from the sauté pan and place them in a heavy roasting pan, skin-side up.

7.
Wipe the sauté pan clean and repeat the same process as in step 6 with the remaining 2 breast pieces, another tablespoon of olive oil, and ½ tablespoon of butter.

8.
Place the stuffed breasts in the oven and roast them for 15 to 18 minutes, until cooked through. Allow them to rest for 8 minutes.

9.
Remove the chicken pieces from the roasting pan and place them on a carving board. Put the roasting pan on the stove over medium-high heat. Add the wine, water, and lemon juice to the roasting pan and simmer, scraping the bottom of the pan until you remove the sugars; this makes a thin gravy or jus as well as a clean roasting pan.

10.
Strain the liquid through a fine sieve into a sauté pan large enough to hold the 4 pieces of chicken and simmer until it’s reduced by half, about 4 minutes. You should have about ½ cup to ¾ cup of jus.

11.
Whisk in the remaining tablespoon of butter and season with salt and pepper.

12.
Remove the chicken meat from the breast bone by inserting a knife where the bone meets the flesh to loosen it; then, using your fingers to remove the ribs and bone, pull it off completely. (The little rib bones make an excellent chicken broth.)

13.
Place the boned, stuffed breasts in the large sauté pan with the sauce and heat them over medium-low heat until warm, about 6 minutes. The sauce will thicken a little more and glaze the undersides of the chicken.

14.
Spoon extra sauce over the top of each breast and sprinkle with chopped parsley. Serve immediately.

Presentation Variation

At Oleana, we split the chicken in half and debone it, and then we stuff the skin of each chicken half and tuck it into a flat ball shape. We cook the chicken in a heavy cast-iron pan, under a brick; this flattens it and marbles the dark meat into the white. This process makes for a dramatic presentation and ultracrispy skin. See Crispy Lemon Chicken with Za’atar on page 245.

BIODYNAMIC FARMING

Theresa Paopao, Wine Director at Oleana

Biodynamic farming is a supercharged method of organic agriculture, centered on the philosophy that all living organisms are affected by two forms of energy: earthly and cosmic. Biodynamic farmers use special preparations of fertilizer and plan the growth cycle according to the natural rhythms of the solar and lunar phases. Wine made from such healthy and sustainable vineyards will produce grapes that are of optimum health and quality. Without artificial additives, the wine may best express its terroir, or the soil in which it is grown. Most biodynamic wines are certified through an international organization called Demeter, which can be found on the label of the wine bottle.

PART II

Herbs and Other Key Mediterranean Flavors

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