“What is that delicious smell?”

Chelsea and I recently returned from a weekend of giving food demos for the Natural MarketPlace Expo in Las Vegas, and we couldn’t even begin to prepare food for the demos without someone following his nose to our booth to ask us that question.  The expo is a large natural foods show, and we’re honored that New Hope Media hired us to head out there.

(If you’d like to see photos of our Las Vegas trip, check out our Facebook page. )

It was tons of fun.   All of our demos were based on our What’s for Dinner? Kitchen Boot Camp featuring recipes that can easily be doubled or tripled and then used as a base for a wide variety of dishes.  While all the recipes were popular, there was a clear winner in the “most delicious smell” category:  chicken marinated in roasted garlic dressing and pan-fried.   We had to turn disappointed people away, telling them we were not selling the chicken for lunch.

So we thought you’d enjoy this recipe too. This highlights an important tip to save cooking time and money that we like to share in our boot camp: Dressings Equal Marinades.

This recipe is delicious on all the wonderful greens that are available at the moment.  But it’s also, as we found out, irresistible as a marinade and sauce for chicken.

Roasted Garlic Dressing

Makes about 1.5 cups.  Adapted from the wonderful book Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home

1 head garlic (about 12 cloves)
1 cup cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1/3 cup water
1 tsp unrefined sea salt
1 tbs Dijon mustard

1. Roast the garlic: During the summer you don’t want to turn your oven on just to roast one head of garlic. Here’s a stove top method instead:  Separate the cloves with paper still on. Heat in a dry cast iron or other heavy skillet over medium heat until browning and soft.  Turn at least once.  You’ll smell them and they will be soft when they are done.  Or, if you love the oven or are using it anyway, put the whole, unpeeled head in an oven at 400˚ for 15 minutes.   Cool.

Tip: you can roast extra garlic and keep it in olive oil. You’ll have roasted garlic on hand, and a deliciously scented oil too.

2. Blend the rest of the ingredients with the garlic: Puree the garlic with remaining ingredients until smooth.  This dressing will keep covered in the refrigerator for several weeks.

Now enter Susanna’s Most Favorite Kitchen Tool Ever. (Well, besides the basic knife and cutting board.) The immersion blender.  If you have a regular blender that’s fine, use it.  But I don’t like doing extra dishes. And when I’m making soup, I’d rather not pour hot liquid into a blender and then risk having it explode out of the blender all over me and the kitchen.   The immersion blender lets you blend your dressing right in the jar in which you’ll store it or your soup in the pot in which you’ve made it.

Tip: If you’re making dressing/ marinade that doesn’t need pureeing, for just one meal go ahead and whisk it in the bottom of your salad bowl. Then toss in your salad.  Less dishes!  Or, to make dressing to have on hand, put all your ingredients in a bottle and shake away. This is Jamie Oliver and my boyfriend’s favorite jar dressing method (he loves that he came up with it independently of Jamie).

Roasted Garlic Chicken

For our demo, we used this chicken to top a pasta with homemade white cheddar sauce and basil.  Here’s what we did:

1/2 recipe of Roasted Garlic Dressing
1 lb chicken breast, cut into smaller pieces
extra virgin olive oil

Marinate chicken for at least 30 minutes up to overnight covered in the dressing and refrigerated.

Heat a large, heavy bottomed uncoated (not non-stick) skillet over medium high heat, until oil shimmers.  Place chicken pieces in pot, being mindful of splattering oil. Do not over-crowd pan- give each piece a little space.  Cook until browned on the bottom and starting to cook through to the middle (you’ll see the flesh turning white).  Flip your pieces and cook on the other side.  If your pieces are small, this should take just a few minutes per side.

Sprinkle with a little more sea salt and enjoy!

Variations:

Seafood- This marinade could be used on seafood too, but only let it sit in the dressing for up to 30 minutes. Seafood is more delicate and suseptible to ‘cooking’ by the acid in the dressing

Tofu/tempeh- Slice or cube, cover in marinade and let sit as long as you want, then pan fry searing as above. Or, marinate the tofu in a baking dish and then pop it in a 400 degree oven until browned.

Seasonal idea for garlic lovers:

The first full heads of garlic were at the Boulder farmers’ market this week, but garlic scapes are abounding as well (removing them actually helps the garlic bulb left in the ground grow larger).

For a fresh, spicy version of this dressing try using 1 or 2 garlic scapes, sliced thin, in place of the roasted garlic.  Blend, or not. Use garlic scapes instead of garlic cloves in your recipes- they’ve got the same garlicky kick. They’re also beautiful garnishes.