Citrus is a bright spot in the cold of winter, giving us a sneak peak of the fresh fruits and vegetables waiting for us in spring and summer. And while oranges and grapefruits probably come immediately to mind when you think of citrus, there are many interesting and fun varieties to choose from, including Satsuma mandarins, tangelos, and yuzu. Citrus is also a source of important nutrients, including the ever-critical Vitamin C. With so much going for it, there’s really no good reason not to add more citrus to your diet.

Celebrating Citrus with Central Market

As I started to see more citrus show up in my market’s aisles this past holiday season, I really had citrus on my mind. I absolutely love Satsumas and I buy them by the box in December for healthy snacking during the fat- and sugar-laden holiday season. Needless to say, I was very excited when the wonderful folks from Central Market invited me to attend a special olive oil tasting and kickoff to their annual Citrus Fest. The event was amazing and I learned a lot about olive oil, so much so that it will get its own post next week, but I was truly inspired by the citrus dishes we were served. Citrus was party of every dish in our tasting but it played a different role in each, truly showing off its versatility. I’ve scanned back through my notes and gone on the search for recipes similar to those we enjoyed at the tasting with the hope that you’ll be as inspired as I was to get your citrus on this winter.

Shrimp and Grapefruit Salad with Fennel: This lovely cold salad featured perfectly cooked shrimp, crisp fennel, slightly sweet grapefruit, and a drizzle of light olive oil. The tastes and textures were well balanced to allow each ingredient to shine without overshadowing the others. To put a similar dish on your table, try Sautéed Shrimp with Spicy Grapefruit.

Baked Salmon with Citrus Goat Cheese and Roasted Cauliflower: I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t like salmon as much as I should. I don’t dislike it, but I don’t love it, which is not a good thing because salmon is so very good for us. This year I promised myself I’d find ways to like salmon, and this dish will help me get there pretty quickly. The chef topped a perfectly cooked piece of salmon with goat cheese blended with herbs and citrus. The balance of creamy goat cheese, tangy citrus, and earthy herbs was a fantastic companion to the fresh salmon. To try a dish similar to this one, whip up a recipe of Citrus Broiled Alaska Salmon and then mix some fresh herbs and citrus zest into goat cheese as a garnish.

Key Lime Tart: I love key limes in every possible incarnation: pie, tart, cookies, or sorbet. You name it, I like it. As you might imagine, I was most excited to see our tasting end with a light and creamy tart. Sometimes creamy pies and tarts can be too heavy so the citrus is almost muted, defeating the entire purpose of the dessert in the first place. Not so in this case – it was really fantastic. Having tried several key lime recipes in my day, I can highly recommend Martha Stewart’s Key Lime Tart. While it may be difficult to get key limes other times during the year, they are in abundance right now, so go out, get some, and make a tart!

If these three recipes recommendations aren’t your cup o’ tea (or cup o’ juice), you can find even more citrus inspiration in these recipe collections:

• Central Market
• Epicurious
• Saveur

When I left class I was inspired to come up with my own citrus recipe to share here. I had the goat cheese salmon on my mind and the staff at Central Market said their blood oranges are amazing this year, so I decided to combine the two and create a blood orange and goat cheese crostini. These little bites come together in a matter of minutes. Supreming the orange is the most arduous task but is well worth it. They are perfect for a light lunch or as an appetizer before a meal. The citrus is the star of the show here and this recipe really lets it shine. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Recipe: Goat Cheese Crostini with Greens and Blood Oranges

Details

• Difficulty: Easy
• Serves: 8 as an appetizer, 4 as light lunch
• Prep Time: 20 min
• Cook Time: 15 min

Ingredients

• 1 baguette, sliced on a diagonal into 16 pieces
• Olive oil for drizzling
• Salt and pepper
• 2 Tbsp. freshly squeezed blood orange juice
• 1 Tbsp. champagne vinegar
• 1 medium shallot, minced
• 1 tsp. honey
• 2 Tbsp. good olive oil
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 1/8 tsp. pepper
• 3 cups baby greens
• 4 oz. goat cheese
• 32 segments from 2-3 blood oranges

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
2. Place the baguette slices on a baking sheet about 1 inch apart. Drizzle evenly with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
3. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until crispy.
4. Combine the juice, vinegar, shallot, and honey in a medium bowl and whisk to combine. Continuing whisking and slowly stream the olive oil into the bowl. Season the vinaigrette with salt and pepper. Taste and adjust for seasoning with more salt and pepper if necessary.
5. Add the baby greens to the vinaigrette in the bowl and toss gently to coat the greens.
6. To assemble the crostini, spread baguette slice with a thin layer of goat cheese, top with a small bunch of the dressed greens and two blood orange segments.

Recipe for Success

• If you can’t find blood oranges, regular oranges will work as a substitution.
• Be sure to taste your vinaigrette for balance before you coat the greens with it. Some blood oranges may be more tart than others, so you may need to add a touch more honey to account for that tartness.
• Create the orange segments using the supreming technique. If you’ve never supreme citrus, watch Ming Tsai’s video for a great overview of the technique. The process is a little time consuming but the beautiful segments are well worth it.

Back in July I attended the casting call for season 6 of the Next Food Network Star. It was an amazing experience and I’m happy to report that they liked me enough to call me back after my initial interview. I had to bring a prepared signature dish and do a three minute demonstration of a cooking technique, as well as answer a whole slew of questions on camera. No pressure. As you might imagine, I was stunned, excited, and just a little bit overwhelmed. After a small fit of shrieking and frantic texting, I settled in to think about what I could demo that would not only show my culinary skills and teaching abilities, but that would also represent a technique I would want to include on an episode of my show because it’s truly useful.

Spatchcock that Chicken!

To make things a little more interesting, I wouldn’t have access to any sort of stove or oven during the demo, so short of setting up my own portable burner – which I did consider, albeit briefly – I had to focus on a preparation technique instead of a cooking technique. I decided on butterflying, or spatchcocking, a chicken, and not just because “spatchcock” is a fun word to say in all of its various forms. Instead, I choose this technique because it’s greatly underutilized in many home kitchens, which is a shame because it takes a chicken to a whole new level. A butterflied chicken is simply a chicken without a backbone that lies flat and as a result it:

• Cooks more quickly because there’s more surface area for the heat to reach. Butterflying a chicken makes roasted chicken doable even on a busy weeknight. You can have it from fridge to table in about an hour, and a good portion of that hour is inactive time for roasting (or grilling – see below). Michael Ruhlman (of Ratio fame and my literary mentor for gougers) even lists a butterflied chicken as one of his staple meals, which incidentally generated all sorts of interesting feedback on the spatchcock method of preparing a chicken.
• Cooks more evenly because it’s flatter than a whole chicken. The white meat won’t dry out while you’re waiting for the thicker, dark meat to cook, which is a good thing because there’s not much less appetizing than dry chicken.
• Is perfect for the grill, which is in fact exactly how I cooked my latest butterfly chicken (recipe at the end of this post). A spatchcocked and grilled chicken is the perfect way to have a comfort-food favorite during even the hottest summer months when you wouldn’t dare turn your oven on for roasting.

So how exactly do you butterfly a chicken? It’s actually not too difficult. You need three things:

• A well-rinsed and dried chicken. Because you’ll be man-handling the chicken a bit, you want it to be more dry than not.
• A pair of kitchen shears. You could spatchcock with a sharp knife but it’s more dangerous that way and takes longer. If you don’t have good kitchen shears, us this as an excuse to get some. They are mighty useful.
• A large, plastic cutting board. This process is a bit messy, so a bigger board is better than a smaller one. Go with plastic to avoid cross-contamination.

Gloves are optional. I know some people who prefer to handle raw meat with gloves, and if you are one of them, then by all means don those gloves. I will tell you that spatchcocking six chickens in a couple of hours, as I did on the day I was rehearsing for my call back, will wreak havoc on your hands, so if you are doing more than a couple of chickens I’d go with the gloves.

There are three steps to the spatchcock technique:

1. Use the kitchen shears to cut down either side of the backbone and remove it entirely.
2. Press down on either side of the breast to flatten out the chicken. You can use a paring knife or boning cut the breastbone cartilage to make this easier.
3. Trim the chicken of all visible skin and fat for a neater presentation.

After my call back I had this grandiose plan that I would video myself butterflying the chicken –I can do it in 90 seconds flat now – but that just hasn’t happened (yet). Until I can get my video act together, I’ve located this most excellent spatchcocking demo for your viewing pleasure. Watch it a couple of times and then buy yourself a chicken (or two or six) and practice. The more chickens you spatchcock, the better you’ll be.

Things to Do with a Spatchcocked Chicken

As I mentioned earlier, you can both roast and grill a butterflied chicken. My favorite way to roast a spatchcocked chicken is simply to salt and pepper it well on both sides, lay it cavity-side down on a bed of aromatics (onions, garlic, citrus, fresh herbs), drizzle it with some olive oil, and cook it for 45 minutes in a 425 degree oven. You can also brine the chicken ahead of time or rub some compound butter between the skin and meat before roasting to give it some additional flavor. If these ideas aren’t enough to get your culinary juices flowing, some interesting recipes I’ve found are:

• Grilled Citrus Chicken Under a Brick (Bon Appetite Magazine)
• Broiled, Butterflied Chicken (Alton Brown)
• Spatchcocked Chicken (Sunset Magazine)
• Spatchcocked Chicken with Potatoes and Asparagus (Serious Eats)

Next up I’ll share my grilled chicken recipe that uses a brick to further in the Tuscan style.

Recipe: Lime and Ginger Grilled Butterflied Chicken

Details

• Difficulty: Medium the first time you spatchcock, easy thereafter
• Serves: 4-6
• Prep Time: 15 – 25 minutes
• Cook Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 3-4lb. whole roasting chicken, rinsed, dried, and butterflied (see video above)
• 2 limes, 1 thinly sliced, 1 halved
• 2 Tbsp. freshly ground ginger
• Salt and pepper
• 2 Tbsp. Olive oil
• 1 large brick, double-wrapped in heavy duty aluminum foil
• 3 Tbsp. Italian parsley, chopped, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

1. Preheat a gas grill with all burners on high. Ideally the grill will be between 500 and 600 degrees before you start to cook the chicken.
2. Generously salt and pepper the cavity side of the chicken and lay it skin side up on a large rimmed baking sheet (this makes it easier to carry to the grill).
3. Run your fingers between the skin and flesh of the chicken breasts and thighs.
4. Evenly spread the ginger between the flesh and skin of both breast and thighs.
5. Insert 2-3 slices of lime between the skin and flesh of each breast and a 1-2 between the skin and flesh of each thigh (as space allows).
6. Generously salt and pepper the skin side of the chicken. Drizzle evenly with the olive oil.
7. Place the chicken skin side down on one side of the grill or to either the back or the front of the grill, depending on how your burners are situated. You’ll be turning off half of your grill’s heat (the half under the chicken) after a few minutes for indirect cooking, so place the chicken with that in mind so you don’t have to move it later.
8. Let the chicken cook for 6-7 minutes without moving it, or until light brown. This will crisp the chicken’s skin.
9. Turn the heat off under the chicken, place the brick lengthwise on top (don’t turn the chicken over) so it covers as much of the chicken as possible, and reduce the heat on the burners that are still on to medium-high. Ideally you’ll maintain a grill temperature of about 425 – 450 degrees so monitor it a bit during the first 10 minutes or so of cooking and adjust the burners as necessary.
10. Cook the chicken skin side down for 30 minutes.
11. Remove the brick, flip the chicken over (cavity side down), put the brick back on top of the chicken, and cook for another 15 minutes, or until a thermometer inserted into the deepest part of the thigh registers 160 degrees.
12. Remove the chicken from the grill and let rest for 10-15 minutes before serving.
13. Squeeze the juice of the remaining lime over the chicken and garnish with parsley if you’d like.

Recipe for Success

• The lime slices should be as thin and uniform as possible to keep them from tearing the skin of the chicken. I used my mandolin to cut ¼ ” slices, but you can just as easily slice them free-hand with a sharp chef’s knife.
• If you don’t have fresh ginger, you can substitute 4 Tbsp. ground ginger. Sprinkle it on with the salt and pepper instead of putting it under the skin with the limes.
• I grill with gas, that’s just the way it is, so these instructions are written for a gas grill. If you use charcoal, build up one side of the grill for indirect cooking and sear the chicken for the first 7 minutes on that side of the grill, as described in step 8. Then, carefully move the chicken to the cooler side of the grill and proceed with the rest of the recipe starting with step 10.
• If you don’t have a brick handy but do have a cast iron skillet, us it in place of the brick. Be sure the bottom is clean seeing as it will be touching the chicken.
• You can also roast the chicken:
  • Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
  • Prep the chicken through step 6 but don’t drizzle with olive oil. Instead, heat the olive oil in a large ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat until it is just about to smoke.
  • Cook the chicken in the skillet skin side down for 6-7 minutes.
  • Place the brick on the chicken, transfer the skillet to the oven and roast for 30 minutes.
  • Flip the chicken over, replace the brick, and return the skillet to the oven for another 15-20 minutes.
  • Remove the chicken from the skillet, let rest, and garnish as described in steps 12 and 13.

Learn more about spatchcocking a chicken

[Jump right to the recipe: Pepita-Crusted Trout with Citrus and Avocado Salsa]

Continuing with this year’s commitment to eat more fish in more interesting ways, I put together a crusted trout recipe that can easily work for any filet of fish. After much tasting research and further contemplating my own preferences, I’ve found that I like planning a salsa, relish, or other bright companion for my fish because it adds a separate, distinct layer of flavor that really balances out the fish. It also makes the whole dish prettier. Along those lines, this dish is quick to prepare and the salsa can be made with either fresh or canned ingredients, depending what you have on hand, so it’s perfect for a weeknight dinner or for serving at an impromptu dinner party.

Learn more about trout

Recipe: Pepita-Crusted Trout with Citrus and Avocado Salsa

Details

• Difficulty: Easy
• Serves: 4
• Prep Time: 20 min
• Cook Time: 15 min

Ingredients

• 1 c. chopped grapefruit segments
• 1 c. chopped pineapple
• ½ small jalapeno, diced (or more if you want a really spicy salsa)
• 2/3 c. diced red onion
• 1 medium avocado, chopped
• Juice of 1 lime
• ¼ c. chopped parsley
• 4 trout filets, 4 oz each, deboned with skin on
• ½ c. fresh-squeezed orange juice
• 1/2 c. white whole wheat flour
• 2 egg whites whisked with 1 Tbsp. water
• 1 c. prepared pepita crust (recipe follows this one)
• 4 Tbsp. grape seed oil
• 2 Tbsp. butter

Instructions

1. Add the first seven ingredients (grapefruit through parsley) into a medium bowl and toss gently to combine. Prepare up to 30 minutes before serving and leave in refrigerator for the flavors to meld.
2. Place the trout filets in a large zip top bag and add the orange juice, moving the filets around in the bag to be sure each is covered with juice. Marinade in the refrigerator for at least 15 minutes and no more than 30 minutes.
3. While the fish marinades, prepare the breading stations. Spread the flour and pepita crust evenly on two large plates or in two pyrex dishes. Have a third empty plate or dish ready as well.
4. When the fish is done marinating, remove one filet from the bag and shake gently to remove any excess orange juice. Lay the filet skin-side down in the flour and press to coat evenly. Sprinkle the flesh side with salt and pepper and flip to coat evenly with the flour.
5. Place the flour-coated filet on the empty plate, skin-side down, and brush the flesh side with a thin, even layer of the egg white and water mixture.
6. Place the fillet flesh-side down into the pepita crust and press gently to coat evenly with the crust.
7. Reserve the crusted fish on a large cookie sheet and repeat the coating process with the other three filets until all are crusted.
8. Heat 2 Tbsp of the olive oil and 1 Tbsp. of the butter over medium high heat in a large sauté pan until a small dusting of flour tossed into the pan sizzles (pan should be very hot and the butter will begin to brown). Place two filets crust-side down in the pan, being careful not to overlap, and sauté for two minutes without moving. Flip the filets to the skin side and cook for 2-3 minutes more until the fish is cooked through.
9. Move the cooked fish to a sheet pan and keep warm in a 200 degree oven.
10. Wipe the pan out and repeat with the remaining oil, butter, and fish filets.
11. To serve, place one filet on a plate and top with about ½ c. of the salsa.

Pepita Crust
My market pre-makes fish crust so I don’t have to make my own, but really, it’s a simple thing to do. If you don’t have access to pre-made crust at your local market, you can put your own together very quickly by combining equal parts roasted pepita seeds (or any other nut) and pre-made bread crumbs or panko. I like to use the pepitas whole because they provide a nice contrast to the finer texture of bread crumbs or panko, but if you like your crust a little more uniform in texture, give the pepitas a quick whirl in a mini-chopper to break the up a bit. You should be able to buy the pepitas already roasted and if you can find them, try those roasted with tamarind for a little extra flavor. Season the mixture with a little salt and pepper to finish. Make a bunch of this crust – it will keep for about 6 weeks in your pantry and it’s great for crusting chicken as well as fish, or for tossing with your favorite steamed vegetables.

Experiments in Fish Crust

Over the years I’ve experimented with different ways to crust something and have the crust 1) stay on and 2) not burn before that something is finished cooking. After some successes and failures with fish in particular, I’ve come to the conclusion that the standard three step breading technique is really the best way to create a crust that really sticks to the fish. The combination of flour and egg whites creates light but sticky “glue” for the crust and helps keep the crust intact while the fish is cooking. If you’re not familiar with this technique, it’s fairly easy but does get a couple of extra dishes dirty:

1. Season the fish with salt and pepper then dredge both sides in flour. In this recipe the fish is a skin-on trout filet so only the flesh side is actually crusted. Even so, the flour on the skin side helps the skin crisp and brown when it hits the pan.
2. Brush the flesh side of the filet with an egg white mixed with a bit of water. If you are crusting a piece of fish without skin, you brush all sides with the egg white and water mixture because you’ll want to coat all sides.
3. Press the flesh side of the filet into the crust and press down lightly to be sure all areas of the flesh are covered by the crust. If your fish doesn’t have skin, repeat this for all sides of the fish until the whole piece is covered.

To give plenty of room to work with the fish, I use three large plates or Pyrex dishes for each step of the process and work with one filet at a time. Big mounds of flour and crust in small dishes make it hard to coat the fish evenly, and it’s much easier to brush the fish with the egg white when it’s lying flat because you can use both hands – one to hold and one to brush. I reserve the crusted fish on a big cookie sheet without overlapping them until I’m done crusting all of the filets.

An even crust that sticks fairly well is only half of the battle. Some things that make cooking crusted fish easier are:

• Use a combination of grape seed oil and butter. The butter helps the fish brown nicely but the grape seed oil gives you a higher smoke point so you can cook the fish more rapidly.
• Cook on medium-high heat and be sure the oil/butter combination is hot when you start cooking. If the fat and the pan aren’t hot enough, the fish will taste greasy and the crust won’t crisp.
• Finish thick pieces of fish in a 400 degree oven. A filet like trout is thin enough that it will cook in 4-5 minutes without burning the crust. A thicker filet (more than ½ inch) will need more time to cook and the crust will burn before the fish is finished. Brown all sides of a thick filet in a pan and then transfer to a cookie sheet to finish in the oven for a few more minutes.
• Don’t crowd the pan. If the fish overlaps while browning you’ll have uneven browning and crust that sticks to other pieces of fish. Work in batches as necessary and keep the finished fish warm in a 200 degree oven. The fish cooks so quickly the first pieces won’t really have time to cool down.