NYT Cooking had this pork recipe with grapes, so I thought there’s absolutely no reason why it won’t also work with skin-on, bone-in chicken, especially if judiciously marinated overnight in Spanish smoky paprika, Worcestershire sauce, a ton of garlic, apple cider vinegar, a pinch of raw plantation sugar and a bit of salt. So, what to pair it with apart from seedless grapes? The apple cider vinegar calls for some fennel. Shallots, red onions, sliced lemon and rosemary will complete the picture.

Well, I promised you simplicity and there it is. The prep is minimal, apart for some peeling and cutting. All that’s needed is to line the pan with some wax paper and to place the legs nicely apart. Fill the spaces with the trimmings. You’re done! Essentially all that’s needed here is to throw the dish components on the half sheet pan with a modicum of haphazard method, nothing more. You can whack that in the oven and by the time the meat is done nicely, everything else is as well. Enjoy! If you have time to spare, however, it pays to start with a cold oven an cook this on two stages as I explain below.

These legs are actually quite nice and fatty, it’s a pity not to render as much of it as possible. Starting with a cold oven which gradually heats to 300F and stays there for around 20 minutes, renders enough of it to toss the fennel and shallots thru and have leftover to reserve for future roasts. Once this step is done, set the oven to roasting and raise the temperature to 425F. I usually go by inner temperature here and not by oven time, but the rule of thumb is to keep them in until you have crispy golden skin and juices running clear when pierced. Blood coming out of either the legs or your fingers is not a good sign, OK?

Houston, the Chicken has landed! Nice, salty crispy skin, sweet leeks and onions, doubled by flavourful dehydrated grapes. That’s not too bad in my book, especially with a side of potato and celery stalk salad made by Sandra. Oh, and a small glass of Ontario white. Perfect! So there you have it, one of the easiest dinners to throw together with the help of a half-sheet pan. Or tray. Call it what you wish.

There are not all that many ingredients here, nothing neither scary nor fancy: cauliflower, one onion, 3.8% milk, garlic, pecorino, linguine, stale pita bread and shredded cheddar. Unexpectedly the pita bread is the only thing which brought me grief here, I’ll get to that in a minute.

First things first. The cauliflower gets stemmed, cut into smaller chunks and gets poached in salted milk along with the onion. This a little time consuming step as it is done covered on low simmering heat. Don’t rush it as the milk will have a tendency to boil over and ruin your day. Besides, slowly infusing the cauliflower, onion and milk together renders quite a bit more complexity if done slowly. You do have 20-25 minutes to spare, right?

Once the poaching is done we move the whole thing, milk included into the blender. This is the moment to adjust the sauces taste, creaminess and consistency. Cheddar or any other melting cheese adds body and creaminess, feel free to use as much as you want according to your own taste. The same goes for any seasoning which in my case is done with a judicious dose of grated pecorino. The blender makes for a really creamy, silky sauce but it is not necessary. The sauce can be done by any means, including by hand, if a chunkier, more “rustic” consistency is what we’re after. There’s no right or wrong here.

Here’s where the more interesting part comes into play. Most people will stem the cauliflower and compost the leaves and everything else but the buds. Not here. The leaves are actually a little funky tasting and will make a wonderful addition to a “regular” pangritata. What’s that I hear you asking? Well in the past, in Italy a lot of people were rather poor, therefore expensive ingredients such as parmesan were not all that accessible so they invented this garnish consisting from olive oil fried breadcrumbs garlic and salt. It is surprisingly tasty and works incredibly well as garnish for pasta among other things. Adding the cauliflower leaves to it adds yet another layer of “funkiness”, Jamie was 100% right here. The only issues I had here were with the stale pita bread. It was nice and crumbly and tasty but as soon as I hit it with olive oil it become like concrete. The only way to save it was to run it thru the food processor twice and press it in between paper towels in between. It was a mistake not considering pita is not all that “fluffy” in consistency to begin with… next time I will use regular stale bread instead. Yes, I ended up wasting some 20 additional minutes on it… however the resulting pangritata was excellent.

I won’t get into many details about the pasta. I used linguine because it was the only “long” pasta we had on hand. It was boiled in water as salty as the Mediterranean for around one minute less than the instructions on the pack. As per usual I reserved some of the pasta water to adjust the sauce consistency. The linguine were dragged into my larger nonstick skillet and tossed with the sauce until they were all covered nicely. Let’s put it on the plates.

Here we go… linguine with cauliflower sauce, garnished with pangritata, fresh chopped parsley and microplane grated garlic. The microplane grater is a late addition to my arsenal of gadgets I started using quite a bit. Its small, really sharp teeth are extremely adept at pulverizing anything from nutmeg to garlic while keeping your fingers safe. Well…. if one insists…. Anyway, that was all that was done for this particular dish. Sandra and I inhaled our portions. This cauliflower / pangritata combo is simply dynamite. Yep. But, as they say on TV, wait! There’s more!

I’m not finished whit these linguine. Sorry I gave that impression… The pasta pack is good for 5-6 people and we had only two portions. When the leftovers go into the fridge and they are reheated the next day… let’s just say they are a far cry from what they used to be only a day before. So let’s crack and whisk two eggs in some cauliflower sauce.

Pulled out a ceramic casserole dish from the cupboard, mixed the leftover linguine as well as I could with the egg sauce and set it in the casserole dish along a generous sprinkling of cheddar on top. You know where I’m going with this, aren’t you? I’ve set the oven on bake at 380F. In it goes!

This is after the 20 min oven trip. All nice and crusty. Next time I’ll pack some more cheese next to the casserole sidewalls. That crunchy rim cheese is something else, OK? Fortunes have been made and lost because of it!

So here it is, a “slice” of it, served the next day for dinner with the same pangritata on top, next to a small mixed salad. Both Sandra and I went for seconds. Must have been the eggs and the crusty cheddar but it seemed better than yesterday. Mission accomplished! And you know what’s even better? I have around 400ml of leftover cauliflower sauce plus lots of pangritata to go along with it. Can’t wait to use them on something else. Maybe some farfalle, and some funky vodka addition to the sauce? Coming full circle, yes!

The ingredients huddle. Shepherds peppers, two kinds of onions roughly cut in eights thru their core, a garlic head halved as seen, pine nuts, cherry tomatoes, harissa, sheep’s feta and San Marzano tinned tomatoes. I did not have cilantro so I substituted parsley for the green stuff and caraway seeds for a bit of zing. Also in for a bit more aroma and spiciness are coriander and chili flakes.

The dish is done in essentially 3 rounds of oven roasting at 450F. We’re looking for a bit of charring, not much, just to give the result a “grilled” aroma. First to go in are the onions along with the pepper and the garlic which is left exactly as shown, I’ll get on the reasons why shortly. Everything is tossed with salt, pepper, olive oil and set in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Every 10 minutes or so pull it out of the oven and toss it slightly so everything gets a little charring on.

Here’s why in this case the garlic has been roasted like this, unpeeled. Oil is getting inside the cloves so the roasting is done on their own juices plus the oil, the result being pure gold. You can essentially squeeze them out with ease, add them back to the casserole where they will get mushed with everything else. Tasty stuff!

The next step is to add the tomatoes, coriander, caraway seeds and the parsley. I never throw out parsley stalks as they are filled with flavor just begging to be released, so I simply mince them and in they go. This is a good opportunity to adjust the seasoning to your liking. I found it needed a bit more salt and pepper, plus, in my case just a hint of brown sugar. I wonder how something like thyme honey would be here…. probably smashing. The mix gets back in the oven for another 20-ish minutes with 10 minute intervals for gentle mixing.

If you were wondering where the Harissa comes into play, here it is: the pine nuts are browned a bit separately then the Harissa gets mixed in. This gets set aside and will be added as garnish in the end.

For the last trip to the oven, the halved cherry tomatoes and the feta are added. Around ten minutes later pull it out and garnish the dish with the harissa pine nuts and some parsley. It works served hot or cold with couscous or rice or… We had it with garlic toasted ciabatta bread so we could mop our plates clean. It was dynamite, Sandra loved it, one of those vegetarian dishes you forget about being vegetarian.

There are a couple of ingredients missing the general roll call here. Here’s what’s present: marinated chicken wings, creamer potatoes, garlic, lovage, sesame seeds, soy sauce, fish sauce and peanut butter. The wing marinade this time is beer, garlic, soy sauce, Spanish paprika, fish sauce and a bit of lime juice.

Here’s one of the parts where NYT and I diverge. NYT Cooking would have these grilled in two stages, but our beautiful backyard grill is collecting dust this year as Sandra wants to avoid the “burned” bits for a while. So I need to adapt here a bit as well. Reaching yet again in the curly, eddy currents corner of my mind, I pulled out this idea of not using the marinade as usual. Instead my thought was mixing the potatoes with the wings and starting the cooking process with a cold oven, so as much fat as possible would be rendered and absorbed by the potatoes. Ideally, at the end of this particular step I would have wings almost cooked thru, with good colour but only half done potatoes, so help me God. You will see why in a moment. So, low and slow is the game here, in the oven at 280F.

Two ingredients missing the earlier roll call, coconut milk and lime, ingredients for the glaze I’m about to make as the wings and the potatoes are on Stage 1 in the oven.

It seems Stage 1 objectives were nailed after 20-25 minutes in the oven. The fat has rendered well, the skin on the wings is starting to crisp up and the potatoes still have around another 15 minutes to go.

Oops! Once I removed the wings for glazing separately I faced a half empty tray of potatoes… this is what happen when cooking is not approached with chess playing ahead thinking. Never mind, this was solved with a bit of quick cold-room diving from which I emerged victoriously holding two large red onions, subsequently chopped large-ish so their cooking time would roughly be similar with finishing the potatoes. Back in the oven with the tray, this time at 400F.

Meanwhile the wings were tossed in a glaze whisked up from soy sauce, coconut milk, peanut butter, lime juice, fish sauce and sesame seeds, then lined up like little parading toy soldiers on a rack set on top of the potato/ onion mix tray. Perhaps the only thing missing here is a bit of chili or some heat of some kind. Yes, I kept it out this time around.

This is the situation in the field after another around 10 minutes of roasting at 400F. All done!

We served them garnished with some undoubtedly un Asian lovage, along a mixed salad Sandra put together. And a Sidelaunch beer for me and Natalia. This is a beer brand made by a microbrewery in Collingwood, Ontario. These people know their craft well, I love their beer! Everything went quite well together even though Natalia would have loved to have spicier wings.

That wasn’t really a marinade… more like a rub of sorts. I massaged some minced garlic inside of the quails and rubbed them on the outside with a teaspoon of harissa paste, salt and a bit of olive oil. I did this a couple of hours before cooking, but you can do it overnight. Just bring them back to room temperature before cooking. That’s an important detail for cooking them properly. If they are cold, by the time the inside reaches the required temperature, the outsides are overcooked, if not burned outright.

I gathered some red and regular onions plus the white part of some leeks I haven’t got around to cook as planned last week and were languishing in the fridge, crying for attention. They were cut into wedges (the onions) and one inch-ish chunks (the leeks). Sprinkled them with salt, pepper, dabbed a bit of olive oil over and sent them in a 10 minute roasting trip thru the oven at 375F.

Done! That little bit of charring and softening was exactly what I was after. I carefully removed them from the pan and set them aside for the time being.

After thoroughly washing it from all that grit which tends to accumulate in them, the green part of the leeks was sliced a little thinner, tossed with salt, pepper, dried rosemary, a bit of balsamic vinegar and olive oil and made into a bed on which the quails were put in, breast down along some thyme. I roasted them in the oven like that for around 8 minutes until they got some browning going and the meat temperature, checked in the breast and thigh near the bone read around 135F.

Once the backs were nicely browned, I flipped them breast side up and basted them with the leftover “marinade”. I added the leeks and onions softened on the first step along with some red grapes and put it back in the oven for another 12 minutes-ish, checking the birds temperature, around 8 min in. Watched them like a hawk (you knew that was coming didn’t you) as they could burn up really easy.

And here they are, done and resting. I took them out when the temperature in the breast reached about 145F. The temperature will still “equalize” with the hotter outside to around 155F or so while resting. If you go any higher, the breast will overcook. Besides when you poke the breast to check, you can see the if juices are running clear or not. It is unlikely you will see blood but if you do, just keep them in the oven a couple more minutes. I enjoyed them with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. Could not ask for anything better.