Jamie Oliver’s Tender & Crisp Chicken Legs with Sweet Tomatoes Recipe

The Naked Chef himself Jamie Oliver is stepping up to the plate on the Today show for a spring cooking school.

Ingredients:

• 4 chicken legs, jointed
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• A big bunch of fresh basil, leaves picked, stalks finely chopped
• 2 big handfuls of red and yellow cherry tomatoes, halved, and ripe plum tomatoes, quartered
• 1 whole bulb of garlic, broken up into cloves
• 1 fresh red chili finely chopped
• Olive oil
• Optional: 1 14 ounce can of canellini beans, drained
• Optional: 2 handfuls of new potatoes, scrubbed
• Optional: linguini or spaghetti

What’s Next:

Go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 F, or 175 C.

Season your chicken pieces all over and put them into a snug-fitting pan in one layer. Throw in all the basil leaves and stalks, then chuck in your tomatoes. Scatter the garlic cloves into the pan with the chopped chili and drizzle over some olive oil. Mix around a bit, pushing the tomatoes underneath.

Place in the oven for 1 1/2 hours, turning the tomatoes halfway through, until the chicken skin is crisp and the meat falls off the bone. If you fancy, you can add some drained cannellini beans or some sliced new potatoes to the pan and cook them with the chicken.

Or you can serve the chicken with some simple mashed potato. Squeeze the garlic out of the skins before serving. You could even make it part of a pasta dish – remove the chicken meat from the bone and shred it, then toss into a bowl of linguini or spaghetti and serve at once.

Eat well & Laugh often.

Dolly Parton’s New Cookbook Will Raise Your Imagination

Dolly Parton has revealed her favorite recipes in her new cookbook, Dolly’s Dixie Fixin’s. The cookbook will feature recipes from her mother Avie Lee Parton, her mother-in-law “Mama” Ginny Dean, as well as recipes from her Dollywood restaurants and dishes she discovered while touring on the road for the last 40 years.

Proceeds from the sales of Dolly’s Dixie Fixin’s will help fund Parton’s Imagination Library. The Library was founded by Parton in 1996 and has been established in 42 US states. The Imagination program encourages reading by distributing a free book a month to children from birth to age 5.

When you purchase Dolly’s cookbook before September 1 of this year, you enter yourself to win a personal backyard barbeque and bluegrass festival with Parton as your special guest. I promise won’t tell anyone if that’s the only reason you’re buying Dolly’s Dixie Fixin’s. The cookbook is available for purchase at Dollywood, the Dixie Stampede restaurant and the more convenient websites.

Stay tuned for ‘A Tribute to Dolly Parton Recipes’ post. You won’t want to miss this collection of Parton recipes.

Eat well & Laugh often.

We’re Cooking with Amy Today

Cooking with Amy is a great food escape, you come out refreshed, full of culinary joy and a happier person for the visit. I felt the same as I was looking at her recent post on Japanese cuisine. Amy revisited the koryori style restaurant Kappa this week, here she is now:

“When I went to Japan I thought I knew what Japanese food was. Boy, was I ever wrong! Going to Kappa is much the same experience. In addition to the kimono-clad hostess, the menu written in Japanese and the virtually all Japanese clientele, the food is koryori style, a traditional small plate cuisine from Kyoto not found anywhere else in town. Sure most of the dishes are familiar, but if you order the prix fixe meal several of the items are quite out of the ordinary.

Lee has been wanting to go back to Kappa ever since we went two years ago for his birthday. Since the prix fixe meal is rather special that was his choice again for this year’s birthday. As I mentioned the last time around, there is no sign in English for the restaurant and the wooden door slides open so you really don’t know where you are going. Lost in Translation anyone?”

This gem located next to Denny’s in San Francisco is worth your time and your well-deserving palate. Amy goes on to describe each dish they tasted, complete with wonderful, clear photos.

Look out for the upcoming ‘Tori no Mizutaki’ Japanese Chicken Stew Recipe’ post.

Until then,

Eat well & Laugh often.

Kiefer Sutherland: Cooking With Cocaine

I found this hilarious entertainment news article and decided that I must share it with you.

24 star Kiefer Sutherland (for those of you who don’t remember The Lost Boys) is hooked on cooking. After realizing that he enjoyed cocaine because of the preparation involved (hmmm, I’m thinking there might be other reasons at play as well) he can’t do without it. He’s an addict getting high on the fumes of coriander.

The actor revealed that he was using cocaine habitually for over a year. He quit recently when he discovered that cooking up food gives him the same thrill as cooking up coke.

He says, “I did like the ceremony, the ritual of preparing cocaine, as much as doing it. I feel the same way about cooking now. It’s an amazing time to focus on something else. You work out a lot of stuff to your day.”

Apparently Kiefer is still suffering from the side effects of drug use, unless you understood the last sentence. I thought this would be the best, first post for my new ‘Celebrity Cooks’ category. What are you going to do with these celebrities? Love them or eat them? Stay tuned for the Kiefer Sutherland Shepard’s Pie. Just pulling your leg. Or am I?

Eat well & Laugh often.