Coq au Greek Vin.

For my mother-in-law, each turn in the road to her late husband's village (Mikrokleisoura) brings with it a story to share as we make the drive. "This is where we saw the hare!" she exclaims. Returning to the city after nightfall, their trip was once halted by this hare- he had become frozen in the headlights. They honked and honked, but the dear thing could not move for fear and shock. Finally she resolved to get out, but just as she reached the him, he snapped out of it and bounded off into the shrubby oaks. I'd never had her for an animal lover! It is wonderful how you can know someone for years and years, and still they can surprise you. "How kind!" I said. She turned, blinked twice, and patiently explained: "No, dear ...."

Stifado, a dish of stewed meat with wine, a little tomato, pearl onions, and gently sweet with allspice, is, apparently, so tasty that a sensible matron in a top-coat and beehive (it was the '70's), given the chance, will jump out of a car, wring a hare's neck, pop it into the trunk next to the 10 k tin of feta, and be on her way. (My second favorite mother-in-law story involves her inviting a neighbor over for coffee in the hopes she might offer to slaughter a chicken for her on the rooftop of their apartment building in downtown Thessaloniki. How do you not like a story with the line: "Put on some coffee. And bring me a knife." ?) I need hardly add that she is a wonderful cook.

It's a good dish, one of the more elaborate and slow iterations of the meat + onion/wine/tomato to be had. Coq au vin, faster but with a lot more ingredients, is another. Today's lunch combines the speed of the French dish with the simplicity of flavor of the Greek dish- not much stuff, not much time, everyone's happy. Just the thing for the chicken thighs in the freezer. All you need for them is an onion, the rest of last night's wine, a little tomato (fresh, canned, paste....) and some seasoning.

A warm steak has kept sauced rich foods from our table- it has been fresh fish and salads for days, and no complaining. After a week of this summer reprise, a softly overcast day- and a look at the calendar - made this warming hybrid just the thing:

We will need:

4 chicken pieces, with or without the bone

3 T olive oil

2 onions

a large glass of wine

a cup of pureed tomato, or tomato paste and water to make the equivalent

bay leaf

seasoning- either allspice and a clove, or sage and a little thyme

Thinly slice the onions and start softening them in the olive oil. After giving them a brief head start, add the chicken pieces, salt and pepper, and turn them until the chicken is no longer pink and the onions are softer and the pan has browned a bit. Add the wine, a little water, the seasoning, and simmer, covered, for about 45 minutes. Add the tomato and keep simmering, uncovered and adding water from time to time as needed, until the oil floats free and the sauce changes from dirty-pinkish to a rich mahogany. If the chicken was on the bone to begin with, it won't be any more. The sauce will have benefited, but you may want to fish out the bones for more elegant serving.

If you go with the sweet seasoning, it is perfect on rice or on egg noodles, or- as here- the time-consuming, heavy, and absolutely delicious classic accompaniment of fresh french fries. With the more savory options, mashed potatoes, or a soft polenta are a good choice. I won't deny a frozen chicken does not have the flavor of wild game, but you cannot always count on running into a hare when you need one.

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Arroz con Pollo (Nostalgia Chicken)- A Dinner Party with a Handful of Rice.

Think of this as an easy chicken paella, a way to stretch four thighs into festive dinner for eight, or in my case a nostalgic trip to a six floor walk-up on the lower east side (St. Mark's Place and Avenue A), 1973. It's just chicken and rice, like the name says, but with the lively zing and piquant verve of Puerto Rico, the same verve that seasoned everything else in the old neighborhood, just like the salsa and soul drifting up from the street below. 

This of course must be a very old recipe, but for me the dish was born in this most wonderful of my childhood's many buildings, the apartment building of my godmother Lynn. Tenements in the old neighborhoods were so beautiful and opulent- rich in detail, if poor in space (Lynn's boyfriend David's bathtub was in the kitchen!- not so uncommon for buildings of the time- he put a sheet of plywood over it to use as a counter when no one was taking a bath). The stairwell and landings were tiled with tiny white hexagons, just like the stairwell leading up to the former sweatshop on Lispenard St. that I lived in during HS (Stuyvesant- the old one on 15th st.), with banisters of ornate cast iron. The doorways to the very small apartments- five to a landing- were thick with moldings, their details softened from layers of oil paint as they were freshened over the years, this last coat a gleaming oxblood red. Laundry was dried on lines strung between the buildings on either side of a soot-walled courtyard, and if the line snapped you had to go over to the building on 9th street and retrieve your clothes. Even apart from the laundry, it was an intimately connected neighborhood, teeming with decades and generations of loud and very tasty life. The walls talked, and sang, and yelled, and the walls cooked- stuffed cabbage rolls, pierogis (these also from the coffee shop Odessa's on avenue A), black beans and tostones (salty hunks of green plantain fried, smashed between 2 paper bags and then fried again until crisp, unbelievably delicious), rich bustelo cafe con leche, and arroz con pollo. The neighborhood was mainly Ukrainian and Hispanic, and that's how we ate, plus slice pizza and technicolor Italian ices.

New York summers are hot and humid- we had ices almost every day to cool off. (Also there was not so much water pressure on the 6th floor on hot days- that was because someone would turn on the fire hydrants so children could run through them.)

This recipe is a lot of food and a lot of flavor from few and inexpensive things. It is also a lot of color- feels like party food. It is made with very Greek things, just put together in a not very Greek way: capers and olives are bright and lively in the rice, strips of roasted red pepper warm and rich.

We will need:

3-6 chicken thighs- the more the better- or breasts if you prefer them - plus salt, pepper, garlic powder, and flour for seasoning and frying the chicken

oil for frying the chicken

2 1/2 C/ 500 g long grain rice

1 large onion 

smoked or regular paprika, spicy or sweet, as you like

sazon goya or saffron, to make the rice yellow- not necessary but very pretty

a little oregano

a small handful of capers

a large handful of green pimiento-stuffed cocktail olives

3 roasted red peppers- ours we torched, like for the salsa and the gazpacho we made recently, but ones from the jar are just fine.

1. Rinse your chicken pieces and pat them dry with a paper towel, and season them- not timidly- with salt, pepper, and if you have it some garlic powder (fresh garlic, even as paste, will burn in frying). Coat them with flour, give them a shake, and fry in medium hot oil, turning every now and then, so that they become crisp and take on an even golden color. They will be spending some time in the oven, so there is no need to worry about the meat at the bone being completely done.

2. Frying makes things so delicious, chicken hardly the least of these. We can make the most of the oil rich flavor- Between frying batches of chicken, strain the oil through a fine mesh strainer into a metal bowl and return the strained oil into the pan- this prevents burning and smoking and also gives us a strainer full of a savory crumble of crisp seasoned golden chicken fat and flour to add to our dish.

3. When you have finished the chicken, strain the oil a final time, add just a little back to the pan, toss in the chopped onion, frying until it starts to take on a bit of color, and add the rice, sazon goya or saffron, a teaspoon of paprika, a teaspoon of salt (no more- we will add something salty later), and the golden crumbly stuff strained from the oil, stirring to coat the rice with the oil and seasonings.

4. Add the capers and olives to the pan.

5. Lightly oil a baking dish, spread the rice in, and add in twice as much water as rice by volume. Starch takes a good amount of salt to not taste flat. If it needs salt and it probably will, splash in some brine from the cocktail olives and even from the capers. This lifts the dish tremendously.

6. Arrange the chicken pieces on top, pretty side up, and the strips of red pepper decoratively among them.

7. Put in a medium oven, 170 C/350 F, for 30-45 minutes, checking from time to time and maybe adding a little more water, until the rice has swelled and is tender. 

Serve hot from the oven or warm, with bottled hot sauce and, if you have it, a handful of fresh cilantro.

I have made it for sit down dinner parties- festive and colorful and piquant and delicious and the capers making it seem fancy. But it is also one of the few things that is not less delicious from being eaten off of a paper plate, and no matter how many people show up it just seems to keep feeding them. 

A house filled with salsa and joy where people could show up and be fed belonged to Marta- my godmother's next door neighbor at 121 St. Mark's Place and dearest friend of four decades. A recipe like this one can be found in this much used and loved and tattered cookbook, given to me by Marta and her daughter Martita on my wedding day.

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Mediterranean Roast Chicken with Vegetables- A Sumptuous Weekend-Style Meal for a Tuesday.

The dish does take time, but not yours- you can devote yourself to the goings-on of mid week as the long roast makes house smell like Home with a capital "H." Those who live in large apartment buildings in Mediterranean cities with a strong mid-day meal culture recognize tempting familiar lunches as they go up in the elevator- fresh mullets frying, stuffed peppers baking, etc. It's gratifying to hear someone open the door exclaiming "I was hoping that was coming from here!" This is that dish- the one everyone hopes is theirs. It is yours for the price of a chicken, the most tired of your produce, and 15 minutes of a busy afternoon. 

One of the goings-on of our mid week is trying to find room for the produce of Monday's λαικι ("laiki"- neighborhood weekly farmers' market). Making room in the vegetable drawer, I found a half box of mushrooms and a single eggplant. On the table were the rest of the previous week's tomatoes- too withered for salad but by no means spoiled. New and irresistible from Monday's shopping were a bunch of delicate sweet carrots.

Chicken and potatoes in the oven with olive oil, lemon, and oregano is a beloved Greek dish, and our worthy starting point. The addition of the eggplant, mushrooms, carrots, and tomatoes made our dish still more generous and colorful. As they roasted, each vegetable became more like itself- the mushrooms and eggplant more rich and meaty, the carrots more sweet and mellow, the tomatoes bursting with tang. There was great variety of flavor and texture on the plate, all brought together by the rich chicken juices, the lemon and the herbs. 

Of course, you could use all fresh produce, specially bought just to make this dish. But there is no need- the week of gentle withering of the vegetables simply started the work that the roasting finished- concentrating their flavors and textures.

We will need:

A chicken as large as you like, or even better two small tender ones.

5 or 6 large potatoes

other vegetables of your choice- here we have:

a dozen mushrooms

an eggplant

5 carrots

3 tomatoes- these added much to the dish

the tops of a fennel bulb

several whole garlic cloves

some lemon zest and the juice of two or three lemons

a very large spoonful of dijon mustard- this also adds much to the dish

a wineglass full of olive oil

salt and pepper

oregano

another herb of your choice (sage here- nice with poultry)

Peel the potatoes and cut them into pieces, perhaps the width of two fingers. Halve the mushrooms, cut the eggplant into large dice, the carrots into 4 or 5 sections each, the tomatoes into large pieces (they will take up quite a bit in roasting- we don't want them to disappear altogether), peel several cloves of garlic, and put them all into your largest roasting pan. They should be about two pieces deep- a single sparse layer and they may dry out; too deep and they will steam rather than roast and turn golden:

Salt and pepper your whole chicken, taking care to salt the cavity as well. Put a garlic clove or two in the cavity, and half of a lemon- these will perfume the meat from the inside out. If you care to, carefully lift the skin from the breast without tearing, and put some fresh herbs beneath it- we used sage leaves here. It also perfumes the meat, and makes a fine appearance at the table. Place the chicken on top of the vegetables- they will serve nicely as a roasting rack.

Zest a lemon, and juice two or three more-

To this, add a large spoonful of dijon mustard, the herbs (fresh oregano is very good if you have it but dried is just fine), more olive oil than you would think is wise- certainly a large wineglass full- and salt and pepper. Whisk it together, massage the chicken with it, and pour the rest over the vegetables, tossing to see that they are all nicely coated.

Roast the dish at 180 C/350 C for an hour, turn it down a bit, and leave it in for another 30-45 minutes, even another full hour. The vegetables will be done after the hour and a half, but the extra time seems to do them no harm, and the chicken is probably technically done after an hour and a half too (74 C/165 F, with an instant read thermometer stuck into the thickest part of the thigh), but give it a little more time to be meltingly tender, coming easily away from the bone. Above all, make sure the skin is crisp, and a beautiful mahogany color.

It's a good idea to let poultry rest before serving to re-absorb some juices. Cover it lightly with tin foil so it stays warm while you set the table. If we'd done the classic chicken with potatoes, we'd need to make a salad now, but no need with all of these roast vegetables on the plate. Serve straight from the roasting pan- it's a handsome rustic dish just as it comes from the oven. There is ample juice in the pan, but we often have plain yogurt on the table as an informal sauce, sometimes mixed with chopped fresh mint and a little salt- a raita a la Greque (just like we serve with our stuffed peppers). Apart from that there is no need for anything else on the table. It is splendid the next day, if you have any left.

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