Signature Dish

Every chef—even a home chef—needs a perfected signature dish. The recipe you’ll find below is mine, but you’ll notice one component of a typical recipe is totally gone: the measurements. That omission is entirely intentional. Early in the quarantine, we were under because of the Coronavirus, in either March or April 2020, I had a ton of chicken thighs in my home fridge and I didn’t really know what to do with them. This recipe, which I’ve prepared pretty much every time we’ve bought large quantities of chicken thighs since then was born out of the quarantine—a time when I was fairly limited in what I could use and what or when I could restock. My philosophy in the kitchen is this: “The best chef is not the one who follows a written recipe the most correctly but the one who produces the best results without any recipe at all.” I haven’t included many measurements here (other than the intentionally vague “pinch,” “dash,” and others) because one of my firmest convictions as a home chef is that the average home chef doesn’t know how to cook without a recipe—by coming up with ideas and tasting and adjusting through the course of assembling a dish. If every home chef in America knew to taste food and what to look for in the intermediate steps of cooking, so many more people would realize their great untapped potential and in doing so, would realize that cooking is not a task or a chore, but an incredibly fulfilling activity—if done with good technique. Good technique will yield good results. If nothing else, let this be a lesson in tasting and proportional cooking.

In some sort of bowl (I like the largest circular-ish Pyrex bowl I can find in my kitchen, which holds 7 cups), combine about equal parts of three different acids (I like balsamic and red wine vinegars, plus the zest and juice of some citrus, usually lime and/or orange). Whisk lightly to combine. These things just need to mingle, so it’s perfectly acceptable to go easy on the whisking at this point. Whisk in about the same amount of reduced-fat homogenized milk as any one of the acids. Again, here, it’s okay to whisk lightly. Now, whisking quickly, stream in about 3 times as much liquid oil as there are (total) acids and milk in the bowl. Oil doesn’t like the acids or the milk (because the milk is mostly water and the oil doesn’t like water), so the two will try to stay separate from each other; whisking constantly and adding slowly will essentially “make the molecules hug each other” in such a way that they won’t separate. Basically, you need to get the fat cells in the oil of your choice (again, use a liquid oil like olive or canola, not a solid one like coconut) into units that are as small as possible—in the best case, just one molecule— which are surrounded by and attracted to the water molecules. The chemistry of water allows us to create this “molecular hug” just by whisking long enough and adding in the oil slowly enough. Here, whisk vigorously. An unbreakable emulsion has been achieved when the fat particles are small enough as to be invisible to the naked eye and thus small enough to be held in suspension in the other liquids.

Technically, what this step does is it creates an emulsion, a mixture of two things that chemically don’t like each other but which are held together either by physical force (applied by whisking) or by each bonding to one side of something that both things are attracted to. (This is why people like to put eggs in meatballs: the eggs not only add protein, but they bring together elements of the meatball which chemically repel each other per se, but are both attracted to the egg, so they can be held together if they hold on to the egg—the egg thus gives the meatballs the structural integrity they need not to fall apart too soon.) Every good marinade has four components: fat, acid, spices, and salt. Whisk in spices. I’ve always used smoked and sweet paprika, basil, oregano, thyme, dill, garlic powder, bay leaves, fresh-cracked black peppercorns, and salt. Especially if you’re inexperienced in the kitchen, I recommend using Kosher salt. Kosher salt has the advantage of being coarser than normal “table salt” that isn’t Kosher, so it’s easier to see how much you’re actually salting something if you use Kosher salts rather than non-Kosher. I recommend having tasted the marinade at least three times by now: when only the acid, the milk, and the oil have gone in; after everything but the salt has gone in, and after the salt has gone in, adjusting what you already have in the bowl at each round.

Move this out of the container in which it was built into a container whose lid’s area is big enough such that the container could reasonably hold all the chicken in as close to a single layer as possible. If there are some spices left over in the container where the marinade was built, use some water to loosen the spices and pour them over the chicken. Close the chicken container, and shake it for a few seconds, just long enough to get the marinade moving around and coating all the pieces of chicken. Leave this in a refrigerator for at least 12 hours, but no longer than 48. Any longer than 48 hours and the acid in the marinade will actually begin to “cook” the chicken rather than just tenderizing and flavoring it.

Once ready to continue, after no less than 12 but no more than 48 hours of marination, move the chicken into enough baking dishes so that they all lie flat in one layer. If you have any more than 4 thighs on an average-sized baking pan, you will need more than one. Preheat an oven to 375 Fahrenheit (190 Celsius); once the temperature has been reached, place the thighs on the same level rack of the oven, and leave them there for an hour. Transfer the marinade into a sauté pan (something that’s wide, has a lid, and has sides that are maybe 2 inches tall), and let it come to a boil, reducing by a third. At this point, the sauce is safe to taste, so you should do so for likely the fourth time in this process.

While the chicken is roasting, it will release two things that together can only be described as “culinary gold.” The first is some of the juices from the chicken—don’t worry, this always happens, no matter how you cook chicken, and this chicken will still be particularly moist. The second is “schmaltz”—that is, slowly melted, flavored chicken fat. Move the chicken onto a separate plate and reserve it. Transfer all the schmaltz from all the roasting trays used into the pan where the sauce is being assembled. Whisk to combine—try to start emulsifying the sauce, but don’t be alarmed it stays separated; in fact, it won’t be until the next ingredient is added.

Cook one pound of some sort of long pasta—I like fettuccine with this recipe—to one minute short of the manufacturer’s instructions. Time the pasta so that it is drained as close to at exactly the same time as when the chicken comes out of the oven and the schmaltz is added to the sauce. Drain the pasta and reserve momentarily. Add anywhere from 2 to 3 heaping tablespoons of sour cream to the sauce and whisk until emulsified. You should not be able to distinguish the schmaltz from the marinade or the schmaltz-marinade from the sour cream. Once everything is thoroughly incorporated, the schmaltz does not appear separated, and there do not appear to be any visible white specks of sour cream in the sauce, it has been properly emulsified. Check for seasoning, adding salt and/or freshly ground black pepper as desired.  Bring drained long pasta into the sauce and stir or toss to combine. Serve chicken atop pasta, garnishing with as much grated Parmigiano Reggiano and/or pecorino romano cheese as desired.

 If you make this, be sure to leave a comment down below letting me know!