You
You
How are you welcome to my kitchen, I'm glad you could be with me again today
Today I want to do some chicken dishes for you and they're called fancy chicken dishes. What makes a dish fancy
Well, just a little bit of extra care and a little bit of a of careful cooking though. I will admit that yesterday in the supermarket
A woman came running up to me and she said I know who you are. You're the frugal gourmet. Good Lord
You're sloppy. I
Didn't quite know what to say to her
The real issue is not what your kitchen looks like when you're finished
But what the plate looks like when you finally put it in front of your guests
So I'm gonna suggest some good chicken dishes. And first of all, I think we should talk about the old chicken
You know invented the chicken
Maybe the word invention isn't proper but the first time that we see chickens in history was about
3,000 BC and they were wild jungle fowl. That's 5,000 years ago. We began eating chickens and about
About what about 900 years ago the Chinese a 900 years BC. Excuse me
2,900 years ago the Chinese began domesticating chickens. Of course, they were the first ones
They did everything first with food and since that time chickens have been around their marvelous bird
They're very efficient and they're very they stand well on the food cycle because it doesn't take a lot of grain
You see to manufacture a good chicken
So thanks to the Chinese you and I can have some chicken dishes today
One of the things you need to remember when you buy chicken is that it's going to be cheaper to cut them up
Yourself you'll save about 12 cents a pound
So let me show you what to do lay the old chicken down on his breast and cut the wing off first
You see very quickly
Cut up your own chicken. This is a boning knife. I'm using you see it's a good grip on it
I don't want to slip and hurt myself and then cut off the other wing now
We'll go to the leg and thigh and just stroke down one side here
And the leg will tell you where it where the thigh will tell you where it should come off
Now we'll bend you see there's the spot. There's the bone right there. Okay, now we'll do the other side
This doesn't take long and for heaven's sakes don't allow some kid in the supermarket to cut your chicken up for you
You know what happens you open up the package that says cut chicken and it's you pay extra money for it
And when you get the thing home, you realize the kid cut it up in a bandsaw
That's no fair. Now we have the legs and the wings removed and we'll cut down
You see this is the tail of the chicken here. This is the breast cut down this side and the other side
And then simply remove the breast get rid of the old back here
I usually use a Chinese cleaver for this too works great and this part of the the chicken
We're gonna want to put in in our soup pot. Don't throw it any way just bend it
You see it comes right apart here around the old neck
There we are
So we now have the back and tail which we'll put in a soup pot that's gone
And then we have the two breasts here
The chicken leg and the thigh and the thigh is separated from the leg set it on its back
You see so that you have it's it's a Y shape here. Put your knife in the knife
We'll know where to go. It'll simply find the spot very easily
You see remember that it's easy to figure out where the thigh and the leg should be separated
You'll set it down this way and just let the knife do the work and it'll find the spot right away
They are that's all the piece
Now let me show you how to how to get the wood get the breast off of the bone the breast bone
You see is that the lead the meat is very very light and it will dry if you're not careful with it
So generally I suggest that you leave the bones in the chicken because it'll keep the moisture in the bird
But if you want to make a boneless breast then do it this way don't buy them at the market
They're too expensive. You need a very sharp knife and I'm using a little paring knife
But I keep very sharp. I never let anybody touch this particular knife. This is my little stripping knife
You see keep it good and sharp now then
We will remove the breast thusly
Down the center we're gonna make a
Slit on the flesh on one side of the breast bone
You see the bone is right here and then you begin pulling the meat away with your fingers and just stroking at it
You see just stroking at it and it will come right off
You'll come right off the old bone
There we are. Here's the wishbone up here
See and there's one all prepared doesn't take long does it see if you want to strip the fat off of this
Remember most of the fat in the chicken is in the skin. So just give it a yank and
That'll always come off unless you're watching there it is and here's an absolutely boneless breast
Lovely lovely meat the chicken is all set to go now. So let me show you some good dishes
Oh, don't throw the chicken fat the chicken the backs away
We want to save this for a good batch of chicken soup chicken soup
The Jews called it gilded in the oreck golden yellow soup heavenly stuff
All right first dish this may sound a little strange to you
But it comes from Italy and I want to stuff a chicken with potatoes. Don't say yuck. It's it's
Terrific. First of all use good potatoes. Let me get rid of this poor chicken here
He should go in another platter. There he is. I've got chickens all over the place today
We want to use new potatoes or red potatoes and this batch is a particularly small bunch
So what I pre-cooked these you see a little new potatoes
You want to dice them up into about four or five pieces or something this size
You see if your if your chicken is your potatoes are much larger when then cut them up into small pieces like so you say
Put several in a bowl. So you have oh, I don't what I have about three cups there. That's what you'll need
And to that now, we're going to add some green olives
This is very Italian comes from the mountains in Italy. I think it's just a lovely dish
I'm going to dice up several green olives. These are stuffed ones. You'll notice
You ever see a stuffed olive stick his pimento out at you mine. Just did
All right, and we need some anchovies and these anchovies be careful with this oil because it'll get all over the place
But these lovely anchovies are very very rich with salt and oil
So you have to kind of pat them a bit before you I just want a couple here if I can get them out of the old jar
Gee this worked great earlier. Now. I'm having trouble. Isn't that the way huh? Here we are
Okay
For the rest of the day, you'll smell like anchovy and garlic the cat will love that
For the rest of the day, you'll smell like anchovy and garlic the cat will love you
marvelous
Chop up a couple of anchovies now if you're trying to save money on this dish that is to say you've decided that
It's not terribly frugal to do this and you can omit the anchovy
But I enjoy it when the chop up a couple of anchovies about three of these you see and into the pot they go
There we are and now we need to add some garlic a couple of cloves of fresh garlic and
Don't use instant remember that now. That's a basic rule in my kitchen garlic is a heavenly food
There's one big fat one
two and
When you scrape off your garlic mill be sure and use the back of your knife never the never the blade right never the sharp side
You see okay. Let's continue now with potato stuffed chicken. What else do we need? We have the anchovies and we need some capers
I'm gonna put in about a tablespoon of
Capers into our dish and about three tablespoons of olive oil good olive oil so that we can help flavor
the potato and
We need some parsley
Here's a good clump here. I'm gonna put in old what three tablespoons something like that
Once I chop it up there
We go you see I'm making
Now the dish doesn't sound so strange to you does it now that you see what all I have in this dressing
And we'll toss that I want to give you that recipe again too as you're we're tossing this up
I have three or four medium potatoes these were small so I put in many more than that about three or four cups
eight to ten green olives some parsley some garlic some anchovies some capers and
Now we want to add the the herb that will make this absolutely heavenly, and that's rosemary
rosemary
And I'm gonna put in a good stiff pinch you put it into your own flavor, huh?
Let me show you what you have now when we're all look at a wooden spoon and we'll stuff a bird with this. It's very simple
You might want to salt and salt and pepper your chicken be sure and get rid of most of the fat here. It doesn't look bad
My mother of course would stand around and use a spoon to do this and
The lady I just saw in the supermarket would tell me I'm sloppy again
But your hand is really much better than any other device in the kitchen
There he is
Put in a baking dish and bake him out about three seventy five sit still there fella
Three seventy five for about
Probably about an hour and ten minutes should do the job
Seventy minutes you think let me show you what you have I have one in the oven for you, and he's really glorious
It's a very nice dish
We'll trade spots with him
And take one out
You bring this to the table
And when you cut him up
There he is come on out of there, I'm gonna put him right in the board here, and then we'll
I want to slice him in half and let you see what's going to appear on the table
There
Come here friend
Use a good knife start the slit down the center here, and then you can just run it right on through you see
And we need to I tied the legs
And here he is look at the beautiful filling of potato
you see
Beautiful filling of potato and uh and the meat and i'll put two of these on the put the both on the platter here
I would probably cut these again into quarters and serve this
with a little
Arrogance because I think it's a beautiful dish certainly needs some parsley though doesn't that just looks awful
Put a little clump at each end
And bring this to the table with some class. There we go
One chicken stuffed with rosemary potatoes anchovies capers. Let's put him out in front here where you can
Get a good look at him. I wish you could smell this
Because he's just it's a heavenly odor
There. All right. Now then let's um, let's fry. Let's do another italian dish
We're going to fry some chicken breasts
Uh in the style of the Italian style
And veal is very very expensive, but a nice chicken breast will do a good job for you providing you don't cook it long
Don't overcook chicken breasts because it'll dry out viciously
So we're going to make a veal piccata or your chicken piccata and the term piccata simply means sharp
And we do that with lemon juice make a sharp flavor. So we have some
Pieces that i've already shown you here
The breast you see let's get rid of the skin. We really don't need that
We'll get rid of the skin. We'll get rid of the skin
All at once just pull it right off. And then we're going to pound the let me get another one going here and we're going to pound the
Pieces of meat with either a metal pounder or you can sometimes use a wooden mallet
I like a I like the old metal jobber. I'll show you one
Just a second here
Chicken breasts are lovely things if you pay for
Some other fellow to take a look at the chicken breast
Breasts are lovely things if you pay for some other fellow to take them off the chicken for you're going to spend about four dollars
A pound and that's a lot of money
But if you want to fix up your own why it's not going to be quite so costly get rid of the fat
There and i'm going to save all of that fat and put it in my
Soup pot
There we go. Now we'll lay these out and we're going to pound them thin
Get my panel going here. We're going to pound them thin with a meat pounder
And there are a couple of different kinds in the market. This one is imported by waldo in brooklyn
And it's very expensive, but it's a marvelous thing has a good way to grip you see it's solid brass and you can just really
Whale the old
How do you like that racket? Isn't this fun?
This is the sort of thing the kids love to do there's one or here's one that uh, you can find from a ruoco company
And uh, it's a little bit cheaper model at about fifteen dollars. It works fine, too
But it isn't as glorious
Okay
That one's ready to go
and finally
If you don't want to invest in something that expensive then I suggest
And i've showed you this once before but this works just great put your chicken on a wax between two rolls of wax paper
Two sheets of wax paper and use a two by four a little bit cheaper
See that flatten out isn't that marvelous
Nothing wrong with a two by four
Just don't let your mother-in-law see you doing that. You know, she figures that things aren't going well in the household
Cooking with a two by four now, dear. Can you hear?
I love it. All right, my pan is hot. I want to flour
I want to flour the
pieces of chicken
You could also dip this in egg
If you prefer, but uh, I don't want to bother
I don't want that much of a crust on this dish and the italians of course wouldn't do that with veal. You just flour it
And i'll get some olive oil in the pan did you notice I put my pan on first on the heat
And i've not yet put the oil in it because I want to put the oil in just as I put the food in
And that way will not burn the oil
Okay, here we go a little bit of olive oil tablespoon or so
Oh, you can just peen it off if you wish
But those are my two favorite cooking oils and we'll fry these very very quickly on one side
And then turn them just
As they begin to brown it'll probably take a couple of minutes
On the side. I don't want them to be overdone. You see
I think i've made that point plain haven't I made that clear to you don't overcook chicken breast
There we are
Oh, we need some pepper on that too
There we go
A little bit of pepper and we'll let those cook for just a moment on high heat
And in the meantime, let's prepare
I want to to throw in a bit of additional flavoring into my chicken piccata
For that reason i've sauteed for you a bit of green onion and yellow onion along with a bit of garlic
Just a tiny smidgen. You think that's all you need
And i've cooked them ahead of time so I can just throw them into the pan at the right time
And it'll work out just beautifully. Let's chop some parsley while our
Our chicken piccata is finishing there we go and we'll need some lemon juice
Where's my lemon squeezer here it is the lemon reamer i've showed you this before it's a great gimmick
You should have one of these. All right, we have everything ready to go time to turn them here. We don't want to overdo them
And see how quickly they brown
That's terrific
All right now, let me give you the recipe again
We have the breast floured a bit of pepper if you if you insist you can also put some salt in this
The olive oil and we have lemon juice ready to go
We want everything ready to throw in the pan you see
Uh, and we need some dry sherry which we'll also throw in the pan and perhaps a bit of chicken broth
and i've made my chicken broth earlier today out of the leftover backs that I had when I
Took down the chickens took them apart. You see look at that go. We're ready to fly. All right into our pan now
We're ready the chicken. He's oh, let's take it out here. I'm going to show you something else, too
I don't want to um
I don't want to keep cooking the chicken in
The sauce that i'm going to prepare right now. So let's deglaze the pan
with a bit of sherry
Now by deglazing you see what I mean is
I'm taking the
Well, the drama is nice too, isn't it? Huh?
I'm taking the brownness the yummy brown color that we had in our chicken out of the pan thusly
Getting into a solution put in some lemon
our parsley
And a bit of the sauteed garlic
and onion
Green onion and yellow onion as well
Slosh that around a bit
There now i'll return my chicken to the pan
And we're going to add a bit of chicken broth
Homemade my own
And that will thicken now because of the flour that's on the
On the chicken remember when we put the flour on
There it is the dish is finished
You need a big frying pan like this with a metal handle so you can stick it in the oven and uh
Not worry about melting plastic handles. You don't need those ever
Okay, we're ready to put it on the platter here
Okay, we're ready to put it on the platter here. It's a lovely dish
And we'll serve them
Thusly
Terrific and the sauce goes right over the top piccata because it's very sharp
And that clever, huh?
Okay, we have another one ready to go chicken piccata
But it's not terribly expensive if you cut up your own chicken. Otherwise, remember that uh,
You're going to be spending too much money
On someone else doing your housework and that's no fair you do it yourself
All right one more for you. That's uh, that's fun and easy to do and i'm going to stuff some chicken thighs
Now you steam them first
And after you steam the chicken thighs, I have some going here right now after you steam a chicken thigh
For about 15 or 20 minutes you can get the bone out of the center
You see here's the thigh. He's just been steamed plain now. You have to work the these are cold now
So it's going to be hard to do but you want to work the
Bone out of the center by twisting the meat off of the end of the bone
There we are
There it comes
And then you just pull the bone right out of the old chicken twist it a bit and it'll come right out leaving you
with a kind of pocket affair
This just takes a little extra time to prepare but it's great fun. You see what I have now
You see now into that pocket. I'm going to insert
A chunk of ham
Let me get a
What do we call it a sphere of ham?
And a chunk of green onion
This is really an old chinese trick
And it's just delicious
Put the old green onion in here. You see stuff it right inside
and
The ham goes alongside of it as well
Push it right in
There and then they're they're cooked with the skin side up in a steamer
Along with a bit of salt and pepper and the ham and the onion will flavor in beautifully
And i'll show you what you have. I have several in the steamer already for you delicious dish
A little unusual takes a few extra minutes to prepare but when you bring it to the table everyone thinks you're a genius
And that's part of the issue here, isn't it?
Convincing them of the truth at last that you really are a genius
I need another pot over here
This dish is hot
But lovely. Oh, i'm going to set it right down right away
There you are
There you have one
A chicken thigh
We removed the bone
And then steamed it first then remove the bone
And put a bit of onion and a bit of ham into it
A little bit of salt and pepper on top put it back in the steamer
I threw in a slosh of white wine
Just a splash of white wine
Steam that for another 20 minutes
And it's ready to serve
Isn't that gorgeous?
Let's do another one. You can go on and on and on with chickens
How about some chicken strips?
Now chicken strips are a snap to make
All we're talking about here
Is a bit of chicken breast
And we're going to just cut it up into strips
And then we're going to fry it very quickly in a hot pan
And deglaze the pan with some lovely Italian marsala
Which is a sweet
This is a sweet marsala
A beautiful wine
So cut the chicken up into strips
That means you're ready to serve
So cut the chicken up into strips
That means it will cook very fast, you see, very rapidly
In this case I'm leaving some of the skin on
Unless it's terribly fatty
I have my pan heating now
I want you to remember that
Good cooking really shouldn't
Always take a long time
I've done three dishes for you already
But it's true I had everything prepared ahead of time
But you get the idea
It doesn't take long at all
My towels are all over the place
In a good Italian restaurant
You know, you see the cooks running around
They always have a towel, well I'm left handed
So I put mine on this side
But they always have a towel over their shoulders
So that they're ready to go
When you're cooking with this much chicken
You should probably do the same thing
Into our pan and we'll put a little bit of cooking oil
Olive oil or peanut oil preferably
You don't need much
Pan's good and hot so we'll put in our chicken pieces now
And we'll saute them very rapidly
In the meantime I'll put together a glaze for you
Let me get another paddle here
Chicken, chicken, chicken
My grandmother Nettie Smith
Used to buy stewing chickens
Because that's all the old girl could afford
And once a week on Sunday
She would prepare chicken and noodles
For the family
And in our time you can't get a chicken that tastes that way
Do you know why?
Because our chickens have never touched the ground
They're raised in baskets
And they're sky high
There must be 16 chickens in a row going straight up
And I don't know if they can talk to one another up and down
But it's a very complicated lifestyle
And they've never scratched the ground
So I think that's one of the reasons
Why they don't have any flavor at all
They don't get the chance to get outside
Okay, let's put into our pan now
A bit of garlic
Always garlic in my house, right?
I love it
We can dice this up or you can crush it
Watch your fingers when you're dicing garlic
That's not funny
A little bit of garlic right into the pan
And I want to throw in a little bit of green onion as well
Just a smidgen
There it is
So we have onion, garlic
And chicken now
In our pan
Cooking very nicely
I need some more lemon here for our
Close down and I'll get some marsala
And we're ready
Now let me give you this recipe because I need to finish it in a hurry
I'll just flip it around once more and it'll be done
We're pan frying the chicken strips
With a little garlic and green onions
You see they're doing nicely
We're going to saute that now for just a moment
Then we're going to deglaze the pan with a bit of lemon and marsala
And we'll be all set
Let's try a bit of pepper, huh?
I love pepper, pepper and green onion
Heavenly flavor
Okay
There we are and if you insist
I'll allow you one pinch of salt
But you're not going to need much salt in this dish because
We're going to put a lot of lemon juice in it
And lemon will help you
Get off the salt kick that you're on
You can get by
So there's a little bit of lemon
A shot of marsala wine
Very nice Italian wine
It's a little bit sweet
Don't be frightened by the flame
When alcohol is flaming
You know it's very, very light heat
Light heat? Well it's very low temperature
Because alcohol turns the gas at a very low temperature
And it doesn't have a chance to
Really get hot
Not like an oil fire
Okay, that one's done
Let's put it out here for you
They're stacking up, huh?
More fun
There we are
I'm just going to pour it right on the old platter
I would make a big pot of this, you see
Perhaps in my Chinese wok
And that doesn't look very attractive, does it?
I'll tell you why, what we need to do
Is to garnish the thing
With a bit of lemon
So that everybody can have
An additional shot of lemon
On their chicken with marsala and lemon
There, that looks a little better, doesn't it, huh?
Now, have another one for you
We can go on and on with chicken
Limes are expensive
Chicken is cheap
So when you put the two together, you get a balanced budget
And you can have a lovely dish
Of lime chicken
And it's so simple, and it's so delicious
That it's just incredible
Let me show you what I mean
I have in the oven some chicken thighs and legs
That I have baked
With a tiny bit of thyme
With some thyme on it
There's some thyme on the
Chicken, you see
There's some oil and some salt and pepper
Just a tiny bit of salt
What I'm going to do now is to slice up
Several limes
And just throw them in the pan
And I'll bring this to the table hot
The limes, of course, will be fresh and cool
And the idea is to squish lime juice
Just all over your chicken
So you have a lime chicken dish
There we are
And each person can do it themselves
Or you can do it for them
In any case
It's a colossal dish
There it is, lime chicken
Oh, isn't lime a lovely flavor?
My hands smell good, the chicken smells good
I'll put this one out for you too
And we'll go through these recipes
It's just delicious
I have five dishes here for you today
Beginning with the lime chicken
So simple, remember
Just bake your chicken until tender
What, 45-50 minutes in the open pan
You see, a little thyme on it
And then I just put lime juice on it
Right at the table
The stuffed Italian chicken
Stuffed with potatoes
Very delicious dish, easy to make
And it's not at all expensive
The piccata is called piccata
Because it's sharp with lemon juice
You can also throw in some capers
That's heavenly, capers would be great with that
We have a stuffed chicken thigh over here
That we put some ham
And some green onion in the thigh
And finally our chicken strips
Cooked down with a bit of marsala
And we also have chicken
I'm glad I don't have to decide which one of these chickens I like best
You know how the chicken got to the New World?
He appeared in Western Europe, 600 B.C.
And he arrived in this country
In America
On the decks of Christopher Columbus' ship
Can you imagine the mess?
Chickens all over the place
And people coming to the New World
But he brought us a good thing, the good old chicken
I'm glad we could be together today
I'm Bill Gourmet, I bid you peace
The New World