This is not a baked chicken dish, but it's quick and easy and fairly healthy. If you're cooking for a bunch of hungry kids, you might note that you can fit a five pound value pack of chicken thighs (cost around $6) into a 14 inch nonstick skillet (available at Sams for around $28) and have the entire batch cooked in 20 minutes. Worth getting a big nonstick skillet just for this recipe. Crispy Chicken Thighs This is more a technique than a recipe. I learned it from a recipe by Jacques Pepin. That recipe involves making a sauce, but the chicken thighs by themselves are tasty on their own even if you don’t want to bother making the sauce. You get crispy ‘fried’ chicken without a batter and with much less fat than regular fried chicken. Quick, extremely easy, and very tasty. From a food-science-geek standpoint, what you’re doing is rendering the fat out of the skin, and the skin fries in that fat, while the flesh side is steamed in the covered skillet by the vapors liberated in the cooking process. You can vary the seasoning if you want; a little bit of smoked Spanish paprika (‘pimenton’) or chipotle powder works well instead of or in addition to the black pepper. Penzeys has a spice mix called ‘Arizona Dreaming’ that works very well on this. So does lemon pepper (Penzey's 'Sunny Spain' salt free lemon pepper is very good on this) Ingredients 4 chicken thighs, skin on salt black pepper Procedure 1. Set the chicken thighs skin-side down on a cutting board. Trim any excess floppy skin. In the flesh side cut a ½ inch deep slash on either side of the thigh bone, parallel to the bone and about ½ inch away from the bone (this helps the thigh to flatten out somewhat). Season the thighs on both sides with salt and pepper. 2. Place the chicken thighs skin-side down on an unheated non-stick skillet. Only then turn the heat to high. When the chicken starts to sizzle, turn heat to medium and move the thighs around to make sure they aren't sticking to the skillet. Cover the skillet and cook for 16 to 18 minutes. Check the chicken occasionally to make sure it isn’t sticking. If the skin is browning too much after 10 minutes, then turn the heat to low. If after 18 minutes the flesh side doesn’t look quite done, flip the thighs and fry them flesh side down for a minute or two, uncovered. When done, serve.

Excuse me but, there is clam poop in there? I thought you wash them, then cook them and then just eat? Poop you say? Really? I've never made clams but really want to. Saw some nice little necks at Costco yesterday. So tell me about the poop please?

Oh great, Robo! Cream cheese is definitely the standard so I am sure yours were great! Localeater, I think horseradish is perfect-- and the chives and parsley are a great addition too. We have red peppers, scallions and parsley so I may just garnish with scallions instead of chives. It will save another grocery trip! I am so happy with how it pulled together. We wanted to do a more special meal... none of the catered meals felt right. We thought about a tenderloin or surf and turf but as we pulled the book together, we realized how so many of the memories and lessons around dad center on food. He is the cook.. the griller.. and he's at the center of all our family food traditions. I had planned to use cards to identify the foods with memories or stories but everyone who has seen the menu has commented on how every single thing reminds them of dad. No need for cards to tell the association! He'll see himself in every morsel... plus many of them tie to "lessons" in the book. Little things.. like "grandpa taught me that coke tastes so much better from a glass bottle" "dad taught me to keep a salt shaker in the garden for the spring onions" and some with bigger meaning like the spicy shrimp he taught my learning disabled nephew to make. I can't wait! Thank you all!

I used to bake desserts/coffee cakes at a restaurant in San Francisco, and it was anything but a dream job. I would generally multiply recipes by 6 because I had three ovens and two 9x13 pans for each oven. For some reason, the pans seemed bigger than 9x13, but perhaps they weren't. This was back in 1977. I used a commercial Hobart machine to do my mixing. I also made bread dough that I would roll up into cinnamon rolls, and I layered butter into the dough to make the rolls flaky. I didn't make those often because they were the most labor intensive, and I did not have a warm space for dough to rise, as the kitchen was rather drafty, and I was working graveyard (11PM to 7-8AM). Basically, to make large batches, you need a large space and possibly double ovens.