Life of Wry

When your president* (not my president) continues to unravel before your eyes and your country feels more unstable with each passing hour; when the Speaker of the House proposes convening a bi-partisan panel to explore the hows and whats of the 25th amendment (equal parts political theater and genuine concern); when the governor of your son’s newly adopted state bravely recounts the details of the plot to kidnap and do her great harm by white supremacist gun-toting yahoos egged on by the president*–a plot unveiled by the FBI as arrests were made this morning…

When all that is going on, making you feel anxious and unsafe…. you stop tap tap tapping on your keyboard and instead blog photos of the evening’s cooking adventure.

So… chose this recipe.. chicken with shallots. Ingredients include, but are not limited to: halved cherry tomatoes, kosher salt, fresh ground pepp, fresh tarragon, white wine and dijon mustard.

The first step was to deeply brown chicken thighs (which had been sprinkled with flour and a generous amount of salt and pepper) in butter, then remove from pan:

Then, drop whole peeled shallots into that crusted pan and caramelize:

Then deglaze with 2 cups of white wine, add tarragon and mustard…

Then add the chicken back and let it simmer, covered, for half an hour:

After 30 minutes, you uncover and reduce the sauce until it’s thick, but, in fact, it was at its desired thickness already… so I just recovered it, turned off the heat and waited for the rice and broc to be done. When ready to serve, you toss in the halved cherry toms and serve it immediately. It looks like this:

Turns out, the liberal salt was too liberal (the only thing that is, these days) and I’m not a fan of tarragon.. too anise-y. Otherwise, the chicken and shallots and sauce (wine, butter, chicken fat, s&p, mustard)… were exceptionally flavorful and the texture of the chicken was perfect.

We’ve definitely turned a seasonal corner here… it’s getting fallish.

See? Leaves! The Birch trees have been raining leaves!