Gourmet Today: Grilled Chicken Palliards with Nectarine Chutney (p. 525)

I wanted to make a recipe from each of Gourmet Today's new chapters. But, since my gas grill is under the weather, the Grilled Dishes chapter presented a bit of a challenge. I chose this recipe because I knew that I could cook the chicken in the broiler. That, and it seemed like an excellent use for all of the nectarines from my CSA box.

First, I cut up some nectarines into one-inch pieces (no need to peel them), and I chopped a tomato (didn't peel that, either), and some garlic. I put the nectarines, tomatoes and garlic in a pot with some vinegar, brown sugar, curry powder, and salt. I simmered the chutney for about twenty minutes.

While the chutney bubbled away, I made the chicken palliards. I put each of the boneless, skinnless chicken breasts in between two sheets of plastic wrap. Normally, when I make palliards, I bang the heck out of them with a meat pounder. Very effective, but also very noisy. It just so happened that when I was cooking this, my nine-month-old son was asleep, and my wife would kill me if I woke him up with all the noise. What to do ... what to do? Ah-ha! I put a big, heavy frying pan on top of the wrapped chicken, and pressed with all my might. I didn't get it as thin as I could have with the pounder, but it worked reasonably well. I patted the chicken dry, brushed it with some olive oil and seasoned it with salt and pepper.

Now, if my gas grill weren't sick (It just won't get hot. I think that the gas gets are clogged or something.), I'd have put the chicken on the grill. But instead, I cooked them under the broiler. It worked just fine, but of course, there's really no substitute for grilling.

I served the chicken with the chutney (topped with some chopped fresh cliantro), along with some fresh grean beans and a potato dish from The Book that I'll blog about soon. The chicken was good, but the star was the chutney. It was sweet and sour and tangy with an excellent punch of Indian flavor and aroma. The cilantro on top was a nice bright, clean note that contrasted with the richer, spicier chutney.

Gourmet Today says that the start-to-finish time is 25 minutes. It took me a bit longer than that, but certainly less than an hour. This really is a delicious, and really do-able weeknight meal.

Date Cooked: September 6, 2009
Degree of Difficulty: Pretty easy
Rating: A-

20. Blueberry and Nectarine Buckle (p. 816)

I like nectarines and peaches, really I do. It's just that they have to be perfectly ripe, or else I'm not interested. Not ripe enough, they're hard and mealy. Too ripe, they're smooshy and sickly sweet. But when they're just so - crisp, sweet and juicy, it's hard to find anything better. Now is the time of year when the stars align for perfect peaches and nectarines, so I was happy to find this recipe to give me a shot of nectarine nirvana.

The first step is to make the streusel topping. Incidentaly, according to The Book, it's the streusel that makes a buckle different from a slump, grunt or pandowdy. Apparently, the cake "buckles" under the weight of the streusel. Silly me, I thought it had something to do with having to loosen your belt after that irresistible second helping of this tasty treat. I guess it would be called an "unbuckle" in that case. Anyway, back to the streusel. It's cold butter, broken up into bits, a little flour, some sugar, and a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg. You knead it up with your fingers until its good and mixed. This step was pretty fun. The topping had the texture of wet sand, so I felt a little like a kid playing at the beach.

The cake batter is next, and it's pretty straightforward. I had the foresight to put the butter out to soften before I went out to mow the lawn. It was so hot out when I made this on Saturday, that by the time I came back in, the butter was so soft that creaming the butter and sugar was super-easy. After all of the wet and dry ingredients are combined, then the nectarines and a prodigious amount of blueberries get folded in. I had a bit of trouble cutting the nectarines. I expected to be able to cut them in half like an avocado (cut around the pit, twist, and voila, two halves). No such luck. I mangled them a bit, but the nectarine chunks that ended up in the cake tasted just as good as perfect wedges would have. Into a buttered baking dish (I used the wrapper from the softened butter to grease the pan), sprinkle on the streusel (see the "before" photo above), and then whack it into the oven.

This was kind of like a dessert version of the Blueberry Almond Coffee Cake I made a couple of weeks ago. It was sweet and buttery and bursting with sweet, jammy fruit. The streusel topping gave the cake a nice texture. The cinnamon and nutmeg made the kitchen smell great. The recipe doesn't say anything about inverting the cake to take it out of the baking dish, so I left it right where it was, considering what happened to the aforementioned coffee-quake, I mean coffee cake.

The Book says to serve it warm with whipped cream. Yes, please! We stashed the leftovers in the fridge and enjoyed it all week. Yesterday, my wife sent me an email at work to apologize for eating the last piece. I told her it was OK, since you can't give a cook a better compliment than to tell him that you just couldn't resist eating something he made.

Date Cooked: July 5, 2008
Degree of Difficulty: Medium
Rating: A