Roasted Chicken Marsala.

      Chicken marsala, fresh rosemary tagliatelle pasta, and artichokes are proof that my Italian is showing tonight. All of these things are such a labor of love, and this week, it's incredibly welcomed.

Last week, my older sister Amanda was married! Hooray! Weddings are wonderful, aren't they? Wonderfully happy, wonderfully emotional, and wonderfully draining. I haven't been able to cook a meal throughout the whole experience! I wouldn't trade one thing that happened this wedding weekend, but I am eternally grateful that I can now spend hours in the kitchen again without fear of fitting into my Maid of Honor dress...

     The days prior to the wedding were filled with family and laughter, slaving over the kitchen table carving pumpkins for center pieces and drinking bottle after bottle of wine. Amanda watched in anticipation, my mother went over lists of tasks to complete the morning of, and I along with my fellow bridesmaids got our hands dirty with paint, caramel (for the caramel apple favors), and pumpkin guts. You know, the normal wedding itinerary. 

Now that it's over however, we have pictures to look forward to. I'm sure that my family will sit around our kitchen table again, and look through them together. Always at the kitchen table.

Tonight, we're making chicken marsala. Let's change it up though, we'll roast a whole chicken with ground dried porcini mushrooms, and make a marsala pan sauce with the natural juice that the chicken creates through it's cooking. That sauce on top of that homemade rosemary tagliatelle...OOF. 

Stay focused, Megan. Chicken. I feel that this process of roasting makes for a much more flavorful dish. Hey, did I mention it's 39 degrees outside? If that temperature doesn't mean it's time to roast, I don't know what does. 

Let's get cookin'.

Roasted Chicken Marsala

Serves 4 hungry people

1- 5 1/2 pound chicken

3 shallots, 1 halved and 2 sliced

2 heads garlic

1 cinnamon stick

1 apple, cut in quarters

1 large sprig rosemary

.5 oz dried porcini mushrooms, finely ground

1 stick salted butter

Kosher Salt and Pepper
2 c. chicken stock

10 oz. sliced fresh mushrooms

3/4 c. dry marsala wine

2/3 c. heavy cream

3 tbs all purpose flour 

1/4 tsp dried sage 
1 lemon

Alright, so some of these ingredients may sound odd for a marsala dish. I get it. These things though, like apple and cinnamon, take the pan sauce to a new level of delicious. They don't taste abundantly like themselves, but rather lend a depth. Phew, okay now that I've explained that, preheat your oven to 425 degrees.

Rinse your chicken inside and out, place on a roasting rack and pat dry. Let this sit at room temperature while you prepare the compound butter and stuffing. Compound butter?! That's right. So next time you see this on a restaurant menu, you'll know how easy it is to make yourself in any flavor your heart desires. Take the soft butter and dried mushroom powder, and mix them together. Add a pinch of salt and pepper, and slather this under the skin and on top of the bird. As for the stuffing, I learned this trick from Alton Brown's Thanksgiving turkey recipe and I will never skip it again when roasting a whole bird. I just change the ingredients to fit the recipe, and I suggest you do the same! If you try this recipe, you'll totally agree. Gather together the halved shallot, the 2 heads of garlic cut in half, cinnamon stick, and apple pieces. Place them in a microwaveable bowl with 1/4 c of water and cook on high for 1 and 1/2 minutes. This releases so much aroma and gives the ingredients a head start on flavoring the inside of the meat. Let this cool before stuffing inside the cavity with the 1 sprig of rosemary. Any extra water from the stuffing can be placed on the bottom of the roasting pan, along with 1/2 c of the chicken stock. Sprinkle the bird with a little extra salt and pepper and roast for an hour and a half, or until the meat has a temperature of 165 degrees! Keep an eye on the bottom of the pan. If it's getting too dark, add more stock or water. The pan means a lot to us right now, it's what is going to make us the base of our marsala sauce, so if it burns...well... we'll figure something out.
Okay, now you can make your side dishes!! Like this fresh rosemary pasta. That's another post though... sorry.

Great, the chicken is done and you can practically taste it! Probably because you've taken that bit of brown skin off the part of the bird nobody really pays attention to and snacked on it. I got you. So let's move that bird to a carving board and cover it with foil, and take that pan back to the stove top on medium heat. Add in 2 tbs of butter and the sliced shallots. Cook until translucent and throw in the mushrooms. Sprinkle with a bit of salt and pepper, and cook again until browned. Add the sage, stirring about 30 seconds or until fragrant. Now we'll make the roux, or the base for our gravy/sauce. Sprinkle the flour over the mushrooms and cook until the juices have seized and the raw flour has cooked, about 1 minutes. Turn the heat off (because a surprise kitchen flare up isn't welcomed everywhere), and pour in the marsala. Turn the heat back to medium and cook.  Now we can customize! Too much wine flavor? Too thick? Add chicken stock. Not enough? More wine. Hold off on more salt though until the sauce has all it's elements. Now whisk in the heavy cream and the juice of 1/2 the lemon. Taste again! I know, it's torturous tasting this marsala sauce... Salt and pepper can be added now to fit your family's preference.
Now you can smother that roast chicken with the pan sauce and devour! My family ate this in 15 minutes. A new record.

So Far, Soufflé.

    Alright Ladies and Gents it's time to put your fancy pants on, because we're about to make some chocolate soufflé!
Soufflé is one of those magical food items. It's light, fluffy, and warm. Depending on what you put into it, it could satisfy your cheesiest or sweetest dreams, and right now we're dreaming in chocolate. Ladies, you know what I'm talking about.
It may seem like something you'd only see on the Metropolitan Opera House's dessert menu, or in a 5-star Brasserie, but with a little know-how, you can whip one up as quickly as a batch of cookies. Trust me, when you're craving some serious dessert, it's more satisfying than a cookie. Unless the cookie is filled with warm salted caramel... but enough of that, I'm getting side tracked.
Soufflé!  One thing that it is however, is time sensitive. So plan on serving it as soon as it comes out of the oven or else you lose the "wow" of the puffed confection. My boyfriend Mark photographed this baking session, and he first handedly found out just how quickly the deflation occurs. So we will have one picture of mine from inside the oven, and then the slightly deflated finished product. He did a great job though! Next time, I'm sure he'll have that finger on the shutter when the oven door is opening. A round of applause for the food photography rookie!
I served this with a warm raspberry sauce for some acidic bite with the rich chocolate. Try it with any fruit you like! Blackberry or tangerine would be heavenly.
Here we go.

Chocolate Soufflé with Warm Raspberry Sauce.
Serves 6
1/2 c. Heavy Cream
6 oz (yes, weighed) Bittersweet Chocolate, chips or chopped
3 Egg Yolks at room temperature
3 Tbs Creme De Cacao 
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract 

6 1-cup ramekins buttered and dusted with sugar

5 Egg Whites
5 Tbs Sugar

 Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Sorry, that was demanding. Please preheat your oven.
Now it's time to get your double boiler happening. This is where a lot of people go wrong. Either they put too much water in the bottom pot so that the bowl with the chocolate touches the scalding water (burning and seizing the chocolate); or they boil the water underneath and again...seize the chocolate. Here's the ideal double boiler. Put enough water in a pot to come up about 1/4 of the way, and gently simmer it. Simmering water looks like seltzer, and we're going for not the most active seltzer you've ever seen, more like seltzer that makes my mom angry that someone hasn't tightened the bottle top enough. Place the chocolate and cream in a separate bowl that sits on top of the warm water. Monitor the water so it doesn't boil and gently melt the chocolate.
Now, blend in the egg yolks one at a time until fully incorporated. Add in the Creme De Cacao and vanilla.

Great job! You can now take the bowl off the heat and sit this aside until you're just about ready to bake and serve.

Stop right now. Just stop. Are you planning on whipping the egg whites and then walking away for an hour until your company arrives? Well with soufflé, that simply won't do. You can make this chocolate mixture ahead of time and prep the ramekins, but save the egg whites until you're about to clear the dinner plates.

In the mean time, let's make raspberry sauce! Here I trusted my go-to chef, Ina Garten. Don't try to fix what isn't broken, folks.

Raspberry Sauce 

1/2 Pint Raspberries
!/4 c. Water
2 Tbs Raspberry Liquor
1/4 c. Seedless Raspberry Jam
1/2 c. Sugar

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan, and cook until combined. I strained the mixture and then warmed it back up before serving. "Now how bad could that be"?

Now that your delicious dinner has been enjoyed by all (I'm sure it was), let's get these bad boys cookin'. Place your room temperature egg whites in the bowl of a stand mixer, and whisk them together at a low speed until frothy. Slowly bump up the speed and add the sugar in a steady stream. Now we're going to whip them until they become a shiny and stiff meringue. When the egg whites start creating a stream behind the whisk and turn shiny, you're just about there. Don't over-whip or you'll break the meringue down and be *&^% out of luck. Sorry to be frank, but it's true and has happened to me so so so many times.

Did I scare you? I'm sorry, you're going great!

Let's get that chocolate mix out, and fold the egg whites in thirds. Be gentle, because the more air in the batter, the fluffier the finished product. Now we can finally fill the ramekins about half way and bake for 15 minutes.

Pull them out, dust with powdered sugar and spoon over some raspberry sauce. Yeah, I'm probably going to go make some now. I made myself hungry.