An Evenng with Mr. & Ms. Jazz - a food centric post

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Apropos of nothing, the other evening for dinner we had pan fried steelhead trout with salad - and of course I totally forgot to take a pic - but believe me when I say it was delicious. OK, so maybe it's not apropos of nothing, it's apropos of saying, damn, I love eating.

After dinner, in keeping with the title of this post, we decided to make a recipe we saw on Food TV on Chef at Home with Michael Smith . It's a slow cooker recipe - but seeing as it's still quite chilly in Montreal, it's not much of a stretch to be eating "winter" food. Though really, how is slow cooker food winter food exclusively? Meh, I'm not even going to ponder that.

Of course this always works best in an ugly 1970s crockpot from
Canadian General Electric no less.

Now, the dish. Chicken thighs slow cooked with sherry and onions. And yes, wonder of wonders you are getting a recipe from Jazz. Mark your calendars peeps, this most probably a one-time occurrence...

So.

Recipe.

Lots of onions, sliced (you need lots cause onions are pretty much your liquid - 90% water and all that). Dump half of them in the bottom of your slow cooker.

Add Codplay's cooking song:



Ok, actually it's Viva la Vida, but damned if cooking and dancing to this... well it totally rocks.

So, you put on the song. And dance while chopping onions. The dancing part is important cause it kills the tears. A caveat - be careful while chopping and dancing and drinking wine. Surprisingly I didn't cut a single part of me off, not even a little bit! Be very impressed with your dexterity if you manage this, if not, haul out the band-aids.

Naw, no dancing-while-chopping-onions-and-drinking-wine pics - I have my pride

Then. OK, where were we? Oh yeah, you dump (or delicately place, according to your style of cooking) lots of onions in the bottom of the crock pot. While you are chopping the onions (which actually should be done before you put them in the pot, yes?), your Mr. Jazz equivalent is grilling up the chicken with LOTS of garlic and olive oil and butter in a pan (and damned if the house doesn't smell freaking edible, rather than newly painted all of a sudden). Please note: if you don't have a cooking partner, you might have to slightly stagger these two steps. Or not. The whole multi-tasking thing while cooking, not so much for me - unless it's chopping onions while drinking wine and dancing. Obviously.

Once the meat is grilled, you dump it on top of the onions with Dijon mustard - however much you like and thyme (though we didn't have any so we put herbes de provence - just put whatever the hell you want already), salt (if you remember - we didn't) and pepper - fresh ground if at all possible please.

Add sherry ( probably Vermouth would do, or even wine or chicken broth, or orange juice - it'd be good with OJ... well, you get the idea), however much seems right, and cover with more onions.

Looks sort of boring doesn't it?

A few more swallows of good wine with more Coldplay. Some wiping down of counters and washing of dishes and you're done.

The next morning, put set the ugly 70s crockpot to low and pootle off to work.

Come evening, this is what you'll have.

Actually, it looks sort of awful doesn't it?
How come things always look scrumptious on cooking shows?

And this is what Michael Smith will have (with the real recipe here):



Serve with a side of pasta tossed in sundried tomato pesto, and voila...

And of course, the requisite glass of wine. See the stem of the glass right there?

And don't forget to watch the Pens eliminate Carolina if you're into that type of thing.
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