Food & Wine (June 2015)
Are we being Inception-ed by Food & Wine?
Leafing through their June issue, we stopped dead in our tracks when we spotted this Grilled Chicken Thigh and Cucumber Salad. It's like the summer dish of our dreams: crispy grilled chicken, tossed with lots of raw vegetables and herbs in a big, messy, delicious pile.
It's as if Food & Wine is making our dreams come true.
We wasted no time in seeing if the reality of this dish matched up to our fantasies.
The beautiful thing here is that you grill the chicken thighs, but everything else is raw. Given how hot it gets in our little kitchen in the summer, that's ideal for us. Sure, there's lots of prep to be done -- cucumbers to be sliced, garlic to be minced, herbs to be chopped -- but it all comes together quickly. Once the vegetables are prepped and the grill is hot, the chicken cooks in just a few minutes, since you've already pounded it very thinly.
Our only quibble with this dish is that our chicken never really crisped up at all. The recipe tells you to "turn the chicken skin side down once more and grill until the skin is crispy." We gave it more time than called for in the recipe, but we never got a texture even approaching crispiness, and we feared overcooking the meat. The chicken was still delicious, it just wasn't crispy.
This Grilled Chicken Thigh and Cucumber Salad is just the kind of thing we love in the summer: a beautiful dish with big flavors that doesn't require a lot of time spent cooking.
Dreams do come true.
Grilled Chicken Thigh and Cucumber Salad
Food & Wine (June 2015), recipe by Michael Symon
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(This photo: Con Poulos/Food & Wine)
Total time: 30 mins
Servings: 4
INGREDIENTS
6 skin-on, boneless chicken thighs (2 pounds), pounded 1/2 inch thick
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt
Pepper
3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon minced shallot
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 English cucumber, thinly sliced
1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion
1 small Fresno or red jalapeño chile, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons chopped mint, plus whole leaves for garnish
3 tablespoons chopped roasted unsalted almonds
DIRECTIONS
Light a grill. Rub the chicken thighs with 2 tablespoons of the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Arrange the chicken skin side down on the grill and top with a sheet of foil and a weighted heavy baking sheet. Grill the chicken over moderate heat until the skin is golden brown, about 5 minutes. Turn the chicken skin side up, top with the foil and weighted baking sheet and grill for 3 minutes longer. Remove the baking sheet. Turn the chicken skin side down once more and grill until the skin is crispy and the chicken is cooked through, about 2 minutes longer. Transfer the chicken to plates.
Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine the vinegar with the shallot and garlic and gradually whisk in the remaining 1/4 cup of olive oil until well blended. Add the cucumber, onion, chile and chopped mint and season with salt and pepper. Toss to coat.
Slice the chicken; toss with the cucumber salad. Garnish with the nuts and mint leaves.
