Glazed Maple Honey Pepper Chicken

The inspiration for this chicken dish came from Brad Leone in the July 2020 issue of Bon Appétit magazine. You will need to plan ahead if you want to make this, as the chicken spends 8 hours in the fridge, absorbing a dry rub of black and pink peppercorns. I cut the backbone out of the chicken (Spatchcock is the technical term for this) using poultry shears, so that it would lay flat and roast faster. This is something you can ask the butcher to do, if you’re squeamish about handling raw chicken.

I have never cooked with pink peppercorns before and I was shocked at how much they added to the flavour of the chicken. They are more floral than spicy and they add a delicate, fruity note. The dry brining also gives the skin a chance to air dry, resulting in the crispiest skin after roasting.

The original recipe was done on the BBQ, but I roasted mine in the oven. Before putting the chicken in the roasting pan, I made a bed of peeled halved shallots and lemon wedges to keep the chicken off the bottom of the roasting pan, so that it would roast and not steam in its own juices. Plus, they helped to flavour the chicken.

While the chicken is roasting, I prepared a glaze to be brushed on the chicken during the last 15 minutes of oven time. The glaze is perfectly balanced in terms of flavour. Honey and maple syrup add sweetness , jalapeño peppers add heat, pink peppercorns add a floral note and champagne vinegar adds acidity.

I served it with some wedge roasted potatoes and a green salad. Even though we are just 2 at home now, I still love to make a whole roasted chicken. it’s great to have leftovers the next day.

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Marbled Matzoh Crunch 2021

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No matter how many Passover desserts I set out at the end of the Seder meal, the Marbled Matzoh Crunch is always the first to disappear. Which isn’t surprising when you consider that it’s basically caramel and chocolate coated matzoh. I mean, what’s not to like.

Last year, because of the Pandemic, I had to mail my Passover desserts to all the family members we usually gather with. I sent Raspberry Coconut Macaroons, Triple Coconut Macaroons, Robin’s Egg Macarons and Marbled Matzoh Crunch. Looks like we’re doing a Zoom Seder again this year, but I just couldn’t muster the enthsiasm to bake hundreds of treats for mailing this year. I think we all have Covid fatigue. I’m praying that next year we will all be able to be together again.

Watch the magic in action.

Feel free to customize the matzoh crunch to suit your family. All dark chocolate and a shower of coarsely chopped salted roasted almond is delicious. Dried cherries and chopped pistachios on white chocolate is also a delicious combo. Make it your own.

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Wishing you and your families a happy and healthy Passover.

Strawberry Clover Club Cocktail

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We are coming up on the one year anniversary of our first Pandemic lockdown. Not sure if that’s something we really want to be celebrating, but I feel it should be recognized and noted. Here’s what I said about Covid at that time. Not much has changed. Still staying home, still baking and perhaps drinking a bit more than I did a year ago.

When my husband and I first met, we used to snuggle up on the couch together and watch TV. We loved L.A. Law, Moonlighting and Dallas. The theme song to Dallas was my Friday night lullaby. I don’t think I ever stayed awake for an entire episode. My husband always had to give me a recap in the morning.

Over the years, we got busy with life and kids and we stopped watching TV together. We had very different taste in what we liked watching. I adored any and every medical show and he loved the science-fiction fantasy genre.

During the first week of lockdown last March, we decided to start eating dinner in front of the TV every night and watch a series together. He had rules though, never more than one episode an evening. He is not a binger like me. We had our dark and violent phase, watching Ozark, Fauda, The Hunters, Goliath and Your Honour. I guess we needed to believe that the Pandemic wasn’t so bad, compared to what these people were living through. Then we needed to tone down the gore, so we watched The Crown, After Life, Broadchurch, The Queen’s Gambit, Atypical, Billions, and The Undoing. I even tricked him into watching Bridgeton, and after two episodes, he was hooked!

My husband is nothing, if not, consistent. He is a deep thinker, and after every episode he would recount all the plot holes he uncovered. He would say, “that would never really happen” or “that’s just not realistic”. I asked him if he did the same thing when watching Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, and he responded, “well those are different.”

We have recently started watching Mad Men. After each episode, my husband comments on the amount of smoking and drinking that goes on. How did they get any work done???? I am in awe of the period costumes and glamorous cocktails and horrified at the chauvinism and sexism. We’re only on Season 2, but I suspect the women of Mad Men are about to change.

This beautiful cocktail was originally created in the late 1800’s at a Philadelphia hotel bar, called the Clover Club. It was quite the swinging hot spot in its day. The original was made with raspberries, but since it’s almost spring, I went with strawberries. It’s a gin based drink, with citrus juice (typically lemon, but I went with lime), fruit based simple syrup and egg white for emulsification and froth. I made my own strawberry simple syrup by simmering sugar water and strawberries for about 5 minutes. Then I mashed the berries and let them sit for 30 minutes before straining.

If you’re concerned about the raw egg whites, you can just leave it out or substitute aquafaba (the liquid in canned chickpeas). It will froth up quite nicely.

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Turkish Flatbread (Lahmajoun)

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I love it when you can put salad on top of your dinner and call it a complete meal. This flatbread originated in Turkey. It is traditionally topped with ground lamb or beef, but I went for a plant based meat. I had never heard of this dish until I saw Christopher Kimble make it on Milk Street. I was intrigued and decided to make it.

The dough for the flatbread comes together in the food processor in one minute. This is a yeast raised dough, but don’t let that scare you. It uses instant yeast, which means you just dump it in with the rest of the dry ingredients.

The wet ingredients for this dough are a bit unusual. In addition to water, yogurt is also added. Yogurt, because of its acidity, will relax the gluten, making the bread more tender. It also adds a subtle tang to the crust. Let the food processor do all the work, no hand kneading required. It takes between 1-2 minutes, and you will notice that the dough will get quite warm in the food processor. This is totally normal. Once the dough is smooth and satiny, remove, divide it in half, form two balls of dough and let rise until doubled, about an hour.

While the dough is rising, make the filling. Roasted red pepper and onion get chopped in the food processor until fine. Add tomato paste. I love buying tomato paste in a tube. It keeps forever in the fridge and there is no messing around with half a leftover can.

The spices include cumin, for an earthy note, paprika and red pepper flakes for some kick.

While the arugula and yogurt topping are not traditional, I really love how the peppery arugula cuts through the richness of the meat topping, The yogurt drizzle helps to tame the kick from the red pepper flakes. Plus, your entire dinner is right there on a flatbread. No side dishes are required.

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Poppyseed Fig and Walnut Hamentashen

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Hamentashen are the traditional treat baked for the Jewish holiday of Purim, which, this year, falls on Thursday February 25. Essentially, they are a triangular shaped cookie stuffed with a sweet filling.

The Festival of Purim commemorates a time when the Jewish people living in ancient (4th century BCE) Persia were saved from extermination. If you’re curious to learn a bit more about the holiday, check out this post I wrote a few years ago.

We’re all about texture here in the salt and serenity kitchen, so this year I added some poppyseeds to my hamentashen dough for added crunch. I have loved poppyseeds ever since I was a little girl. My paternal grandmother baked poppyseed cookies. We called them Bubbe Cookies. She lived in Philadelphia and a few times each year she would mail us cookies. She always packed them in a shoebox. When that package arrived, my sisters and I would get so excited. I suspect that is where my love of online shopping stems from. There is something so exhilarating about getting a package and opening it.

I filled the hamentashen with fig jam. My favourite is the Dalmatia brand. Don’t be tempted to overfill the hamentashen. A heaping teaspoon if perfect. Make sure you brush the edges with beaten egg white, to glue the seams closed. Pinch the corners firmly to really seal them. I like to put them in the freezer for about 15 minutes before baking. It helps them to hold their shape during baking.

Once they are cooled, I dipped one edge in honey and then into some crushed candied maple walnuts. Double crunch!

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Strawberry Rhubarb Hamentashen

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Sam Sifton, food editor of the New York Times, has an interesting theory regarding pizza. The first slice of pizza a child sees and tastes becomes, for him, pizza. In effect, that becomes your standard by which you judge all other pizzas. I believe the same could be said for hamentashen. We have a predisposed love of the hamentashen we grew up with.

I grew up in Toronto, and in our family Purim was celebrated with hamantashen from Open Window Bakery. They were huge with a hard, crumbly cookie dough exterior and either a prune or poppy-seed filling. My sisters and I fought over the poppy-seed ones. (Mom, why did you even bother buying the prune ones?)

Over the years, I have experimented with different types of fillings (hello cinnamon bun hamentashen, salted caramel apple hamentashen, dried cherry and pecan hamentashen, and maple pecan hamentashen. Experimenting with fillings is fun, although there are the die-hard traditionalists, like my husband, that just want the “Aunt Carol” hamentashen they grew up with.

Where I get a bit cranky is when people start playing around with the dough that encases the filling. Many of the newer recipes include cream cheese or sour cream, in an attempt to make a flaky dough. People, we are making hamentashen here, not rugelach. Cream cheese and sour cream do not belong in hamentashen dough. The shell of a hamentashen should be cookie-like, firm and crumbly with a toothsome chew.

I did stray slightly by sprinkling a little bit of freeze-dried strawberry powder over my dough, as I was rolling it out. It added a hint of strawberry flavour to the dough, and looked so pretty. Sadly, the streaks disappeared upon baking, but the flavour was there. It’s an optional step.

I’m going to ask you to make your own strawberry rhubarb jam. Store-bought is fine, but if you have an extra 20 minutes, this jam is stellar. I discovered this recipe from Jake Cohen over at thefeedfeed. Sweet and tart with a little pop of acidity from rice wine vinegar, you will find yourself putting this s##t on everything.

Once the jam is made, the process goes fairly quickly, unless you have a mailing list of 25 to send hamentashen to!

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Malt Chocolate and Marshmallow Sandwich Cookies

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When I saw these cookies on nytcooking.com, created by recipe developer and food stylist Yewande Komolafe, I knew I wanted to recreate them. I love using malt powder in baking. Stella Parks calls it the umami bomb of dessert.

These are like a grown-up version of Mallomars. A pillowy marshmallow filling, sandwiched between two chocolate malt shortbread cookies and topped with a bittersweet chocolate ganache. Each cookie is garnished with a sprinkling of edible gold flakes and coarse sea salt. I love to make delicious and beautiful cookies. It satisfies my deeply strong sense of aesthetics. These cookies are fancy AF, but that’s how we roll here at saltandserenity!

Making marshmallows is not difficult, as long as you have a candy or instant read thermometer. I give very detailed instructions in the recipe. The marshmallow mixture sets up fairly quickly, so have your cookies baked and ready to fill before you make the marshmallow mixture.

Although I called these adult cookies, don’t skip the glass of milk!

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Bagel Breakfast Sandwiches

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Although this post is titled “Bagel Breakfast Sandwiches”, I’d never actually eat this for breakfast. I’m never hungry in the morning and usually it’s just a bowl of oatmeal or some yogurt and fruit. But, I’m a big fan of breakfast for dinner. When my kids were little, we’d have waffles and ice cream if my husband was out at a meeting. He would have never considered that dinner. We loved it.

Although I’m giving you a recipe for this sandwich, it’s really more of a guide. Feel free to use whatever you have on hand. I had leeks, kale, peppers and some leftover plant based Italian sausage.

I sautéed the veggies, shredded some cheese, then added them to some beaten eggs and poured them into a greased sheet pan. It only took about 8 minutes to bake in the oven.

Since there are just the two of us, we had leftover “egg circles”. They reheated up perfectly for breakfast with a piece of toast the next few morning, and lunch the day after that.

I toasted up some everything bagels, melted some Gouda cheese on the bottom and topped my egg patty with sliced avocado, tomato and arugula. Cheddar and an English muffin would be yummy. Ciabatta bread and Gruyere would also make a fine match. Just use up whatever is lingering in your vegetable crisper and cheese drawer and you’ve got the makings of a very fine dinner!

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