Chicken is not usually the first choice for grilling at my house.  We’ve eaten far too many dull, dry chicken breasts over the years.

Yet a whole chicken was one of the best things we grilled this year.  It was rich, juicy and intensely flavored.

The secret is the classic Italian method of cooking chicken under a brick— or al mattone.  The skin gets incredibly crisp and the meat stays moist.  Add a lively rub of garlic and rosemary and it’s irresistible.

I like to serve it on a bed of peppery arugula. The warm juices from the chicken make an ideal dressing.

If grilling season is winding down now where you live, you owe it to yourself to try this technique before packing the grill away for the winter.  You’ll never think of chicken the same way again.

This isn’t one of the fiddly dishes that require a lot of new ingredients or special equipment.  It helps to have a sturdy pair of poultry shears to butterfly the chicken but you can use a large chef’s knife for that chore if you’re careful.

The bricks for which the recipe is named are just inexpensive construction materials wrapped in foil.  We cleaned up and wrapped a rectangular concrete stepping stone we already had, instead, and it works just fine.  A heavy skillet weighted with a couple of cans is an alternative.

Although it’s fun to pound the rub in a mortar and pestle, a blender or food processor will do the job.

Because the bird is butterflied first, it needs less time on the grill, which helps preserve its natural juices.  The bricks, which are preheated, also speed things up by ensuring the maximum surface of the chicken is exposed to the heat and the meat cooks uniformly.  No more undercooked thighs or sawdust dry breasts.

Chicken this good is making us reconsider our old prejudices.

A perfectly roasted chicken is among the most satisfying of foods, the golden skin crisp and crackling, the flesh tender and moist.  It’s basically a simple dish yet it intimidates far too many cooks.

I was reminded of this fact on a recent getaway with two of my best friends to a house overlooking the harbor at Bodega Bay.  We had stopped at a nearby fish market on our way to the house in search of seafood for that night’s dinner. But the deliveries from the local boats hadn’t arrived.  So we went to the little market across the road and a whole bird beckoned from the cold case.

“Let’s roast a chicken,” I suggested.  My friends looked skeptical.  We were here for day of hiking, watching whales, reading books and lazing around the glass-enclosed deck.  We wanted to eat well but fussing with dinner was not on the agenda.

“It’ll be fine,” I promised.  “We’ll do it Thomas Keller’s way.  It’s simple and it always works great.”   My friends still looked doubtful but the shopkeeper wrapped the chicken in butcher paper and we were on our way.

That evening in the kitchen, we talked cooking.  One friend always roasts her chickens in a venerable clay pot.  The other follows James Beards’ lead and  both covers the breast with bacon and bastes with melted butter.  We knew cooks who always brined their chickens before roasting and those who stuffed a mixture of herbs and softened butter under the skin.

For all his fame as the chef and owner of some of the most revered restaurants in the world, Thomas Keller does none of that for his favorite simple roast chicken as described in “Bouchon” (Artisan, 2004).  He starts, as we did, with a very good farm-raised chicken, dries it well, sprinkles it with kosher salt and roasts it at 450 degrees for 50 minutes to an hour. Only when the chicken comes out of the oven does he baste it with the pan juices before letting it rest for 15 minutes.

Keller does not fuss.  He doesn’t even baste.  And the chicken is perfect every time.

We ate well that evening.  My one variation was to stuff the chicken’s cavity with rosemary and cut-up lemons before roasting.  When it came out of the oven, I squeezed the lemon juice over the bird after spooning  juices over the skin.

There was only one hitch.  All three of us wanted the thighs and no one was that interested in the breast, juicy as it was.  We came up with an equitable split of the dark meat and the breast meat went into a salad the next day.

When I got home, I decided to see if I could get such good results with just parts — primarily thighs, of course.  They were terrific, too, and much more practical for my small family.  We just roast the parts we prefer.

Not only is chicken prepared this way flavorful and moist right out of the oven, it’s great as leftovers the next day, served cold or at room temperature.  This summer I may just ditch the fried chicken in favor of roasted parts for Sunday lunch or a picnic at the beach.

Whether you’ve been hiking in the woods or just sprawled on the couch watching the big game, a hot bowl of chili is always welcome on a crisp winter day.  If it’s spent all day bubbling away in a slow cooker while you were playing, all the better.

In preparation for Super Bowl Sunday, I’ve been working on a slow cooker chili recipe for the last couple of  weeks.  We’ve eaten more chili than I would recommend, but the end result is a deeply flavorful stew of home-cooked beans, lively spice and savory turkey.  It’s hearty enough to satisfy the most devoted chili head, yet still low in fat if you don’t pile on the condiments.

I realize there are plenty of chili recipes in circulation already that can be thrown together and left to simmer for hours in a slow cooker.  Most are pretty basic, though, and I wanted a chili that tasted like I had tended it all day.  To pump up the flavor, I use pure ground chile, cumin, coriander, Mexican oregano and a pinch of cinnamon along with a touch of cocoa at the end.  Inexpensive turkey legs and thighs take the place of the usual ground meat.

Beans add nutrition, fiber and lovely background for the vibrant spices.  Although you could use canned beans instead, I don’t like their spongy texture or salty flavor. I cook my own the day before and freeze the leftovers for a later meal.

Since the chili must cook for 8-10 hours, you may want to assemble the ingredients in the crock insert the night before and chill the whole thing in the fridge.  The next morning, pop it in the cooker and turn it on.  The chili will only take about half an hour longer to cook and you’ll be free for the day.

Although I find the slow cooker useful, I don’t use it all the time.  So I had a couple of things to learn during the course of developing this recipe.

Number one:  Don’t expect a 4-quart cooker to brew up a big batch of chili.  By the time I had added all the ingredients I thought I needed for this recipe, my old cooker was almost overflowing and the turkey took far longer than expected to cook through.  If I had read the instruction book, I would have known you shouldn’t fill the crock more than 3/4 full.

I went shopping for a new cooker.  The one I bought, the 6 1/2-quart Crock Pot Touch Screen model, received top marks from Cook’s Illustrated and I was impressed with how much better it performed.  The temperature stayed steady at about 200 degrees once the cooker brought the chili up to “low.”  Although it’s significantly more expensive than many cookers on the market, I liked the fact that you can program it to cook for up to 20 hours on high.  When the cooking time is up, it automatically shifts to the warm setting for up to six hours.

Number two: Watch your liquids.  Because a slow cooker is a closed environment, liquid does not evaporate during the course of cooking.  In fact, more liquid is drawn out of the vegetables and meats.  That makes a tasty broth, but not if you’ve added too much liquid in the first place.  My second batch was watery and dull because I didn’t drain the beans or tomatoes at the beginning.

The third try was the charm.  This chili was thick and meaty, sweet with tomatoes and ripe peppers and spiced with enough ground chile to tickle the tongue without searing the palate.  Add more chile if you crave heat.

Flu and cold season already has arrived at my house.  After being laid up on the couch all weekend with a scratchy throat, aching head and the sniffles, all I wanted was a hot bowl of chicken soup.

Nothing out of a can or a box would do, and I wasn’t interested in anything from the takeout counter.  I wanted homemade soup and it was up to me to make it.

Truth be told, it’s so easy I can’t imagine why anyone would buy chicken soup.  Even someone as unsteady and fuzzy-brained as I was can make her own as long as there are a few staples in the pantry, some basic veggies in the fridge and chicken parts in the freezer.

If you have a food processor, you don’t even have to chop anything.

Everyone knows chicken soup is good for you.  Scientists have studied it and doctors recommend it. Invalids crave it.  But it really needs to be homemade if you’re to get the anti-inflammatory effect found by University of Nebraska researchers in 2000.  And it needs plenty of vegetables.

I decided to pump up the nutrition by throwing in a handful of garlic and a bunch of dark leafy greens.  Garlic strengthens the body’s immune system and the greens are packed with anti-oxidants.   Not incidentally, they tasted great.

I wish I could say I had homemade stock waiting in the freezer.  Instead, I had a box of commercial stock in the pantry, which I used to boost flavor.  Chicken soup can be pretty pallid if you just use a few chicken parts—thighs in this case—and water.  The packaged stock gives you a head start and cuts the cooking time.  Just be sure to get a low sodium brand.

Everything gets thrown into the pot and is allowed to simmer until the flavors blossom and meld.  If you feel up to it, you can pull the chicken out, remove the skin and tear the meat into shreds.  Otherwise, give your fellow diners knives and forks to cut the poultry up themselves.

Emergency preparedness experts advise us all to maintain a stockpile of food and water in case of disaster.  To their list, I’d add the makings for chicken soup.

I’ve been obsessed by chicken wings all summer.  No, not the pepper sauce-drenched Buffalo-style wings offered by bars, franchise restaurants and fast food chains everywhere.  The wings of my dreams are served only  at the celebrated Pok Pok/Whiskey Soda Lounge  in Portland, Oregon.

Ike’s Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings are like nothing I’ve ever eaten before — savory, salty, sweet, sticky and totally addictive.  From the moment I first tasted them in June, I knew I would have to find a way to make something similar at home.   I just can’t be flying off to Portland whenever I get the craving, after all.

Pok Pok is an eccentric, crowded and insanely popular restaurant serving Thai street food in a hip Southeast Portland neighborhood.  The wings, though, are Vietnamese through and through.  They’re based on a recipe from the homeland of the eponymous Ike, the daytime grill cook.

The restaurant’s menu describes the wings as being marinated in fish sauce and palm sugar, deep-fried and tossed in caramelized fish sauce and garlic before serving.  It specifies Phu Quoc fish sauce from the island of the same name in Vietnam.

Sounds simple.  But of course it never is. The elusive balance of flavors is critical in the most basic dishes.  So I went looking for some hints.

Food & Wine Magazine, which named the wings to its Top 10 Restaurant Dishes of 2007, offered a recipe that called for superfine sugar and that just seemed wrong.  Palm sugar is not that hard to find in natural foods stores anymore.  One Chow.com member from Vermont even proposed a recipe using maple syrup and butter — imaginative, yes, but not even remotely Asian, much less Vietnamese.

On my first attempt, I tried the magazine recipe, substituting palm sugar for the superfine and using some Thai Kitchen fish sauce I had on hand.  It was OK but didn’t come close to the real thing.  The fish sauce was too strong and the dish was missing the lilt of the original.  Plus frying, although authentic, is not really my forte.  I never use enough oil and I hate the cleanup afterward.

Several tries later, I’ve come up with a recipe that comes a lot closer to Ike’s and uses a cooking style I prefer.  Switching to the very good Viet Huong brand fish sauce, also known as Three Crabs, made all the difference.  It’s delicate and far more complex than the Thai Kitchen, although it’s a product of Thailand, too.  Vietnamese cooking authority Andrea Nguyen gives it her stamp of approval.  I also added a couple of tablespoons of lime juice to give the sauce the zing I felt was missing in the magazine recipe.

To cook the wings, I turned to the grill.  It doesn’t deliver the crisp character of frying, but the slight smokiness is a pleasant addition and I don’t have to mess with all that hot oil.  I like to think that it’s in the spirit of Pok Pok, where the aroma of grilling meat and poultry wafts through the helter-skelter arrangement of dining areas.

These wings may not be Ike’s but they’re unforgettable, nonetheless.

I can’t cook without lemons in the kitchen. A shot of fresh juice or dusting of lively zest is often just what a recipe needs to sharpen flavors and make a dish memorable.

Thick-skinned Eurekas from the grocery store will do, but the fragrant Meyer lemons more commonly grown in backyards are my favorites. Strictly speaking, they’re not lemons at all, but a cross between a sweet orange and a lemon, bringing the best of both citrus fruits to the table. The juice is a little softer and the aroma more intoxicating than ordinary lemons.

So, when my friend Sheila generously offered me a bag of Meyers from her hyperproductive tree, I leaped at the opportunity. I wasn’t counting on such a large bag, though, and when I got it home I began to worry that some would rot before I could use them all. My freezer was already stocked with lemon juice. There was lemon marmalade in the pantry and limoncello in the fridge. What should I do with the unexpected bounty?

Why, preserve them Moroccan-style in salt and their own juice, of course. Although preserved lemons take three or four weeks to mature, they’ll last a year in the refrigerator. Over time the bright flavors soften and mellow, developing deep and savory undertones.

Preserved lemons and olives do wonderful things for chicken in a the classic Moroccan tagine, or stew. It’s an amazing dish guaranteed to impress dinner guests. Deceptively quick and simple to prepare, it tastes as if you’d been cooking all day.

Salted lemons also work their magic in dishes as diverse as a lamb tagine with artichokes, a spinach salad, a simple vinaigrette, or a bowl of French lentils.

There’s only one drawback: You need to plan ahead. Unless you have a good Middle Eastern grocer nearby, you can’t just run out and buy preserved lemons when you get a hunger for an exotic tagine or salad. They’re available to order on the Internet now, but that takes time, too.

You can speed things up a little with a quick brine that produces a decent pickled lemon in just five days. I’ve had good success with the technique outlined in Paula Wolfert’s seminal cookbook, “Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco” (Harper, 1973).

Essentially, you make eight very shallow vertical cuts with a thin, sharp knife in each lemon, being careful not to cut into the pulp. Boil the lemons, covered with very salty water (about 1 tablespoon per lemon), in a stainless steel saucepan until very soft — at least 30 minutes. Then pack in a clean jar, cover with cooled cooking liquid and leave to pickle for five days before using.

The best results, though, take more time. You can preserve as many or as few lemons as you wish and you’ll want to use organic or, at the very least, unsprayed fruit since you’ll be eating the peel. In any case, scrub the peel well with a stiff brush before cutting and packing with salt. The jar should be sterile and the salt should be pure, either Kosher or sea salt.

Many Moroccan cookbooks have instructions for the longer term method. I like Kitty Morse’s technique in “Couscous” (Chronicle Books, 2000) because the lemons look prettier in the jar:

Scrub and rinse the lemons. Slice each one vertically almost in half, stopping a quarter of the way from the bottom. Then flip the lemon over, rotate it 90 degrees and slice it almost in half again. You’ll have two opposing deep cuts but the lemon will remain intact.

Pack the cut surfaces with as much salt as they will hold and tuck each lemon tightly into the clean jar. Seal the jar. The lemons will begin releasing their juices almost immediately, creating a salty pickling brine.

Open the jar after three or four days, press the lemons down with a wooden sp0on and add more lemon juice if necessary to cover the peels entirely. Close the jar and leave in a cool place for at least a month to allow the rinds to soften completely.

Use the preserved lemons as desired. Don’t worry if a little harmless white mold develops on a lemon. Just wash it off or cut it away before using the rind.

Now you’re ready to make the Moroccan chicken tagine from Claudia Roden’s “Arabesque” (Knopf, 2005). It’s worth the wait.

Every home cook needs a foolproof dish to pull out of the hat for an almost effortless dinner when life spins out of control. That was the premise of a chain letter I found in my inbox recently. Although I usually resist getting caught up in this sort of thing, the request came from a good friend, who argued that everyone needs more ideas for easy meals.

I sent off this recipe for deviled chicken thighs that has become a staple at our house and eagerly waited for other people’s ideas to flow into my email. Only a handful of the 36 I was promised ever showed up. And only a couple of those matched my personal interest in food made with mostly fresh ingredients. I know I’m a bit of a food snob, but I don’t like to cook with a lot of processed food.

The prospect of coming up with 20 people to pass the note to must have been as daunting to my friends as it was to me. Some of my victims begged off. Others must have dropped the ball or their recipients broke the chain. It’s understandable: Getting dinner on the table is hard enough for most people, much less coming up with a recipe for a stranger.

So I thought I’d ask my blog buddies here to talk about what they eat when time is short and the pantry is all but bare. What’s your go-to dinner for crazy school nights, the dish you can make without any thought? It doesn’t have to be a full-blown recipe. Just a rough blueprint will do.

As for me, I don’t remember where my family first came up with this chicken dish. It must have been when my mother was cooking a lot of oven-fried chicken in the interest of my dad’s diet. Bread crumbs gave the poultry plenty of crunch without adding extra fat. My husband and I introduced zippy Dijon mustard to bump up the flavor.

At first we used boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but they’re usually so boring and bland, we switched our allegiance to thighs. We also employ the same technique for pork chops and sometimes for fish.

Recently, I noticed that Suzanne Goin has a similar treatment of chicken thighs in her inspiring cookbook, “Sunday Suppers at Lucques” (Knopf, 2005), and she credits Julia Child. Of course she marinates her chicken overnight, sautes her breadcrumbs in butter first, and serves the thighs on a bed of braised leeks. They’re wonderful, I’m sure, but they’re not what’s called for when there are too many commitments and too little time.

My version is simple but tasty and the chicken always comes out juicy and moist with a crisp exterior. You can’t ask for much more when you’re in a rush.

Steam a vegetable, in this case purple cauliflower. (Who knew it would be so colorful when cooked? I thought it was supposed to turn green.) Throw some baby greens in a salad bowl. And dinner is ready .

What’s your quick dinner secret?