More Chicken Under a Brick

Lemon Artichoke Heart Soup

Olive Oil Bread

Chicken Under a Brick

Chocolate Coconut pots de creme

I really wanted the chicken to be the focus of the meal, and the menu reflected that.

The soup is Greek avgolemnos with imported artichoke hearts. Early January isn't the time for fresh produce and the artichoke went well in the lemony soup. I put thyme in mine, to echo the chicken's marinade. If you put the artichoke in early and let it sit, the flavor infuses the soup without any labor by the cook.

Olive oil bread because the table looks naked without it. And my kids gobbled it down while I cooked the chicken and our guest regaled us with tales of his very successful hunting trip, complete with large caliber rifles, large caliber handguns, trucks, and barbecue. Oh, and he's a priest. One of the things I love about Iowa is that almost all the clergy are avid hunters.

The chicken was the star, and turned out really well, as I wrote yesterday. Tomato sauce would have been overbearing with it, so...

I served this with bowtie pasta in a mild picata sauce. Picata (piquant) sauce is a versatile clear pasta sauce made with lemon juice, chicken stock, and white wine. Sauteed garlic, capers, green olives, or other little flavor bombs can be added. The cook has a lot of freedom to set the tone, and I used garlic, nonpareil (very small) capers and omitted the wine. I think small pieces of green olives would be better. White wine would have clashed with the bacon, and leaving it out was fine. It's the right taste, but doesn't make for an interesting photograph. If it's new to you, grated cheese is not ever appropriate with picata sauce.

The Belgian dark chocolate coconut pudding was a huge success. It's obviously not Italian, but it's so good no one cares. My son plaintively suggested we buy larger cans of coconut.

I know diddley about wine and seldom drink it. But for what it's worth, we decided all this tangy food needed a table wine on the sweet side and not too heavy. We drank an '09 Alice White (Australian) red lexia. I've never even heard of red lexia before. But it was good, went well with the food, and wasn't expensive. Since I like Greek food and can't get Rhoditis here, we'll certainly get it again; not too many wines play well with lemon and bacon both.

And yes, I confess to a tiny bit of food styling.