Thursday night’s dinner was a roasted CLQ™ (chicken leg quarter) with rice, onions, and tomato butter.
The night before Thursday night’s dinner (also known as Wednesday) was a roasted CLQ™ with instant mashed potatoes, onions, greens, and tomato butter.
Happy new year! Yes I’m still saying it! (That’s how I’ve been starting all my emails lately because I’m cool.) Returning home to an empty fridge after visiting family for Christmas felt something like a clean slate. Not to be confused with a resolution, I’ve been giving more thought than usual into what and how I cook.
Part of this is due to the fact that I’m currently working on a project that’s been keeping me at my desk for a few weeks (as opposed to out and about on shoots), so I’m now considering lunch and dinner daily, and boy I’ll tell ya, 100% more meals to think about every day is a literal dream. As in, I sometimes dream about things to make (..is this a problem?), but also a figurative dream, meaning, it’s something I’m very happy about.
My vague cooking goals these days float somewhere around a few ideas: I’m trying to cook more things from the books that I own (it tastes like someone else has cooked for you!), I’m trying to cook just enough for 2 with no leftovers (I’m bad at eating leftovers), I’m trying to try different things and break myself out of my own comforts and patterns (variety is the seasoning of life!).
Enter: tomato butter! I lured John into a trap by asking him what he thought was in tomato butter: “tomato paste…and…… butter?” I proceeded to laugh in his face (he frowned) because after a dinner so tasty I was inebriated with the victory of new knowledge, and I felt a special, secret kind of power in having made something seemingly straightforward, but behind the curtain was nuance and complexity achieved in such an easy way.
That tomato butter recipe is quintessential Christopher Hirsheimer and Melissa Hamilton, a pair of geniuses behind The Canal House (cookbooks and restaurant), two women who sometimes feel like tiny consciences on my shoulder, guiding me closer and closer every day toward the inherent boldness of simplicity. Christopher was also a founder of Saveur magazine. Casual.
Last month I was styling a cookbook, and Spencer, who deigned to assist me on the job, described a photo I was really proud of as “elemental” - the word has stuck with me since, and if there’s a way to explain why I admire these women so much, it might be that same essence.
Canal House recipes are unfussy but deceptively sophisticated. I read them and reread them with panning eyes, striking gold on every page. They appreciate every detail about the ingredients they cook with, know well how to acutely highlight the best of those details, and along the way really delight in every moment of the process. Watch their cuteness.
Tomato butter starts with two anchovies, some thyme, and dry sherry in a saucepan (you can probably just use white wine - I coincidentally bought sherry the other week because lately I’m teaching myself about dirty martinis, I know I’m insufferable). That simmers for a bit and the anchovies completely dissolve to turn the sherry into what looks like sewer water. Remove the thyme, add 2 spoons of tomato paste, and then 8 tablespoons of cold butter one by one until it all emulsifies. It tastes like mysterious tomato velvet and I ate a few spoonfuls completely on its own.
I roasted the chicken in my handy 8x8 pan, which is great for this purpose because the high sides protect all of the liquid from evaporating away in the oven (compared to a flat sheet pan), so you end up with a lot more yummy juices. I’ve also been baking a number of easy cakes out of it recently from this extremely necessary and good book (no stand mixer needed!).
I don’t think we treat onions with the distinction they deserve. They’re often relegated as an accessory or a dissolvable, invisible component of something. I advocate that we start considering them as the vegetable they aren’t (they’re technically an allium), so I sliced 1 onion into thick rings and laid them below the chicken like a soft onion bed. Restful! After the chicken was roasted, the onions turned out so sweet and chicken-y, we loved them so much, so the next day I sliced two onions and did the same thing. The color of the chicken looks extremely weird and unnatural in this photo, just know it did not appear this way in person. What is photography??
So John and I have consumed a total of 1.5 onions each in the span of 48 hours, and if there’s an issue with that, from a health perspective, we might find out. Or we might not!
During dinner both nights we mostly reveled in how delicious it all was, and I continued spooning tomato butter with every bite. We also used some conversation cards to bring some excitement to our evening - they mostly ask hilariously intrusive questions like “what personality trait of yours do you resent your mother for?” and stuff like that. But the black sheep that John pulled was “what is the happiest movie?”
I thought Legally Blonde and John copied my answer. Let’s hear your answer in the comments!!