I love thighs. Let’s face it people, thighs are lovely. Whether you’re talking about a piece of chicken, or the female anatomy, thighs are the best.They’re soft. Kinda sexy. Juicy.Chicken breasts? They tend to dry out when you’re cooking them. They’re really good for some things, like cutlets and Milanese and chicken piccata, but in general, I prefer chicken thighs.I also love pesto. I got a little sick of it when my dad--we called him Paps--made so much pesto we were using it on our cornflakes in the morning. But after I got over my overdose of pesto, I started really enjoying it.Pesto is so good for so many things. You can put it on a piece of salmon, you can put a dollop in soup, you can put a tablespoon or two in an omelette. You can use it as a hair gel! Pesto is the best-o.So, I thought I would combine my two loves, pesto and chicken thighs, so I came up with…Pesto chicken thighs! I put the “J” back in genius with this recipe.Some say a thigh is just a thigh, but these pesto chicken thighs are special, delizioso. And quick. And healthy.So let’s dig right in and start cooking. You know, Slim People, sometimes cooking doesn’t have to be all complicated and time-consuming.Sometimes it’s easy. Like this recipe…INGREDIENTS4 chicken thighs, boneless, about a poundOlive oil (a couple tablespoons or so)Salt and fresh-cracked black pepper4 tablespoons of pesto sauce (I make my own, it’s in the Slim Man Cooks cookbook, it’s quick!)
A couple tablespoons of toasted pine nuts (toasted in a dry pan, medium heat, until golden)Here we go!OK, pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees.Take your thighs and rinse them in cold water. Do the same with the chicken thighs. Notice the difference.Pat the chicken thighs with paper towels.Trim off any funkiness, any fat, any leftover bone splinters and such.Put the chicken thighs in a baking dish.Drizzle with some olive oil.Make sure they’re all coated, rub your thighs!Add some salt and fresh-cracked black pepper.Make sure every thigh gets some love.Put the top side of the thighs on the bottom of the baking dish.Put the thighs in the oven for 20 minutes.Take them out, turn them over, and bake for another 10 minutes.When the thighs have come to about 165 degrees (I use a meat thermometer, not the one I use for the dogs) they are done.Take them out of the oven, and turn the oven to broil.Smear about a tablespoon of pesto on top of each chicken thigh. Be smoov!Put them under the broiler for about a minute or two, until the pesto is golden brown.Take them out of the oven, sprinkle with some toasted pine nuts.Put them on a platter, garnish with a sprig of basil, serve with a hunk of crusty bread, or my tomato salad, or both, and…
MANGIAMO!
Slim Man Cooks Roasted Potatoes with Rosemary and Garlic
I got a call from Joyce. I was in Nashville, Tennessee. Music City USA. She was in Austin, Texas. She asked me if I could be an extra on the TV show ‘Nashville’. They had seen my photos online. I told her I’d think about it.I’d been an extra before on a Hugh Grant/Drew Barrymore movie in Manhattan, and it was quite an experience—a lot of waiting around, a lot of shooting the same scene a million times—but not something I felt like doing again. Not for $84, which is what I got paid for that 12 hour day.But Joyce kept calling me. She called and told me the director liked my look. She called and told me the shoot wasn't far from the Slim Shack. She called me so often, I felt like I was married. I finally told her I’d do the show. Joyce made me feel special. Plus, maybe the director would see me and cast me in a starring role in an upcoming episode...'Guinea Guy meets Cowgirl', or 'Mob Guy takes over Country Music Biz.' Could happen...Joyce sent me an email telling me to dress like I was going to the Grammys. The scene we were shooting was going to be a Country Music Awards show, and they wanted us dressed in evening clothes.The next morning, I drove from the Slim Shack in the Green Hills section of Nashville to the Tennessee Titans football stadium, which is downtown by the Cumberland River. I checked in to the extras 'holding' area, which was on the club level of the stadium. There were a couple hundred people there…So much for feeling special.The women extras were dressed in cocktail gowns and high heels and up-dos, and they looked great. Lovely. I’ve said this once, and I’ll say it again…in the history of the world, Lady Peoples have never looked better than they do today…the hair, the skin, the nails, the…everything.It was early in the morning. The gals, the guys...everybody was dressed in evening wear. Everyone except me. I wore a military jacket. It kinda looked like evening wear....if you were an officer in the Russian army at a ballroom dance in the 1800s.They put out a breakfast buffet, and after about an hour, we well-dressed extras--men and women--left the stadium, got on a big old school bus, and headed to the General Jackson, an old steamboat docked on the Cumberland River, next to the stadium.We boarded the steamboat, and went into the concert area--a ballroom on the first level that was decked out with a big raised stage. Tall cocktail tables were scattered around, and there was a second-floor balcony overlooking the whole scene.
The assistant director stood up, got everybody’s attention, and then described the scene we were about to shoot. An older female country singer, Rayna James, and her young rival, Juliette, are nominated for the same country music award—Female Vocalist of the Year. Juliette—played by Hayden Panettiere—shows up on the steamboat drunk, and does her new song on stage, all liquored up.That was the scene. We extras were the audience members, and we were directed to be puzzled by Hayden's drunken stumblings. The cameras started rolling…Action!Hayden/Juliette came out and sang her song. I’ll admit this—it was a really good song. I liked it.But I didn't like it so much after hearing it for five hours straight. They shot the scene over and over again. Every time they changed an angle, they'd have to re-position the lights. Re-position the cameras. And then everybody--extras and actors--would have to go back to the exact same spots, and do the exact same thing. They did a bunch of takes--five hours worth. Then Director Dude told us to take a break. We went up to a room on the third floor of the boat, where they had a folding table laid out with…Two big tubs of Costco peanut butter and jelly, loaves of bread, Tootsie Pops, and Goldfish crackers.It was a nice lunch--if you were in kindergarden. After about an hour, we went back down to the concert area and shot the same scene…over and over again. After about five more hours—at around 10 PM--we broke for dinner.We went back to the Titans stadium to the club level, and they had a big spread of food—lasagna, salad, fish, desserts. It wasn’t so bad. Better than PBJ…
After dinner, it was back to the boat. We waited and waited in an empty banquet hall. After a few hours, the assistant director walked in, and started looking over the extras. Then he looked at me and pointed his finger. I went over to where he was standing. He said…“We need a guy to play a slick record executive type, an older guy. Are you interested?”When he said “older guy” I felt like arm-wrestling the young whippersnapper to the ground and kicking his ass. But I just said “yes”.He walked me upstairs to where they were shooting the scene. It was being shot on the open-air top deck, which was spiffed up with lights and flowers and had a lovely view of downtown Nashville. It was freezing. I stood in a small group of people, and the prop guy handed me a glass of champagne…Joy. Except it wasn’t champagne, it was ginger ale. The director came over and told me what the scene was…one of the stars of the show, Scarlett, was coming over to talk to this small group of four folks, and I was supposed to have a fake conversation with this girl standing in front of me.Fake conversation? The director wanted me to move my lips, but not make any sound. They'd overdub the voices later. Plus, they have to pay you extra if you talk. So I had a fake conversation with my fake glass of champagne with this really good-looking girl.We finally wrapped up around 2:30 AM. We had been on the set for almost seventeen hours. Must have been hell for the girls in heels.Before we left, they instructed us to come back fifteen hours later--at 6 PM. A lot of folks didn’t show up. I did. I wanted some more peanut butter and jelly, which they had waiting for us when we arrived. Joy. It was freezing again, but this time I wore my Under Armour thermals. Really.We did another scene on the steamboat--the red carpet scene, where the BigWigs arrive at the awards party to check-in.The assistant director paired me up with two gals. They were gorgeous. We shot the ‘entering the awards party’ scene a bunch of times. I didn’t mind so much…
After a couple hours of shooting, we broke for dinner. About an hour later, we went back to work. We waited in a banquet room for a few hours for our next set of directions. It was 4 AM.People were nodding off. An assistant director walked into the room, came up to me and asked if I could be the “slick record executive” for the next scene. I accepted. He explained the scene:Limos pull up, pick up the BigWigs and whisk them away. Easy enough.We shot the scene outside the boat in the freezing drizzle. We shot it a bunch of times. A limo would pull up to the curb. The star of the show, Rayna James, would get in as I’m fake-talking to her manager--who gets left at the curb in the rain with Yours Truly. The limo would pull away...Once again, one scene took hours. When we wrapped, the sun was coming up. My boots were soaked and my feet were freezing. I went back home, got to the Slim Shack around 7 AM. Batu was waiting. I was starving. The only thing I had in the house?Peanut butter and jelly.
Roasted Red PotatoesAs a Manly Man, when I’m cooking for a Lady People, I have to be sensitive. I'm pretty sensitive already. It's been a common complaint from most of the Exes..."You're too sensitive."What do you say to that? "I'll try my best to be insensitive from now on?"When I'm cooking for a Slim Woman, I gotta be sensitive; make sure I don’t use butter and cream and fatty stuff. When cooking for the Lady Peoples, I don't fry--I'll bake or broil or roast. Roasted red potatoes is a good side dish when cooking for the Women Folk.You’ve got to keeps the ladies happy.Because if the ladies ain’t happy, you, my friend, ain’t happy.INGREDIENTS3 pounds small red potatoes¼ cup olive oil1 ½ tablespoons minced garlic3 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary, plus a few sprigsKosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper to tasteHere we go...Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.Cut the potatoes in halves or quarters, depending how big yer taters are.Put them in a large bowl.Add the olive oil, and mix by hand, making sure they’re all coated.Add the rosemary and garlic, and mix again.Place them on a baking tray covered with aluminum foil (this be easier to clean that way).Sprinkle with salt and fresh cracked black pepper, then turn them over and sprinkle on the other side.Put the potatoes in the oven on the middle rack.Bake for 25 minutes.After 25 minutes, flip ‘em over with a spatula.Roast for another 25 minutes. Stick them with a fork--if it goes in easily, they're done. If not, put 'em back in the oven until they are.Plate ‘em up! Make ‘em look nice, add a sprig or two of fresh rosemary, and…
MANGIAMO!!
Slim Man Cooks Lemon Chicken
Lemon Chicken with Ace Frehley
The first time I saw Ace Frehley he was waving an Uzi machine gun around in his kitchen.All this before lunch.He wasn’t trying to kill anybody, he was just showing us one of his toys. Ace had lots of toys. Fast cars, guns, guitars.Ace used to play guitar in a band called KISS. I was at his house with my band BootCamp. We were recording our first EP in his studio, which was built into the side of a small hill underneath his Connecticut house.Ace was under house arrest for driving his ridiculously expensive and exotic sports car the wrong way up the freeway while drunk. If you’re gonna be under house arrest, it might as well be in a place like Ace’s. It was pretty amazing, more like a castle than a house. It had gates – all it needed was a moat.Ace would wander in and out while we recorded in the basement studio. It was a basement, yes – but it was more like a luxury bunker with a recording studio. It was plush, had all the latest gear; it was a real pro studio, ready to go. There was only one small problem.The septic system was screwed up. So the whole place smelled faintly of – well let’s say it didn’t smell good. We were encouraged to go outside in the woods if we had to go to the bathroom.Oh, the glamorous life of show biz. My band, BootCamp, was doing pretty well. We had a few videos on MTV that were making some noise. We had labels that were interested. Managers were calling. We got the attention of two guys who were the road managers for Van Halen. We signed with them. Our new managers thought we should do an EP. Our first single (we released it on vinyl) had done really well, and we needed a follow-up.Our new managers thought we needed a producer, so they brought in Rob Sabino, who played keyboards in Chic. I loved Chic; loved the sound, the playing, and the production on those records –“Good Times”, “Le Freak”, “I Want Your Love”.
Rob got the job. Rob Sabino knew Ace Frehley from back in their early days in the Bronx. Rob suggested we record at Ace’s bunker. So that’s what we did. It was winter, there was snow on the ground, and we recorded in the Luxury Bunker, and slept in a small motel nearby.Tom Alonso played keyboards, Bob Fallin played guitar, Hit Man Howie Z (known back then as Howard Zizzi) played drums, and I played bass and sang. When we started recording, I wasn’t getting warm and fuzzy feelings about what I was hearing. Maybe it was because I had just recently completed two weeks of complete vocal rest, and my voice sounded like one of the Chipmunks.Maybe it was because I thought Ace might stroll in at any second and start waving his Uzi around, and accidentally fire some rounds into the ceiling. Ace was always strolling around. I think his cologne of choice must have been Eau de Rum and Coke, because that’s what it smelled like when he walked by. I will say this, Ace seemed like a happy guy. He had a slurry way of talking and always had a loopy grin on his face. Ace had a certain boozy charm, like Dudley Moore in Arthur.
Ace was proud of his toys. He showed us his collection of guitars. It was pretty extensive. He had all kinds of electric guitars – a lot of Gibsons – hanging from the ceiling on hooks. He had a guitar that shot flames out of the neck. When Ace showed us that guitar, he couldn’t get the fire to shoot out. I was kinda glad when he couldn’t get it to work. I was afraid he’d fry my new hairdo, which resembled a coonskin cap made of dark curly hair.We recorded four songs in four days. When we finished, we packed up the truck, and waved goodbye to Ace and his castle and his busted septic tank. We drove in the freezing cold from Connecticut back to Baltimore. A few weeks later we got the songs back from The Luxury Bunker. It wasn’t my favorite recording of all-time.That didn’t stop the EP from selling. It did extremely well. BootCamp got a ton of airplay. We were playing more gigs than ever. That EP led to a lot of really good things.BootCamp had a really good run, nearly six years. Then we all went our separate ways. Tommy started doing film and TV work. Bob took over a company in Orlando and it took off. Howie started working the nightclub circuit around Maryland. He also plays bongos in the Slim Man band. And me?Like Batman, Superman and Spider Man, I’m Slim Man—a superhero disguised as a singer; spanning the globe, fighting the forces of Evil while masquerading as a mild-mannered songwriter.LEMON CHICKENAfter a week of rocking and rolling all-night and partying every day, there’s nothing better than a home-cooked meal like lemon chicken.This is such a simple dish to cook. It is my Mom’s recipe. She was an excellent cook, and not only did she cook a wide variety of cuisines — French, Italian, American, Indian, Mexican —she did them all authentically and deliciously.I made lemon chicken the other night. As I was getting ready to stick it in the oven, I thought I might tie the legs together. They call it “trussing”, and it helps the chicken maintain its shape and cook more evenly. When real chefs truss a chicken, it’s complicated, and resembles minor surgery and requires a doctorate. Me? I simply tie the legs together. But I didn’t have anything to tie them with. I was thinking of using one of my old guitar strings, but I came to my senses and in a stroke of culinary cleverosity, decided to tie the chicken legs together with a piece of rosemary.I’m a jenius! I poured a little olive oil over the rosemary after I tied it, to keep the leaves from crumbling. It looked really cool when it went in the oven. But after an hour and a half, the leaves turned dark green, almost black. You can remove the rosemary from the legs after the chicken is cooked, if you want. I left it on; I liked the way it looked.I’ve cooked this dish a lot of times. This was by far best, there was an aroma and a taste that was pretty delizioso. I cooked the chicken in a large glass baking dish, uncovered.Roasted sweet potato wedges go well with this dish. Check out my recipe on page XXX. The sweetness of the potatoes blends well with the lemoniness of the chicken. And you can cook both the sweet potatoes and the chicken at the same time.Finally, whenever you handle raw chicken, you gotta be careful. Make sure you wear your HazMat suit when you handle raw chicken. Clean off every surface that raw chicken touches with soap, warm water, and a pressure washer. Bring out the heavy artillery and scrub-a-dub dub.INGREDIENTS1 chicken, a whole chicken (I used a 4 pound chicken)Olive oilSalt and pepper1 lemon, cut in half3 sprigs rosemary, plus one long one to tie the chicken legs together4 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed with the flat side of a knife¼ cup dry white wine¼ cup chicken brothHere we go…Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees.Rinse off your chicken, inside and out. Pat dry – inside and out – with paper towels. Place the chicken in a large baking dish. Rub the chicken with olive oil. Rub your chicken! Sprinkle with salt and pepper, inside and out. I use fresh cracked black pepper and kosher salt.Put the 2 lemon halves inside the chicken – give them a gentle squeeze on the way in. Put 2 rosemary sprigs inside the chicken. Put 3 of the smashed garlic cloves inside the chicken.Pour the wine and chicken broth into the bottom of the baking dish. Put a rosemary sprig and the garlic clove in with the wine and broth.Take the remaining rosemary sprig, and tie the chicken legs together. Slim Folks! If I can do it, you can do it. Drizzle the rosemary sprig with a little olive oil, so the leaves don’t catch fire and burn down the McMansion.Put the chicken in the oven. Most chickens these days have pop-up thermometers that let you know when your chicken is done. Meat thermometers come in handy for a dish like this. DO NOT use the thermometer you use for your dog. Or your kid. The minimum recommended temperature for poultry is 165 degrees. A 3 or 4 pound chicken should take about an hour and a half.Baste your chicken every 15 minutes or so.After an hour, start checking the temperature of the chicken every 15 minutes or so. When the chicken is done, take it out of the oven, Don’t be afraid to carve off a piece to make sure it’s done. If you cook it too long, it will be dry. It should be juicy, Lucy!When the chicken is done, dish it up! Carve your chicken, put a couple slices on a plate, add a few roasted sweet potato wedges and…MANGIAMO!!!!!!