Afternoon sports, graduation parties, spring concerts oh my. This time of year is busier than can be. And all I want to do is play in my garden. The pea tendrils are pushing up out of the earth and reaching for the trellis just above them. The first row of mesclun mix is almost ready for the salad bowl. And the chives are budding up. Though I have a long list of chores to tend to in the garden, I haven’t been dividing clumps of daylilies and filling my planters. I have been off doing other things.
I feel torn in a million directions. If you read the Healthy Seasonal Recipes newsletter, you know we are very busy around the house these days. And now suddenly, I am adding a new activity to my schedule. Running.
I haven’t run very much since I ran a half marathon last spring. And since I took on becoming a Les Mills GRIT coach in January, I think I have gone for about three runs. Total. That is, until last week, when a new friend asked me to run a leg of the Vermont City Marathon Relay on the 26th. Of this month! Even though I knew it was crazy, I said yes. Yikes! What was I thinking?! So suddenly I have been running like mad. I am sore.
Anyway, I want to tell you that this chicken rocks because it is fast and light and springy. It doesn’t take much time, and the whole family will eat it. It is like comfort food light. It is creamy and cheesy, but not heavy. The fresh chives and bright spring green garlic make it so lovely. Did I mention it is fast? I served it with barley, but mashed potatoes would be heavenly with this. I would go on but you get the idea and I gotta run 
Ingredients
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
- Freshly ground pepper
- 6 boneless skinless chicken thighs, fat trimmed (about 1 ½ pounds)
- ½ all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons canola oil
- 1 cup finely chopped green garlic* see ingredient note
- ½ teaspoon dry thyme
- ¼ cup dry white wine
- 1 ½ cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
- 1 cup non-fat milk
- 1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
- ½ cup chopped fresh chives
Instructions
- Sprinkle ½ teaspoon salt and pepper all over the chicken. Place flour in a shallow dish and dredge chicken in the flour, until coated, shaking off excess and setting aside. Reserve ¼ cup left-over flour mixture and discard the remainder.
- Heat oil in a large heavy skillet over medium-high heat. When oil is shimmering, but not smoking, add chicken to skillet and cook until browned on both sides, 2 to 4 minutes per side. Transfer chicken to a plate. Note chicken will continue cooking in step 4.
- Add green garlic or leeks, thyme and the remaining ½ teaspoon salt to the skillet, and cook, stirring until fragrant and starting to brown slightly, 1 to 3 minutes. Add wine, and cook scraping up any browned bits until the wine has almost completely evaporated, 1 to 2 minutes. Sprinkle the reserved ¼ cup flour over the green garlic mixture and stir to coat. Stir in broth and milk and stir until the flour is dissolved. Bring to a simmer, stirring often, and continue cooking until the sauce is thickened slightly, about 1 minute.
- Return the chicken and any accumulated juices from the plate to the skillet and return to a simmer. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, turning the chicken over in the sauce occasionally until the chicken is no longer pink in the center and is cooked through, 4 minutes longer. Transfer chicken to serving platter. Remove skillet from heat and stir cheddar and chives into the sauce until the cheese is melted. Spoon the sauce over the chicken and serve.
Notes
Ingredient note* Green Garlic is immature garlic plant and is available in the spring from farmers markets, CSAs and markets with a really good produce department. It has a distinctly garlicky flavor, but is not as strong as mature garlic. If you can’t find it, substitute 1 cup leek and 1 clove chopped garlic. Here is how to cut and clean a leek Do the same thing for green garlic.
I have always been a soft pretzel lover. Having grown up in the Philadelphia area, I was lucky enough to get my hands on good hot soft pretzels all over the place, from vendors on the street to Phillies games. They were everywhere really. But, probably the most formative experiences in my journey of pretzel appreciation occurred in one place in particular: Reading Terminal Market.
On weekends, my parents regularly took my sister and me on the one hour drive down to Market Street in Philly. On our visits, we’d wind our way through the hundreds of food stalls to the Pennsylvania Dutch pretzel vendor. We never missed it. We’d order up a batch and the bonnet-clad Misses would pass over the screamin’ hot pretzels in parchment, brushed with sweet melted butter. Then we’d walk through the market, butter soaking through the paper and dripping down our hands, knowing there was nothing better. I’d tear off bites, dipping each in good mustard. And before you knew it, I’d devour the whole thing. It was blissful.
So knowing that, you may not find it hard to believe that the first recipe I ever developed was for soft pretzels. I asked my mom to dig up the recipe card I’d written so I could show you. I’m not sure how old I was, but judging by the handwriting and inventive spelling, I wasn’t very old. And from the looks of the recipe, the resulting pretzels were probably was pretty dense.
It was with all of this in mind that I recently decided to tackle soft pretzels again, this time with a more informed approach.
These biscuits may be made with whole-wheat flour but please don’t hold that against them. They are as flaky and tender as any white-flour biscuit, thanks to a cool technique we learned at King Arthur Flour Blog & Bake™. It was actually a technique the chef instructors showed us during a demo for Blitz Puff Pastry. But I figured it would actually work pretty well for getting that nice pull-apart flaky biscuit texture too. And what do you know? It worked!
Thank goodness spring is here. I have been out in my garden with a fervor. The spinach, kale, peas, radishes and mesclun mix are all in and starting to come up. I just tested the soil, today and I think I need to amend my other beds to add some nitrogen. This is my first vegetable garden, and I am already off to a Topsy-turvy start. I know I was supposed to test first. Humph! Please leave me a comment if you know how to add nitrogen (organically of course) to the bed that has the seedlings coming up without burning them up. Anyway. My lilacs are happy, and so are the chives. Which inspired this biscuit recipe.
So here we go, the method for getting these biscuit fork-split-flaky is actually related to the process of laminating dough. That is the way bakeries make croissants and puff pastry. With traditional lamination, a large sheet of butter is layered into a sheet of relaxed dough (or detremp) through a series of folds and rolling. When the dough is baked, the butter melts and the steam it creates helps the dough to rise, and the melted fat creates flakes in the layers of dough. It is quite brilliant actually.
Tomorrow I am going to be sharing a technique I learned at King Arthur Flour Blog & Bake™. First I wanted to show you a few more pictures from the event and tell you how much I love the other bloggers who were there. Please be sure to check out their blogs too, because now I am following them, and I don’t want you to miss out on them.
Rebecca of Foodie with Family, Carole of Heirloom Meals, Jen of Tiny Urban Kitchen, Audra of The Baker Chick, Eva of Adventures in Cooking and David of Spiced. Bowls lined up for our Pie Chopped Challenge.
My whole-wheat scones with apricots and chocolate chips, about to go into the oven
Top Left: Carole and Kate share a digital scale, Top Right: Bread Bowls, Bottom: cheese straws made with our home-made blitz puff pastry dough
Two loaves of bread made with the same recipe. Left:made with King Arthur Flour unbleached All-purpose, Right: made with store-brand bleached all-purpose.
I just got back from the King Arthur Flour Blog & Bake™ event in Norwich Vermont for three days and nights. It was so much fun, I am about to pop from so much learning. It was all about getting into the kitchen, having fun with other bloggers, and learning all about baking. And eating. [Boy, was there lot's of that!] And shopping in the Baker’s Store. Hello new props and cooking gadgets!
I have a ton to download to you about it, but first I wanted to tell you about this yummy green smoothie.
I developed it for Cabot Creamery Cooperative, who co-sponsored the Blog & Bake, so it seems like to perfect opportunity to share it with you. It is one of the yummiest ways of getting your greens, and it is packed with 13 grams of protein thanks to Cabot’s farm fresh Greek-style yogurt. Cabot is also gearing up for this really awesome healthy bike expo event in New York City. There they will have a booth where they will be attempting to break the Guinness World Record for largest smoothie by making 400 gallons of smoothie with their Greek-Style yogurt.
