Braised Chicken Thighs with Lemon, Garlic and Olives

Braised Chicken Thighs with Lemon, Garlic and Olives

We follow our time-tested one-pan skillet chicken method to make these crispy thighs with lemon, olives and garlic. 

If you follow this blog at all, I have a pretty good idea what you’re thinking. And yes, I admit it. I make pan-roasted chicken a lot. Like, a lot a lot.

Examples: Chicken With Lime, Garlic And Cilantro / Chicken With Lemon, Garlic And Basil / Skillet Chicken With Wine, Shallots And Mustard.

But it’s not just because I’m boring. It’s also because this method is a simple and fool-proof way to get perfect chicken with crispy skin and tender meat, every time. Luckily, it happens to be extremely versatile so though the method may be similar, the flavors are completely distinct.

Braised Chicken Thighs with Lemon, Garlic and Olives
I love the color of the bright green olives with the dark onions and lemons.

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Spicy Chili Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

Spicy Chili Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

Chili sweet potatoes are our go-to for a rainy fall weekend – we give you a few meat and meat-free options, but they’re all tasty.

I’m a film editor and several times over the span of my career, I’ve thought about moving from New York City where I was born, to Los Angeles. Many of my friends and colleagues have done it, and most of them love it there.

It’s so beautiful, they say. True, I’ve been and it’s very pretty. There’s a lot more work and for the price of a Brooklyn studio, you can buy a three bedroom house with an avocado tree in the back! All true and, yes, this makes me jealous. And the best part? It’s warm all the time and it never rains! Aaaaaand you’ve lost me. 

For me, one of the great joys of life is feeling the crisp, cool air of Fall. When the weather turns it feels like a shock, every time. Even better if that cool air comes with a blustery rain storm. The type of weather that practically forces you to cook something warm and comforting. To stay home and watch movies or play video games all day. (Nerd note: Matt and I are re-playing “The Last of Us” and, oh my god, it’s so good).

When I heard it was going to turn cold and rainy last weekend, I knew right away what I wanted to make; spicy chili with all sorts of yummy toppings stuffed inside a baked sweet potato.

Chili Spices
The chili is flavored with cumin, two types of chili powder, jalapeños, garlic and dark chocolate. Also maple syrup and beer, not shown.

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Chicken with Lemon, Garlic and Basil

Chicken Lemon Garlic Basil

This chicken with lemon, garlic and basil – the flavors of an Italian summer – cooks in one pan and gets a delicious crispy skin. 

Even though we are now fully immersed in September, in our neck of the woods yesterday was actually the hottest day of the year so far. The thermometer that we keep by the chicken coop was up to 99ºF (37ºC) by noon, and stayed there until way past dark. Not to sound like a whiner, but that meant that our kitchen was hotter than a three dollar pistol and it was seriously messing with my plans. See, I had been dreaming about making this chicken all summer, and I had already bought all the ingredients that I couldn’t pick from the garden so I just decided to make it anyway, inferno be damned.

This chicken is kind of a variation on one of my favorite dishes of all time, Chicken with Lime, Garlic and Cilantro. It has the same incredible combination of crispy skin and tender meat that is just so damn good. But instead of the latin influence, this version is like a summer vacation in Italy, with the flavors of lemon, garlic and fresh basil.

Chicken Lemon Garlic Basil

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Chicken with Lime, Garlic and Cilantro

Chicken with Lime, Garlic and Cilantro

In the 1970s, the Upper West Side of Manhattan where I grew up was a true melting pot of cultures. I went to a bilingual grade school where classes were taught in both English and Spanish, and staying for dinner at a friend’s house often meant getting to have Arroz Con Gandules (Puerto Rican Rice with Pigeon Peas) or Mofongo (mashed green plantains with chicharrones).

My absolute favorite dish back then was Pernil (Roasted Pork Shoulder), which is flavored with lots of citrus, cumin and cilantro. Just thinking about it is making me hungry, but until I find the time to make a whole pork shoulder, I thought I’d take some of those great flavors and turn it into a much more weekday-friendly chicken dinner.

Chicken with Lime, Garlic and Cilantro
Garlic, cilantro, lime and cumin make the sauce bright and tangy.

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Spicy Asian Chicken Skewers with Creamy Avocado-Cilantro Sauce

Spicy Asian Chicken Skewers with Creamy Avocado-Cilantro Sauce

With the perfect balance of sweet, salty and spicy, our grilled Asian chicken skewers are a treat any night of the week. We like to serve it with creamy avocado-cilantro sauce. 

Hooray, it’s allergy season! I don’t know about you guys, but I could power a small town with the force of my sneezing alone. I basically look like a teary-eyed, puffy-faced medical emergency this week, to the point where even my beloved dog is giving me side-eye and calling around to find a replacement begging target should I expire before dinnertime.

Be that as it may, I will not let a little thing like debilitating histamine reactions stop me from doing what I’ve been waiting months for. That’s right, grilling! Last night Matt dusted off the old grill, gave the spiders living inside it their eviction notices and warned the neighbors that delicious smells would be wafting their way soon.

And I gotta tell you, we have made this chicken three times in the last month and it is amaaaaaahhhhzing. The first two times we cooked it inside on a grill pan and set off our smoke alarm about 15 times during the process. You know what? I REGRET NOTHING. It’s that good. It’s spicy and sweet and tangy and sticky in exactly the way you want food on a stick to be.

Spicy Asian Chicken Skewers with Creamy Avocado-Cilantro Sauce
Our Asian chicken skewers take only 30 minutes so they’re perfect for weeknight meals.

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Jalapeño Popper Stuffed Chicken Breasts

Jalapeño Popper Stuffed Chicken BreastsWith the exception of East Williamsburg, just about every apartment I rented in New York City had at least one bodega on the corner. In fact most blocks had several bodegas, a couple of Korean fruit & vegetable markets and possibly a Whole Foods/Trader Joes.

Now that we live in the Hudson Valley that’s just not the case any more (though now we own a house and have a garden and a dog and a bunch of chickens*, so okay, fair trade). But the truth is that, even three years later, I’m still adjusting to the idea that I can’t yell out my window and have someone throw a jalapeño at me.

*I didn’t include cats in this list because I always had cats in the city.

So the other day, I’m walking around the grocery store and find that organic, thin-sliced chicken cutlets are on sale. “Awesome!” I say to myself, because I am literally that much of a dork.

Now if you follow this blog at all, you might have noticed that I almost always use thighs for baking and roasting because I think they have much more flavor. But the one thing you can’t do (easily) with chicken thighs? Stuff them.

So now I’m imagining some kind of crispy, panko-crusted chicken stuffed with some sort of cheesy, creamy, spicy deliciousness. Sounds good right? I thought so too, until I got home and realized that I had completely forgotten to get jalapeños which, surprisingly enough, happen to be a rather important ingredient in jalapeño-popper stuffed chicken.

I hemmed and hawed about it for about four seconds before I decided that, yup, nothing else would do. Back to the store for three dollars worth of chiles.

I don’t regret a thing.

Jalapeño Popper Stuffed Chicken Breasts

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