Chicken Recipe with Blackberry Sauce

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June 14, 2024

A blackberry chicken recipe with sprigs of rosemary for garnish

This chicken recipe is inspired by a meeting I had some years ago at a grilling demo sponsored by the Weber folks in Portland, OR. I came up with this idea to make use of the area’s iconic berries, in season at the time. I don’t remember much about the day now, except that all of the invited chefs grilled out on the rooftop of a downtown building without catching anyone or anything on fire, and that everyone loved this dish.

Tips for Making Your Own Sauce

Once you start making your own sauces, you’ll never want to buy them again. If you really want to DIY it, you can try making your own stock, too, either chicken or vegetable. But we all have to start somewhere. The great thing about making your own sauces is that you can taste them as you go and get them to the flavor you want, instead of just going with what you bought. So, taste as you make it and take the time to get it to just right. In this recipe, you also want to pay attention to how much the berries disintegrate, because you can always get them softer, but you can’t go back once they lose their solidity. With any home cooking, it’s important to experiment based on what you (or whoever you’re cooking for!) like, because in your own kitchen, you’re the boss.

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Chicken Recipe with Blackberry Sauce

Author: Cheryl Alters Jamison

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Description

A simple and straightforward but gourmet recipe.

Ingredients

Scale

For the Chicken

6 large boneless skinless individual chicken breasts, pounded ½ to ¾ inch thick
1 tsp freshly milled black pepper
Salt
Vegetable oil spray
Fresh rosemary sprigs, for garnish
Blackberry Sauce (See below)

For the Blackberry Sauce

2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 large shallot, diced
2 cups chicken stock, preferably low-sodium
2 cups blackberries or loganberries, fresh or frozen
1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary or ½ tsp crumbled dried rosemary
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme or ½ tsp dried thyme
Salt
Blackberry, loganberry, or raspberry jelly, jam, or preserves, optional

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Instructions

For the Chicken

Fire up the grill, bringing the temperature to medium (where you can hold your hand comfortably an inch or two about the cooking grate for 4-5 seconds before needing to pull it away).
Pepper the chicken and salt it lightly. Just before grilling, spritz the breasts with the oil.
Grill the chicken uncovered over medium heat for 5-6 minutes per side, until opaque but still juicy. Brush lightly with the sauce when you turn the cooked side of the chicken up, and coat the second side when it comes off the grill. Serve hot with the remaining sauce, garnished with rosemary.

For the Blackberry Sauce

To prepare the sauce, melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the shallot and sauté until soft, about 3 minutes.
Add the stock, berries, rosemary, and thyme, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer until the berries have disintegrated, about 20 additional minutes.
Strain the sauce into a bowl, pressing on the solids to extract from them as much liquid as possible. Return the sauce to the saucepan and season it with salt. If the sauce tastes overly tart, stir in a bit of jelly, if you wish to balance the flavor. Continue cooking the sauce until it has reduced to about 1½ cups. (The sauce can be prepared a day ahead to this point, cooled, and refrigerated covered. Reheat before proceeding.)

Recipe by Cheryl Alters Jamison
Styling by Anna Franklin
Photography by Dave Bryce

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The Origins of the Strawberry

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Kylie Thomas

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June 13, 2024

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A white plate in front of a field of grass holds various strawberries in red and white color.

Next time you bite into a juicy, ripe, red strawberry, spare a thought for the three centuries of history, exploration, and botanical adventure origins that bring this seasonal staple to your table. The story starts in Chile. With espionage.

Where the Strawberry Comes From

As the sun rises on the Chilean Cordillera Nahuelbuta, “the mountain range of the great puma,” songbirds and the crowing of roosters announce the dawn. A field of white strawberries with pale blooms awaits the gold-hued sunlight. Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral marveled at the fragrance of the region’s famed strawberry, white, rather than red, with red achenes or seeds: “A delicate scent flies away shy and pleasant, thin as the breeze, intimate as the breath.” The Chilean countryside is fragrant with this enticing scent during New Year’s celebrations.

It is undoubtedly this same aroma that captivated French explorer Amédée-François Frézier (1682-1773) when he arrived in present-day Conception in the early 1700s. And it’s the first clue that hints at how the white strawberry of Chile, journeyed across oceans and arrived in Europe.

A man picks strawberries in a field in the city where the origins of strawberries began, holding a basket in his other hand.

The Birth of a Berry

Hired to spy on Spanish ports and fortifications on the Chilean coast, the young engineer embodied the spirit of the Enlightenment. Guided by a thirst for knowledge, he was equally engaged in mathematics, art, and botany. In the 18th century, minerals, plants, and animals were of utmost interest to intellectual travelers like Frézier. South America, a region mostly unknown to Europeans, brimmed with possibilities for curious botanists. Frézier and his crew enthusiastically collected, dried, and documented botanical samples to stock the ship’s herbarium. But their hope was to do more than preserve dried samples. There was a constant quest to bring back plants useful for medicine, food, or craft which led to the introduction––and later assimilation––of species from around the world.

Near Concepción, Frézier gathered and chronicled remarkable strawberry plants that grew in the area. One that he described as: “Fragaria chiliensis, fructu maximo, foliis carnosis, hirsutis, vulgo frutilla.” In other words, “Chilean strawberries with large fruits and fleshy and hairy leaves, which are commonly called Frutillas.” In his book, Relation de Voyage, he writes, “They cultivate whole fields of a species of strawberry different from ours … Its fruits are usually as big as a walnut and sometimes as big as a hen’s egg. They are of a whitish red color and a little less delicate to the taste than our wild strawberries.”

A man carries a basket through green strawberry plants in a greenhouse where the origins of the strawberry began.

Bringing the Strawberry to Europe

At the expense of the crew’s freshwater rationing and against the odds, Frézier’s crew arrived in Marseille, France on August 17, 1714, with five plants that miraculously had survived the six-month voyage. Fragaria chiliensis quickly spread throughout the botanical gardens of France, England, and Holland. Unfortunately, they did not produce flowers or fruit until one day, at the westernmost tip of Brittany, France, facing the Atlantic, the Chilean white strawberry happened to be growing in the vicinity of Fragaria virginiana. This small, red, wild variety, grew in abundance in the meadows and forests of North America and was cultivated by Native Americans. Thanks to another explorer, navigator Jacques Cartier, it travelled from Virginia to Europe.

A new hybrid was born. Fragaria ananassa, the pineapple strawberry, boasts the size of the Chilean and the color of a Virginian strawberry. It is the first of the modern strawberry plants, whose red fruits now delight us throughout the world in summer.

A person holds four white strawberries in their hands.

The Continuation of a Strawberry Legacy

To this day, Brittany holds a special place in its heart for strawberries, so much so that it has its own Strawberry Museum in Plougastel-Daoulas. Not surprising, since the mild climate of this peninsula in Brittany makes it ideal for growing strawberries whether in the open ground or in hanging containers. Several varieties are popular including the Ciflorette, Charlotte, Mara des bois, and Gariguette.

Story by Chloé Batissou and Esha Chiocchio
Photography by Esha Chiocchio

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Chef Paul Smith is West Virginia’s First James Beard Award Winner

By

Emma Riva

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June 13, 2024

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Chef Paul Smith holds his James Beard Award — Paul Smith, 1010 Bridge, Charleston, WV

As we spoke on the phone, Chef Paul Smith’s sous chef came up to him and told him he had burned some brussel sprouts. “Just burn them some more and make some ash, we’ll use it on a steak,” Smith said. In our nearly forty minutes of conversation, Smith had touched on the fact that he makes it a priority to use every part of the ingredient. Smith is the real deal, walking the walk as much as he talks the talk at 1010 Bridge and its corresponding sports bar The Pitch in Charleston, WV, and at both the James Beard Awards or in his own kitchen.

This June, Smith was named Best Chef for the Southeast Region at the James Beard Awards in Chicago. He’s the first West Virginia chef to receive a James Beard Award. A banner on 1010 Bridge’s website announces BY GOLLY, He Won!!!!!). The awards ceremony was the first time his sous had flown on a plane. When they returned to the state, a hundred cheering people met them at the airport. “I had a little bit of imposter syndrome,” Smith remembered. “Being small-town, being from West Virginia, I wanted to make sure I represented West Virginia well. Other chefs are representing cities, I feel like I was representing my whole state.”

“We’ve never met a stranger.”

Smith has a star-studded work history as the Valedictorian of the Culinary Institute of America’s Greystone campus in Napa Valley and world-renowned hospitality venues like Biltmore Estates in Asheville, NC and the Windsor Club in Vero Beach, FL. But West Virginia is home to him, and after a whirlwind weekend he was right back in the kitchen. “I got back to town at 1:30, I was back in the restaurant by 1:35,” he said.

While in Chicago, he dined and his team dined at Alinea, where the chef gave them a personal welcome and one sommelier even noted that his father was a restauranteur in Morgantown. “He said ‘My dad’s from Morgantown and told me West Virginia loves Chef Paul, so you better treat him well,’” Smith recalled. “At 1010 Bridge, we want to emulate that level of hospitality. We want everyone who walks in to feel like the only person that matters in our restaurant. We’ve never met a stranger.”

“We’re at the starting line, not the finish.'”

The hospitality also extends inward to a close professional relationship among the restaurant’s team, a relationship Smith sees as of the utmost importance. “I’m conscious of how people treat my staff—we’re stewards of service, not servants,” he said. He’s only had to step into a situation like that once, though. Given the fanfare over his win, it’s clear how much guests appreciate his ability to go the extra mile. “One of my bartenders told me that ‘we’re at the starting line, not the finish, right now.’ And what comes next isn’t for the James Beard Awards, but for our guests.”

That attitude is built into his understanding of Appalachian culture, what he calls “innate Appalachian hospitality.” In his culinary training, Smith focused on Appalachian food history and the gatherings. Charleston was originally a salt mine town connected to Cincinnati’s meatpacking industry in the days when the Cincinnati was called “Porkopolis” for its dominance of the market. Though that industry eventually moved to Chicago, the J.Q. Dickinson Saltworks recently re-tapped its family well and is now offering excellent locally made salts again.

The coal boom, the next industry to take over Charleston, was the height of the pepperoni roll, which Smith’s grandfather brought with him as lunch to work in the coal mines. Though 1010 Bridge isn’t doing a fine-dining spin on a pepperoni roll, it carries with it the same spirit of ingenuity, grit, and gratitude for small things in life.

“People really needed to slow down.”

Smith poured over photos of towns like Thurmond, WV and Lost Creek at the height of that boom. The rail industry’s presence in the region meant access to new dishes. B&L Railroads shipped oysters in from the Chesapeake Bay. “Things became accessible because of the railroads,” Smith said. “In the photos I looked at i saw when the oysters would come in how excited people got. Everyone was eating fried oyster and oyster soup during the fall months.” He observed something in his research he wanted to bring into modern day dining: An appreciation for what you have that makes you slow down. “I saw around me that people really needed to slow down. Now, you can get oysters the next day if you want them. Some of the specialness of the meal is lost,” he noted.

The interest in oysters shows up on the menu in the form of Smith’s Fried “Nashville Hot” oysters with toasted brioche, horseradish bread & butter pickles, and ramp-buttermilk. “I like to create a dish’s texture and flavor, but more than anything, I want to create the experience.” The dishes that most allow him to do that are often the ones that come from local history.

“I’m interested in what the cooks and the farmers ate, because those can showcase your talents more.” When you’re doing what you have to do to get by, it forces you to think on your feet and be inventive with your cooking. He grew up understanding the importance of using what you had because you had to. That meant using shoulder, loin, or shank of a meat, or short ribs, and growing your own food. “I have the choice now not to do those things. I can make a filet. But I don’t want that on the menu.”

“I’m just so happy to be giving West Virginia something to cheer for.”

When Anthony Bourdain visited West Virginia for Parts Unknown, he remarked that people know the state best for what’s been taken from it. Steel, coal, natural resources. “Now, hopefully people can come to West Virginia and take back memories and experiences,” Paul said. “I always hear people say they’ve driven through West Virginia, and I’m hoping that in the future, they know they have a reason to stop. I’m just so happy to be giving West Virginia something to cheer for.” Instead of what you can take from it, maybe it’s time to focus on what West Virginia can give.

Story by Emma Riva / Photo courtesy of the James Beard Foundation

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Simple Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread

By

Emma Riva

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June 12, 2024

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This Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread recipe is a fun way to add some vegetables into your dessert. The recipe is especially great for veggie-resistant kids. After this bread is baked, give a slice to your child and watch them indulge in the deliciousness with no clue about the nutritious ingredients inside. Summer is zucchini season, and if you’re not feeling the zucchini noodle craze, zucchini bread is a good way to use this savory vegetable. We’ve used espresso powder and a heaping helping of semi-sweet chocolate chips for beaucoup flavor.

How to Shred Zucchini

You don’t want to end up with clumps of zucchini mush in your zucchini bread batter, but you also don’t want it to totally purée: part of this recipe’s texture comes from the thickness of the batter. We grate by hand, the old fashioned way! You can use a food processor or a blender, but the aggressiveness of the blades takes away from the zucchini’s flavor. Plus, a box grater will preserve its integrity. Just make sure you’ve washed it first and cut off the ends to grate it most effectively.

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