Chicken with Nuts and Raisins (BRW)

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 1 chicken, 3 to 4 pounds, cut into serving pieces, or 2 1/2 to 3 pounds chicken parts, trimmed of excess fat [chicken thighs obvs]
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled and lightly smashed
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 1 cup walnuts or hazelnuts, roughly chopped [walnuts pulsed in the food processor]
• 1 cup raisins or currants [currants are more interesting]
• Fresh lemon juice to taste [high-enough-quality bottled stuff is the way I usually go]

Brown chicken over medium high heat.  Halfway through this process, add the garlic.

Mise en place.

Cook onions until softened and they begin to color.  The garlic is really gone by this time, charred and black.

Add the wine and let it bubble away for a minute or so.

Add the nuts and currants.  Return the chicken, skin-side up, cover, and cook over low until chicken is done, 10-15 minutes.

Adjust seasoning with lemon juice, salt, and pepper as necessary.

Apparently this dish is made anywhere nuts and raisins are grown in this world.  And with good reason.
As with the last dish, this one is very straightforward in terms of ingredients.  Served over brown rice, it is quite satisfying.

Ma-Ma's Pasta "Milanese" (FM)

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 green bell pepper, chopped
• 2 celery stalks, chopped
• Salt and black pepper
• 2 tablespoons minced garlic
• Two 3.75-ounce cans sardines, preferably packed in olive oil
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 1 cup red wine or water, or more as needed [What did I use?  Oh yeah, oxidized Malbec that I opened at least a week and a half before for the escabeche.]
• One 28- or 35-ounce can chopped or whole tomatoes; include their juice
• 1 small cauliflower, cored and roughly chopped [I preferred to cut them into florets.]
• 1/2 cup raisins or currants [The currants I had for this blog's very first entry over a year ago had expired.  Raisins are a food-stuff that should be ubiquitous I guess in a kitchen but still somehow lack, like ketchup.  In any case, I wound up using blueberries.  Yes, they are a dried berry; nope, they don't really serve the right function.]
• 1/2 cup chopped pecans or walnuts
• 8 ounces any pasta, preferably whole wheat [Hahaha.  I rarely cook recipes involving pasta.  I'm not going to waste my time with edible cardboard.]

Mise en place.

Cook onion, bell pepper, and celery until everything is soft and the onion becomes translucent.

Stir in garlic, sardines with their ooil, and tomato paste until mixture is fragrant and starts to stick to the bottom.

Stir in wine and scrape up bits from bottom of pan.  Add tomatoes and cauliflower and cook until cauliflower is extremely tender.

Stir in fruit and nuts.

The dish was pretty awesome.  I might do it again since it was quite good, but who knows.
I apologize for the fact that I can't be any more detailed about my reaction to the dish since I'm pretty slow at blogging now, but I totally dug the combination of garlic, sardines, tomatoes, and celery.  Maybe I'll even have the proper dried fruit for next time.

I should cook more pasta dishes.