How do you revive your chicken tonight? With any one of the recipes in Food52’s “Dynamite Chicken: 60 Never-Boring Recipes For Your Favorite Bird” (Ten Speed Press; $23).
The cover image features chef and cookbook author Tyler Kord’s Pan-Seared Chicken Thighs With Newfangled Sauce, a particularly wonderful dish because it crisps skin-on chicken thighs and adds tender kabocha squash and an anise-flavored liqueur for a flavor that’s slightly sweet and perfectly complements the melted funky goat cheese.
Here’s how it’s done, complete with Kord’s commentary.
Food52’s Pan-Seared Chicken Thighs with Newfangled Sauce
Serves 4
Ingredients:
4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, about 1½ pounds
2½ teaspoons kosher salt, divided use
1 teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
8 ounces kabocha or butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into ¼-inch cubes
1 tablespoon Sambuca, dry vermouth or sweet white wine
¾ cup water or chicken stock
2 heads baby bok choy, cut into ½-inch pieces
4 ounces goat cheese
Directions:
In a small mixing bowl, toss the chicken with 1⁄2 teaspoon salt. Heat the oil in a large sauté pan over high heat until smoking. Add the chicken thighs, skin-side down, and sauté for 10 minutes, lowering the heat a little if they are getting too dark, until the skin is crispy, brown and spectacular. Flip the chicken thighs, push them out to the edges of the pan, reduce the heat to medium, and continue cooking.
In the same mixing bowl you used for the chicken, toss the squash with 1 teaspoon of the salt and add to the pan with the chicken. Spread the squash out in the middle of the pan and cook, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes, or until tender and nicely caramelized. Set aside the cooked chicken and squash on a plate.
Add the Sambuca to the pan and deglaze, scraping up the browned bits with a wooden spoon. Once the Sambuca has fully evaporated, add the water. Bring the water to a boil and add the bok choy, goat cheese and remaining 1 teaspoon salt. Stir until everything is combined and cook for another minute, until the goat cheese is fully melted into the sauce and the bok choy is a tiny bit wilted—bright green and still pretty crunchy.
Add the chicken and squash back to the pan. Cook for 1 minute, then check out the skin of your chicken thighs. If the skin doesn’t feel crisped up enough for you, feel free to put it under the broiler for a couple of minutes (but know that this uncrispiness is a texture that I love, and we all need to embrace it more).
— Reprinted from “Food52 Dynamite Chicken: 60 Never-Boring Recipes for Your Favorite Bird” by Tyler Kord, published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
