During the first group meal my study abroad group had in Novgorod, we had a regional dish that was served in the clay pot it was baked in. To this day, I do not know the Russian name of this dish, but it translates to something along the lines of "chicken in a pot".
Whoever decided to combine chicken, potatoes, cheese, and sour cream in the same piping hot dish is a genius. This was so good that I finished every bite.
A few days later, we had a variation of the same dish with fish and mushrooms instead of chicken. Though I'm not fond of fish and I wasn't as eager to finish this as I was with the chicken variation, it was still a delicious dish.
When I returned, I knew I had to cook this dish sometime in the future. I tried searching for the dish by looking up the ingredients in the dish, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I finally e-mailed the professors who hosted the trip and, while I still didn't get the name of the dish, I got the recipe:
You will need 1 pound of fish, 5-6 potatoes, 2-3 onions, 4 table spoons of sour cream, 2 ounces of cheese, 2 table spoons of butter, 1/2 glass of fish stock, lemon, 1/3 cup water, salt and pepper. You cut fish into pieces, salt and pepper it, sprinkle lemon on it and leave for 15-20 minutes. Slightly saute the onions. Peel the potatoes and cut them into circles. In a clay pot put a bit of butter at the bottom, then a layer of fish, a layer of potatoes, and a layer of onions, again fish, potatoes and onions. Pour the fish stock into the pot and put in the oven for 15 minutes. Then put the sour cream and grated cheese on top, and back into the oven until the dish is ready.
I intended to cook chicken in a pot for two people, so I halved the recipe and used chicken breasts and chicken stock instead of the fish equivalents. Even so, the recipe is missing what I'd consider to be pretty important components: the temperature the dish should be baked at and how long it takes for it to be ready. Despite this, I dove in - I'd figure it out on the way, right?
Click the link below to get to the cooking!
The first part of making this dish involved marinating the meat - in this case, the chicken.
Salt, pepper, lemon, and a trimmed piece of chicken breast ready to cut into pieces!
After being seasoned with the salt, pepper, and lemon (and after picking lemon seeds out of my chicken), I left the chicken to marinate while I got the rest of the ingredients ready.
Onions and potatoes were in the recipe, but I added garlic as well because I remember it was in the dish I ate in Russia. (The cheese and butter will come later.)
After thoroughly cleaning the cutting board, I chopped my onions on it and minced the garlic.
I sauteed the onions a bit further than "slightly" to ensure that they would be cooked enough. When the onions were just about done, I added the garlic and turned the heat off when I could smell it cooking.
I peeled the potatoes while the onions were cooking and, as called for by the recipe, I cut them into slices. I halved the slices because these potatoes were rather large.
I used a standard baking dish because it's what was available to me. I don't have a clay pot and, aside from the internet, I wouldn't know where to get one. I wanted to get flowerpots and pretend I had clay pots, but I didn't even have the time to get those. Aside from tradition, I think clay pots are used in baking like this because of their self-basting abilities and it would have been much better if I had used one. Maybe next time.
Butter makes everything better!
I layered the ingredients over the butter and poured the chicken stock over it. The recipe wasn't clear about where the water was added, so I assumed it would be with the chicken stock. I have a feeling I was wrong.
At first, I cooked the dish in a 365°F oven and waited for fifteen minutes as the initial magic happened.
More cheese to grate? It's like yesterday all over again. I used the cheddar left over from yesterday's khachapuri because the recipe didn't specify which cheese to use. It must not have mattered much.
Fifteen minutes later, I spread the cheese and some sour cream onto the dish and put it back in the oven.
At this point, I started to freak out. I left it in for twenty minutes, pulled out the dish, and didn't see any browning or any thickening in the juice. I thought I was going to have my first complete culinary failure! I stirred the contents of the casserole, increased the oven temperature to 400°F and put the chicken back in for another twenty minutes, hoping for the best.
That seemed to do the trick! It was a little dry, but the sauce was thick and everything was cooked and brown. I grated the rest of the Monterey jack from yesterday and topped the dish with that.
Despite being drier than I remember (especially the chicken), the chicken and potatoes had an excellent flavor. My father, my most ardent food critic, initially turned down this meal because he had leftovers to eat. He did have a bite, however, and quickly decided to eat it for lunch the next day. That's the best compliment I could receive. Second best compliment? Noticing that all of my chicken in a pot leftovers were gone the next day. It turns out that my father's vegetarian girlfriend ate it.
I hope to have some cooking dish made of terracotta next time I try to cook this dish. I ought to figure out a way to keep it juicier, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment