Riverside Ovens
Test Kitchen

"We arrived in the late afternoon, with the September sun tilting across the vines and bathing the chateau in a flattering way of pale gold; not the Pichon-Longueville needs any flattery. It was built in 1851, a period in architecture when turrets were all the rage, and Pichon (it's nice to be on first-name terms with a chateau) could be the model for a fairy-tale castle, suitable for princesses or damsels in distress." from Peter Mayle's French Lessons, "A Connoisseur's Marathon"








It's deep February, Wisconsin turns to an ice cube, sometimes a white ice cube, but sometimes dreary as a squirrel's fir, and so naturally the very season for taking the great imaginative leap away from this place and arrive, one hopes anyway, somewhere to the south of France where there are celebrations for frog legs, marathons built upon the premise of as many stops for wine tastes as the body and mind can muster, and long rounds of outdoor boules.  Here at the Riverside Ovens Test Kitchen, lights shining full tilt, fire place burning its fake logs, and the great sun stamped art out in the courtyard trying as hard as it might to sparkle, it might as well be the Chateau Mayle talks about in French Lessons.  The Chateau is not much unlike the great cozy French restaurant just a mile away from here, La Kitchenette, a little one-roomer, 12-tabler, where the back wall is a hand

sketched blackboard and the waitress, French as Aix en Provence, doesn't speak a word of English. Here is where the imaginative French edible garden flourishes in its well-tended bunches and a Pastis or two by siesta is no national crime but something more like a remedy shared by farmers themselves just now walking in from the coarse fields for the daytime meal that matters most.

Here at the Chateau, Cashew Chicken Stir-fry by Blue Apron is on the menu. Ingredients include

chicken tenders, jasmine rice, scallions, Napa cabbage, Tango mandarins, garlic chives, roasted cashews, sesame oil, ginger, soy glaze and cornstarch.  All of this had been recently collected at the

town market, fresh as morning, diced, sliced and peeled, leaving a small kitchen smelling of ginger and cabbage.  While cooking the jasmine rice, add minced ginger, celery and scallions to heated oil in a pan, add sliced cabbage and let cook at a medium temperature for five minutes, place on a plate, then re-oil the same pan and prepare for cornstarch coated chicken tenders, cooking 8-10 minutes. A

fairly simple dish in many ways, once the rice is boiled, the vegetables sautéed, and the chicken cooked, its time to assemble: add the vegetables to the pan of chicken, add soy glaze and 1/4 cup of water, let cook before finally adding sesame oil, raw garlic chives and segmented mandarins over the top, toss cashews over and...voila...a rich stir fry, crispy by the cabbage, rich by the soy glaze, and filling by the coated chicken.  The meal is completed within an hour, the creases in the doors of the Chateau release rich pungent aromas of cabbage and soy; the waiter, unfortunately, still working on his French.