Chicken Bonne Femme

It's been a while since our last episode of cooking on the Yellow Blog so, before we start, let's clear up a few things first. Those of you who have become accustomed to reading the ever-expanding wealth of informed professional grade food writing on the local internets in recent years... and also those of you who read Blackened Out... should know right off the bat that you're not going to get anything approaching that kind of refinement here. I haven't taken any training. I don't know any chefs. I've never written a book. I've only worked in restaurants as a very young man when I bussed tables and washed dishes during the summer. I'm just a guy who grew up in New Orleans, reads a lot of cookbooks, and screws around in the kitchen.

I'm a home cook who cooks homey food mostly of the sort I grew up eating. I do the usual predictable stuff around the appropriate holidays. I do a lot of "smothered" this or that. I put bacon and butter all over everything. Every now and then I'll try to copy something I've had in a restaurant. And sometimes I even experiment with mixed results. But mostly, I like to stick to the classics because it's what I know and it's where I don't suck so much. Also I hate doing dishes. So whenever possible I like to cook whatever I'm cooking in one pot or pan which is what I did last night with this simple execution of Chicken Bonne Femme.

"Good woman's chicken", as I understand it, is so named because it represents something a resourceful housewife might come up with with a store of simple ingredients. As an aspiring housewife myself I take this as high praise. It's also a versatile baseline for other New Orleans classics. Throw some peas on this and you've got Chicken Clemenceau, or maybe with some Bernaise sauce you can call it Chicken Pontalba. In any event it's about as homey a dish as one can think of and that suits our purposes nicely.

• Start by chopping up the following:
  
  One bunch of green onions
  
  
  
  One very blurry medium sized Spanish onion
  
  
  
  About this much fresh parsley. (I could have used the whole bunch but I'm saving some for some pasta I'm making later this week.)
  
  
  
  And I like a lot of garlic so go through at least one (maybe one and a half) of these
  
  



• Okay throw it all together in a bowl and set it aside somewhere. Then go grab two of these.
  
  
  
  That's your ordinary run-of-the-dirt Russett Potato. I used these because, well, that's what I had laying around the house last night. But I should note that I've been using red potatoes to make soup lately as well as the best french fries I've ever done so I might recommend subbing those in next time.
  
  Anyway just hack at them until you get these little irregular shapes.
  
  
  
  I've got them in a bowl here tossed with salt, black pepper, cayenne, and a little garlic powder. Do that or something like it and set them aside.



• Chicken. You're gonna need to brown some chicken pieces. First, dust them lightly with a mixture of flour, salt, pepper, and cayenne. What kind of chicken pieces is up to you. Some people like white meat, some people like dark meat. Some people like skin, some people like bones. What I've got here is boneless chicken thighs.
  
  
  
  Why boneless? Because they were easier to shove into the cast iron skillet to brown in a little vegetable oil. Like this.
  
  
  
  Just as that is about ready to come up is about the time in the process when your wife will call you on the telephone and ask you to run into the other room to check for the exact number printer cartridge she is supposed to be buying. If you keep her on the phone as you walk back into the kitchen, she'll probably wait until the exact moment that you're reaching for the tongs to ask, "Wait. Are you sure it said 4216 and not 4260? Because I don't see that here at all." And then you'll get a little distracted and knock over the whole plastic Saints cup full of slotted spoons, ladles, and spatulae you were retrieving the tongs from. That may even take a full glass of water with it on its way to the floor resulting in shit everywhere plus one very excited cat.
  
  Don't freak out. Just get off the stupid phone, throw the scattered utensils into the sink, put some paper towels down and remove the chicken from the skillet. Set aside.



• Okay, now, deglaze the pan with something. Most people will do this with a little white wine but we had shoved all of our white wine into Menckles' backpack and took it with us to Krewe du Vieux Saturday night. I did happen to have some brandy available. It did the trick.
  
  By the way, now would be a good time to start pre-heating the oven. This worked well enough.
  
  



• Bacon is such a cliche nowadays. WHATEVER, get over yourself, Bourdain, and chop some up. That looks like enough right there.
  
  
  
  Add some to your deglazed pan with a chunk of butter. Pause to take one glorious photograph.
  
  



• With the exception of the chicken, start adding all the stuff we chopped up earlier to the pan. It doesn't really matter what order you do this in. Just make it so that your bacon fat is rendered, your vegetables are softened, and your potatoes are at least pliable and maybe starting to crisp. Add some herbs if have them laying around. Thyme and rosemary are nice.
  
  



• Really what you're looking for is a situation where all that stuff is cooked down to the point where your chicken pieces fit comfortably back into the pan with it. Notice I dropped some more butter on top just to be an asshole.
  
  



• Okay. Whole skillet goes in the oven. Cooking time at 350 degrees was about 45 minutes in this case. Although I left it in there a bit longer because I had to help Menckles carry a bunch of shit into the house just as the timer was going off. Just make sure you aren't serving your bonne femme any raw chicken and you'll be alright. Here's what it looked like.
  
  

Maybe the refined professional out there would say the presentation is a little monochromatic or something. So, I don't know, sprinkle some parsley on top or something. Otherwise, enjoy.