Lemon-Fennel Chicken In A Pot

Dorie tells us this is her “favorite kind of recipe: it comes together quickly, cooks unattended, and arrives at the table ready for its close up.” Sounds like it could be a favorite for me too! 😂

This is a straight forward recipe…

Ingredients arranged on the bottom: fennel, shallots, garlic heads, and lemons are mixed with olive oil, honey, thyme, bay leaves and chicken broth.

Chicken is stuffed with some lemons and more thyme…massaged with some olive oil and drizzled with lemon.

Cover this up in your dutch oven and bake for 90 min and voila…dinner is served.

This was really easy and smelled delicious while cooking! Personally, we didn’t think the chicken on its own had much flavor, but we really liked the additions of the roasted garlic, fennel, and juice!! All of them together were delicious. I think if I would make this again I would double the vegetables and liquid because that is what made the dish. What I do like about this is the fact we easily get two dinners out of this….plus all the rest of the chicken I shredded and will be frozen and used so many ways.

I like this method of cooking chicken a lot and would be so easy after picking up a whole chicken…which I rarely do because I don’t know what to do with it…now I know!

This one is a keeper!

Java Mini Mads

As you can see from my picture, these didn’t go quite as planned 😳😩

We have a take on the classic Madeleines today…coffee flavored “mini mads”. Same beloved texture, but now in mini muffin form and cappuccino flavored…coffee and cinnamon.

We are to make the batter and let it chill for a minimum of five hours which helps you get the classic madeleine “hump”. As you can see, mine went a little wonky…no hump whatsoever 😆🤦‍♀️. They tasted great…had the right texture, but were missing the classic hump. All I can think that happened was I didn’t use a metal mini muffin pan but a silicon one. I am guessing that doesn’t help crips the edges the same way or help induce the hump. Bummer and lesson learned….just kicking myself a bit that I could have just made the cookies in my classic madeleine pan haha and all would be well but I thought the mini mads would work better for sharing. As you can see I got some terrific height in these things so I will be happy with that haha!

Flognarde With Plums Or Berries Or Pears

This one was new to us, but tasted like something we had eaten before….we were thinking maybe like those skillet baked pancakes.

We are told this is a custardy French dessert of fruit…usually plums, prunes, pears, or berries and the batter most closely resembles one you would use to make crepes.

I used blueberries in my flognarde…and would again if I was to make this another time. This was very easy…really just some mixing up of ingredients and then a good long hour baking. Honestly, that was probably the hardest part because of the sweltering heatwave we have been going through. Not really baking weather 🥵 but we must press on haha!

It seemed like everyone enjoyed this one. Not sure it was a favorite, but if I had leftover blueberries to use up…I would make it again!