Chicken Breast

This is a typically Italian way of preparing chicken, but Italians rarely combine chicken with pasta; by serving chicken over wide ribbons of fettuccine I’ve created a hybrid Italian-American one-dish meal.

For milder chili, reduce the green chiles by half. You can also replace the canned beans with 4 cups cooked dried beans (page 202); replace half the chicken broth with bean cooking liquid.

This rich pumpkin-seed sauce, based on traditional Mexican moles, is made with green herbs, and is just as satisfying as cheese- or cream-based sauces but contains far less saturated fat and fewer calories. Serve the dish with rice for an authentic accompaniment.

After the chicken is browned and the vegetables are sautéed, the meat is braised until fork-tender. Orange juice adds vitamin C and brightens the dish, but you can omit it and increase the chicken stock by half a cup.

This salad features Madras curry powder—a blend of spices that includes turmeric, coriander, cumin, and cinnamon, all of which are antioxidants, anti-inflammatories, and detoxifiers. Watercress is also a potent detoxifier.

Avocados in the salsa supply a generous portion of monounsaturated fat and fiber. If fresh corn is not in season, opt for frozen; it will taste better and have more nutrients than any “fresh” corn in the grocery store.

Cooking the chicken with the skin and bones intact ultimately makes the dish more flavorful (and economical), but feel free to substitute two boneless, skinless breast halves for the whole breast in this salad if you prefer (reduce the cooking time to 15 minutes). Bok choy, abundant with cancer-fighting compounds, makes a nutritious accompaniment.

Achiote paste is a distinctive staple marinade of the Yucatán peninsula that infuses food with a brick-red hue, a part bitter–part acidic flavor, and an earthy intensity that lingers on the palate. It’s usually combined with the bitter orange of the Yucatán and the fierce, tropical habanero chile. This recipe has a distinctly Caribbean flair, evoking personal memories of the early market in Merida, capital of the Yucatan and famous for its beaches. There, you’ll find wonderful whole fish marinated in achiote paste and cooked on fires on the beach over coconut husks. Or chicken tamales with achiote paste wrapped in banana leaves steamed, then finished over an open fire. These tacos are traditionally served with black beans, rice, and a heaping side of fried plantains (see page 140). You can make your own pickled onions for the garnish: Slice red onions into thin half-moons, sprinkle with oregano, and marinate in the juice from a jar of pickled jalapeños for about 20 minutes.

Chorizo is usually made from pork, but you can find wonderful beef or chicken chorizo as well as an excellent vegetarian chorizo made from tofu. I’ve had a delicious green chorizo in Puebla that was a regional specialty composed of fresh green herbs and chiles blended with pork. The green marinade for the chicken plays wonderfully against the red chile of the chorizo. These hearty tacos are also great served with queso fresco or grated Cheddar or gouda cheese. Quail eggs fried sunny-side up makes a tasty garnish, if you like.

Here in New Mexico, we have a number of really good goat-cheese producers who sell their products at farmer’s markets. Spanish settlers originally introduced goats to the region along with the craft of making goat cheese. For Mexican recipes, I prefer the flavor of goat cheese to American cheeses made with cow’s milk. Mexican cooking is rich and needs the counterpoint of a sharp cheese for balance and lively taste. Cow’s milk cheeses are usually too creamy and flat in flavor, absorb too much of the flavor accents from a dish, and lack a certain acidity and sharpness common to Mexican cheeses. New Mexico also has great apples, as good as those I grew up with in New England. At an elevation of 7,000 feet, Santa Fe experiences very cold nights in the fall that “crisp” the apples and set the juices. The sweet juiciness of apples is a perfect match to the mild creaminess, tang, and richness of goat cheese. You can use the goat cheese as a garnish, if you prefer, rather than mixing it into the filling.

This recipe makes use of nopales cooked sous vide—under vacuum, a technique from the professional kitchen that I’ve modified here for home cooks (see also Nopales en Bolso with Vegetables Escabeche, page 28). Nopales—cactus leaves—have a wonderful texture and fresh flavor almost like fresh green beans or green squash. In Mexico, they grow wild everywhere, available for the picking. The most amazing place to see nopales is at the central market of Mexico City, one of the truly great markets of the world. Arranged in circles are huge, round burlap bags, five feet tall by four feet wide. Each bag holds hundreds of nopales, and workers handle sixty to seventy-five bags simultaneously. Women whittle away at mountains of nopales with long, sharp knives, trimming off their sharp spines in seconds while gossiping with their neighbors, stopping only to sell to shoppers. The enormous amount of nopales sold underscores how important they are to the daily diet.

The town of Puebla, a serene and peaceful oasis about one hour south from the congestion and commotion of Mexico City, is known for its charming inns that serve a rich array of traditional dishes. The most famous mole (the word is from a pre-Columbian language of Mexico and means a sauce that is blended with more than one chile or ingredient) originated in the kitchen of a large, wealthy Puebla convent with chocolate as its most acclaimed ingredient. But there are six other moles from the region. This filling, the green mole that uses all fresh herbs and fresh green chiles, is one of the simpler ones and the one that I usually eat for breakfast at the market—one huge bowl of chicken mole verde with fresh warm corn tortillas. Admittedly, it is a little time-consuming, but your effort will be rewarded with enough mole sauce to use for these tacos and many others. Leftover mole will keep in the refrigerator for at least a week, or you can freeze it for up to 3 months. This sauce makes a tasty complement to chicken, turkey, fish, and pork.

The Spanish word tinga means “unruly” or “messy.” But there is nothing messy about the wonderful flavors of this dish with its layers of smoky and sweet. The browned chicken has accents of balsamic vinegar, roasted sweet peppers, and chiles—a sort of Mexican chicken cacciatore. I consider it one of Mexican cuisine’s top ten classic dishes. Tinga tacos are a perennial favorite in northern New Mexico and can have other fillings beside chicken. In addition to tacos or burritos, this filling—really a homey soul-satisfying stew—can be served in a bowl over rice. It also makes a great bocadillo, a Mexican sandwich served on a square crispy roll. To reduce the heat level of this dish, decrease or leave out the chipotle puree.

Tortellini are traditionally served in broth; Basic Chicken Stock (page 41) or Basic Brown Stock (page 50) would be equally delicious.

This simple yet timeless Italian dish demonstrates beautifully the process of sautéing: cutlets—most often chicken or veal—are dredged with flour, then sautéed in a mixture of olive oil and butter, a typical combination that is practical and flavorful. The flour encourages the chicken to form a light crust (and helps thicken the pan sauce), the butter helps it to brown, and the oil raises the smoke point so the butter doesn’t brown too much before the chicken is cooked through. A simple pan sauce is the only accompaniment, and is designed to make good use of the tasty browned bits left in the pan from cooking the chicken.

A composed salad of marinated seasonal vegetables becomes a main course when fortified with sliced poached chicken. Not only is this an economical way to stretch a meal, it is practical in other ways, too. For starters, many of the components can be prepared (and refrigerated) ahead, and when served as shown, guests can select the ingredients they prefer. This salad offers an array of springtime’s fresh bounty, including asparagus, new potatoes, leeks, and artichokes, all gently cooked just until tender. You can adapt this formula to take advantage of whatever is in season throughout the year.

Poaching chicken breasts on the bone results in more flavorful and juicy meat than poached boneless breasts. It’s also harder to overcook the meat. The aromatics used in the poaching liquid below are designed to add flavor to the chicken, but Basic Chicken Stock (page 41) can be used to similar effect. Poached chicken has myriad uses: add shredded chicken to soups, casseroles, pot pies, and Mexican dishes such as enchiladas, burritos, and quesadillas, or to all kinds of green salads. This one’s a particular favorite: Cut the chicken in to 1-inch pieces and toss with chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, torn fresh basil leaves, shredded Romaine, and a creamy dressing, such as Green Goddess (page 359).

Portion-size cuts of meat or chicken take a relatively short amount of time to cook through (as opposed to, say, a whole chicken or leg of lamb), so you can’t rely on the high temperature of the oven to sear the surface of the meat to a golden brown. (In other words, it would take longer for the meat to brown on the outside than to cook through on the inside.) Instead, the meat is first seared on the stove. This recipe is for chicken breast halves (with the skin left on during cooking for added flavor and to keep the meat from drying out), but the method can be used to cook thick pork or lamb chops; skin-on fish fillets, such as bass, salmon, and snapper; or even steaks, such as porterhouse or T-bone, which take too long to cook entirely on the stove. Pan-roasting is frequently practiced in restaurants, as it allows chefs to get a nice crust on the meat and then quickly finish it in the oven. Choose quick-cooking vegetables and other accompaniments, such as the grape tomatoes here, so that everything is ready at once.

The potatoes must be parboiled so they will be done at the same time as the chicken.