Psst... A Zuni Chicken Shortcut 🤫

Plus: French Toast with a Fresh Cherry Compote, Roasted Asparagus and Potatoes with A Fried Egg, and Dinner at Pizzeria Bianco.

Hey everyone,

Have you ever had the chicken at The Zuni Café in San Francisco? It’s the stuff of legend. The late Judy Rodgers not only created one of the world’s greatest chicken dishes, she also created one of the world’s greatest chicken recipes when she included it in her essential Zuni Café Cookbook. (Ask any chef or food writer what their favorite cookbook is and there’s a very good chance it’s Zuni.)

What makes the Zuni chicken so special? It’s all about the bread salad. See: you roast a chicken with salt and pepper, very simple, and then you take big chunks of bread and toast them until they’re croutons. Then you pour all of the pan juices from the chicken over the croutons and make a salad. It’s genius because you get all of those intense, chickeny juices absorbed into the perfect vehicle for them and the results are wild. Plus there’s pine nuts and dried currants and all kinds of goodies. If you haven’t made it, go make it… I’ll wait.

But if you’re a busy mom like me, taking the time to roast a whole chicken and then toast croutons and then make a salad is asking a lot. (My son Winston is very demanding.) Which is why this recipe for chicken thighs with schmaltzy croutons and kale is so genius. You do it all in one pan.

First you brown the chicken thighs, then you add the torn bread to the chicken fat and toast it right in the skillet. Finally you add quickly boiled Tuscan kale, stir everything all around, and finish with lemon juice. So much faster and yet just as satisfying! Maybe even more satisfying because frying the bread directly in the chicken fat is its own special thing. Trust me: you’re going to love this.

Now let’s talk French Toast. Specifically French toast with a Cognac cherry compote.

Doesn’t that look fancy? It was actually really easy to make. (Those are hickory smoked sausages that I seared up on the side.)

Step one: make your cherry compote. Don’t worry, you can have the recipe right here in this paragraph for free. The recipe is this: fresh cherries, a little sugar, some Cognac. Ha ha, I know, how obnoxious… but, really, that’s what it is.

Okay, if you want numbers, let’s say I had a cup of fresh pitted cherries, two tablespoons of sugar, a pinch of salt, and about 1/4 cup of Cognac. I turned the heat to medium and simmered until the cherries started to burst and release their juices and then cooked until it was all syrupy. You have to be careful, though, because Cognac can ignite! It’s fine if you want to do that on purpose, cherries jubilee style, but if you don’t want flames, don’t tilt the pan.

The French toast was just your basic French toast. I took day-old sourdough (the same one I used for the sourdough croutons in the previous recipe), sliced into thick slices, and soaked in a standard French toast batter of 3 eggs, whole milk, salt, a little sugar, and vanilla. Voila! A lovely breakfast.

But that’s not the only lovely breakfast that I made this weekend. I also made this little ditty of roasted potatoes, charred asparagus, and fried eggs.

Again, it may look swanky but it was all pretty easy. The potatoes, which were fancy farmer’s market potatoes, I cut in half and roasted in the oven with olive oil, salt, and pepper at 425, Barefoot Contessa-style. The asparagus I seared in a hot skillet, also with olive oil, until charred. Then I fried the egg in that same fat until the white was set but the yolk was still runny. Finally, I made a quick salsa verde with parsley, garlic, and Peppadews + olive oil to make it saucy. I spooned that over everything, doctored with Aleppo pepper, and that was breakfast. And it was good.

Let’s talk about this incredible pizza that we ate on Friday night.

Pizzeria Bianco is often touted as some of the best pizza in the country. Nancy Silverton went there to study pizza-making before she opened Mozza. It’s on every list of the country’s best pizzas but, it being in Phoenix, Arizona, I’ve never been. Until now… they just opened a new outpost in downtown L.A.

Craig and I went on Friday and we had the best game plan. Before pizza, we went and had cocktails at Kato — the swanky tasting menu spot that we went to for his birthday — and then hustled across the way for pizza.

The cocktail I had at Kato was wild: it was made with ancient sake (called Time Machine, the original recipe is from the 1700s) with blackberries and I think pickled plums? It was so good and tart and refreshing and boozy.

Then, at Pizzeria Bianco, we shared the famous Rosa pizza (with pistachios and onions) and then the Wiseguy with fennel sausage and smoked mozzarella. We loved them both and also loved the housemade ice cream for dessert.

If you live in L.A. and have OpenTable on your phone, get thee a reservation for Pizzeria Bianco stat. They book up quick!

Now for some fun links:

• Grilled bananas with Bourbon butter… yummo (The Guardian);

• Padma’s leaving Top Chef! Who should replace her? (Deadline);

• Congrats to all the James Beard media award winners! Many of them — including Kevin Bludso, Noah Galuten, and Illyana Maisonet — were guests on my podcast this past year (Eater);

• S’Mores Ice Cream Pie (Taste).

That’s all for today, folks!

In case you missed Thursday’s paid-subscriber’s only newsletter, I listed The L.A. Dishes That We’ll Miss the Most When We Move to NY. Read that plus get today’s recipe, all past recipes, and future recipes by becoming a paid subscriber.

Until next time….

Your pal,

Adam

[Seared Chicken Thighs with Schmaltzy Croutons and Kale recipe below.]