Posts filed under 'chicken'
This is what chicken and dumplings looks like when it is cooked but not yet arranged on a serving dish.
This version of chicken and dumplings is a dish that derives from very early times in the American colonial period. I learned it from my mother and she from hers. I remember my mother telling me that my grandmother had herbs at her kitchen door that went into this and other dishes and lilacs that perfumed the kitchen and were a place to dry the kitchen towels. That was an image so firmly in my mind that when I looked for a home I looked for herbs and a lilac by the kitchen door.
I don’t have a kitchen door now, but I grow the herbs my grandmother, whom I never knew, grew in Maine and some she could never have grown there. I can see the lilacs from the kitchen door, but they are too tall in this warm country for drying towels.
When she was a little girl, this was eg’s favorite dish and when she was asked on her birthday what she wanted to eat, it was chicken and dumplings. She feels differently now. I might convince her to love it again if I had a pot with a glass lid so she could see the dumplings plump up… what do you think?
Through the years that I have tasted foods from other American ethnic groups, many if not most of them included a version of chicken and dumplings. They often had a different name, but this is what they were. I liked them all. That is my tragedy…. I like almost all of the homey dishes that are made in kitchens next to the family kitchen garden.
If you look at these recipes you’ll see that the typical farm or small town home could provide most of the ingredients, even in winter. Except for the baking powder and flour, everything else might grow right outside the door. That’s really homemade! It’s also a stretchable meal. If you only have 3 pounds of chicken and someone wants to bring a friend or two over for supper, this works. Cut the chicken pieces in half or even smaller. You can just add more vegetables in the same proportions, more salt, of course, and lots more dumplings. Split the stew into two pots so the dumplings will have room to expand. You might even make two versions of them, one plain, one with cheese or herbs, or one with and one without eggs. Both the dumpling recipes are straight out of a 1960 edition of Betty Crocker Cookbook. Remember her?
This dish takes about an hour to make. It might take a lifetime to forget.
La ricetta in italiano segue la salta.
Chicken and dumplings
NB all metric measurements are in the Italian recipe version
Serves 6 to 8
Chicken in pieces — enough to feed your family. I skin mine.
1 large onion in chunks
1 or 2 carrots in chunks, depending on size
2 legs of celery in chunks
optional a splash of Sherry or Marsala
1 quart of water
salt—about 1 teaspoon per 1 pound or .5 kilo of meat and vegetables, start with 1.5 teaspoons
2 teaspoons dried thyme
2 teaspoons dried tarragon or a different herb if you like
1 pound of potatoes peeled and cut into chunks
In a large pot, like a Dutch oven, with a good lid, heat some oil, or like me you can fry a bit of the fat removed from the chicken to render some fat. Brown the chicken pieces in the fat you are using. When the pieces are all browned on both sides, toss in the wine if you are using it, then add the onion, carrot and celery chunks. Scatter the herbs over all, then pour in the water. Add about 1-1/2 teaspoons of salt. Bring this to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Taste for salt and correct.
Add the potato chunks, cover again and simmer 10 minutes. While the potatoes are parboiling, start making the dumpling batter:
And this is how it looks when you have just scraped the dough onto the stew. All that sparkle in the middle is the quickly boiling gravy bubbling up.
Dumplings 1
1-1/2 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons oil
¾ cup milk
optional 3 heaped tablespoons of grated dry cheese like grana, Parmigiano or any well-aged hard cheese OR 2 teaspoons of dried herbs.
Put the dry ingredients into a bowl and stir together. Put the liquid ingredients in a measuring cup and stir. Add the wet to the dry and stir with a fork until it makes a lumpy batter. Uncover the chicken stew. Using a big spoon, scoop up some batter and scrape it off onto the chunks of vegetables and meat—not into the liquid. Use all the batter. Cook uncovered for 10 minutes.
After 10 minutes, cover the whole thing and cook 10 more minutes without peeking. DO NOT PEEK! When you remove the cover it’s there.
Remove the meat, vegetables and dumplings to a serving bowl or platter and check the gravy for salt. You can thicken the gravy quickly if you like, but work fast so your dumplings will be light and fluffy when they get to the table. Just the cooking of the dumplings in it will thicken it a bit.
Grind some fresh pepper over the dish and serve really hot. I like to eat it in a soup bowl because I don’t thicken the gravy and that allows the dumpling to get lots of savory sauce.
Dumplings 2
1 cup flour
1-1/2 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons oil
1 egg
¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons minced parsley
Make them exactly as you made the previous dumplings. I like these even more, but I didn’t make them, because I made half a recipe and I didn’t want to waste half an egg.
So how was it? I have just finished eating chicken and dumplings for breakfast, because early morning is when I usually work on food. It gives me the chance to clean up and wash the floor if I’ve been messy. While I wouldn’t recommend this for breakfast, it was excellent.
I had not made dumplings in decades, so I wasn’t sure the first effort would be publishable, but they are so simple to make that they came out perfectly. The only rule is do not open the lid of the pot for that last 10 minutes so they can rise and become dry and fluffy inside their moist skins. I even liked the carrots with their hint of chicken and herbs.
Chicken and dumplings could easily be made ahead a few days without the dumplings, and then when you want them make the dumplings and cook them on the reheated stew. That would make it a really hearty winter or autumn dish that could be ready 30 minutes after you and the family walk in from work, sports, errands. I don’t know for sure, but I think you might be able to reheat dumplings in the microwave. Someone please try it and tell me?
What NOT to do: Do not make this from skinless chicken breasts. You will never get a broth worth basing a whole meal on from them. Do not leave out any of the three first vegetables, because they are there as much to develop the broth as to eat. You don’t have to eat them, but use them. Don’t be afraid to change to herbs you prefer. There are some strong ones I probably wouldn’t like much, but if your family does, use them.
Questi sono gnocchi tipo americano. Li fanno le mamme americane come piatto unico con una stufata di solito di carne o pollo, ma anche con una stufata vegeteriana.
E’ un piatto più apprezzato nel autunno o inverno. A noi ha un carattere che fa caldo, ma anche è fatto delle verdure del inverno più rigido che quello italiano. Le patate, cipolla e carote, il sedano sono le verdure che conservano bene in fondo e una volta facevano quasi tutto di che cosa c’era d’inverno.
Anche se è fatto con manzo o agnello, il pollo è la carne più comune ed è la carne ho cucinato io. Quando è stata una bambina, quest’era il piatto preferito della figliola. L’ho cucinato innumerevole volte per lei. Lo cucinerà ancora ogni volta lei mi chiede.
Pollo in umido coi gnocchi americani
6-8 persone
Pollo a pezzi, quanto basta per la tua famiglia—il mio faccio senza pelle
Una cipolla grande a pezzi grandi
1 o 2 caroti, depende la taglia, a pezzi grandi
2 gambe di sedano, a pezzi grandi
un pò di Marsala
1 litro acqua
sale qb
2 cucchiaini timo
2 cucchiaini drogoncello o un altro profumo preferito
500 g patate, perlate e tagliate a pezzi grandi
In una casseruola grande con una coperchio stretto, riscalda un pò d’olio con un pò del grasso che hai tagliato del pollo. Arrosolare il pollo a tutti lati, e poi aggiungi il vino. Aggiungi la cipolla, la carota e il sedano. Aggiungi I profumi sopra, poi l’acqua. Aggiungi il sale circa 1.5 cucchiaini. Porti a bollizione, e poi coptilo, riduci la fiamma a sobollire and lascia cucinare fino a è cotto il pollo. Con un pollo giovane, ci vuole circa 30 minuti. Assagi e coreggi il sale.
Aggiungi le patate e ricoprilo per 10 minuti. Mentre cuocono le patate, fai la pasta dei gnocchi.
Gnocchi 1
200 g farina 00
2 cuchiaini rasi lievita in polvere
¾ cucchiaino sale
2 cuchiai olio di semi
165 ml latte
se vuoi, anche 3 cucchiai colmi di grana gratugiatta o 2 cucchiaini erbe profumate secchi
Mette gli ingredienti secchi in una ciottola e mescolargli. Mette gli ingredienti fluidi in un fiasco di misura e mescolargli.. Aggiungi gli ingredienti del fiasco sugli ingredienti nella ciottola e mescolargli con una forchetta solamente fino a sono inumidati. NON mescolargli troppo! Ci rimangono chicchi. Va bene così, ti giuro. Scopri la stufata e usando due cucchiai, prendi qualche pasta e togli e fai cadere sulle verdure e la carne, non nella’acqua. Usi tutto la pasta. Cucini scoperta per 10 minuti, e poi coprila e cucini un’altra 10 minuti—rigorosamente senze do scoprila! Se toglie il coperchio troppo presto saranno falliti I gnocchi.
Servi la stufata nei piatti fondi caldo fumante.
Gnocchi 2
130 g farina 00
1.5 cuchiaini rasi di lievita in polvere
.5 cuchiaino sale
2 cucchiai olio di semi
1 uovo
90 ml latte
2 cucchiai prezzemolo tritato
Procedi precisamente come i gnocchi 1. Mi piacciono anche più i gnocchi 2, ma perchè volevo fare la metà di la ricetta e la metà d’un uovo fa fatica, ho fatto gnocchi 1. Ma I gnocchi 2 sono più ricchi.
Come era? Buonissima! Davvero un piatto per I giorni che fa freddo, che tira il vento, che piove a fa buio permanente. E’ anche un piatto che piace ai bambini. Per I giorni impegnati, fai la stufata un’altro giorno, e poi riscaldila e fai I gnocchi proprio prima del pasto. E’ anche un piatto elastico, che se venga qualcuno in più si può taglieare I pezzi di pollo più piccoli e fare più dei gnocchi. In America quella qualità è stata importante, perchè a casa nostra sono venuti gli ospiti inaspettati.
Cosa non fare: Non fare questo piatto dei petti do pollo senza pelle. Non raggiunge mai un brodo saporito così. Non omettere niente dei profumi, anche se non vuoi mangairli, fanno il brodo. Non hai paura di cambiare l’erbe profume secondo gusto tuo.
October 3rd, 2008
Don’t worry about the photo, I’ve got a bunch of them and one is bound to be focused better.
This is not aji de gallina as my favorite Peruvian used to make it for us. This is not even as genuine an effort as I could make in the United States. This is aji de gallina the way a person can make it in Italy if she is fortunate enough to have Texan friends who carry chilli peppers to her in their luggage. Someone who lives in Torino, Milano, Roma, and maybe other big, international cities of Italy may be able to buy chillis of all types– perhaps even the gorgeous yellow aji amarillo pepper. People who live in charming backwaters cannot.
The real thing is pink and feminine and complex and delicious with a fire that warms the tongue and never burns it. My Italian version is different every time I make it depending on which peppers I use and the color is not the pastel the aji pepper gives, but a robust autumny and coppery red.
I like a change once in a while. I adore cooking, writing about and eating Italian food, but inside lurks that American girl who always asked “Where is Chinatown in this city?” whenever she went to a new place. For a summer garden lunch in July, I indulged that lurker and Barb Skinner, who came to lunch, must have felt the same, because she asked me to post this recipe. It has taken all this time to have the occasion to make it again so I could photograph it. And here it is.
Aji de Gallina
Serves about 6
1 4-pound chicken, an old hen if you can buy one
4 slices of plain white bread without crusts
1/2 cup of oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 teaspoons minced garlic
3-6 dried chili peppers soaked in boiling chicken broth to soften them, the amount depending on how hot they are and how spicy you want your aji to be
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1/2 pound (200 g) chopped walnuts or other nutmeats
4 ounces (100 g) grated Parmesan cheese
about ½ liter of milk
6 yellow potatoes, cooked and halved
Black olives and hardboiled eggs, for garnish
Boiled rice
Cook the chicken by simmering in a tall pot with a carrot, an onion, a leg of celery, salt and water to cover it all. If it is a young chicken it won’t take very long, but if it is a hen you should leave it to cook by itself for 2 –4 hours, or until it is tender. Remove the chicken from the pot keeping the broth. Remove the meat from the bone and skin and cut into pieces.
Soak the chilis in the chicken broth. Soak the bread in milk to cover.
Heat the oil in a saucepan and fry the onion, garlic and softened chili peppers until golden. Use a stick blender or a food processor to make this into a smooth paste. Add the milk-soaked bread. Add enough of the chili-broth to make a cream. Cook over low heat, stirring, for 10 minutes and then add the chopped nuts, grated cheese and cut chicken. Simmer, stirring, adding more milk as necessary to make the sauce the consistency of heavy cream. Taste and correct for salt.
Using bread to thicken a sauce means that it can become very thick and sticky, so watch and stir carefully toward the end of the cooking.
Arrange chunks of cooked potato on a platter, then pile rice over that. Pour the aji over the rice and garnish with olives and wedges of boiled egg.
Now I know you are thinking you don’t really need to use both potatoes and rice under this aji. You’re wrong. It was my first occasion eating this that broke through what I thought I knew about food and made me want to learn and go to culinary school. Until I ate this, I thought rice and potatoes didn’t have much flavor. Eaten together they reveal what there is of the other and you discover that they in truth have strong flavors. It was that watershed experience that helped me understand that most good ingredients are perfect within themselves and properly respected can create art in the mouth without smothering sauces and piling on multiple flavors. It was not much of a leap to the day when eg made fun of me for saying a cucumber is sugary. To me it is, but she’ll still laugh her head off if you say it.
September 22nd, 2008
Slurp! I am right behind Judy Witts’ every word in this post.
Yes, that’s a different picture. Those are my Buffalo Wings that I ate fpr Sunday dinner! They were really good, too.
May 23rd, 2008
Once upon a time there were only a few Europeans scattered along the eastern coast of the United States and Canada, and those few were all British or French. There was no pasta, there was no pizza, for that matter there were no stoves. Everything they ate had to be cooked over an open fire and made from the few things they’d carried across the Atlantic and what they could find where they were. Slowly, slowly, the toughest among them survived and were joined by more adventurers from back home, and slowly, slowly what they ate became something not quite like home but not at all like the food of the native population, either. Something in between. That is still true today. 
Italian food is not quite the same as it is in Italy, nor is Chinese nor French and after almost 400 years, even the original American food is very changed from what it was. The advent of the stove, the oven, the refrigerator and the microwave has widened the possibilities. Modern science has brought new techniques and chemicals into the mix. It’s not all bad, but it equally is not all the kind of progress we were promised.
The foods that our early settler ancestors made were easy to cook, cheap and practical. As more ethnic groups came, their foods came with them, and more flavors, more spices, more herbs became ordinary. American food marched across the centuries farther and farther from those early British and French peasant roots, so that even the oldest New England family ate things that would have puzzled its antecedents. As Americans grew richer, they ate more meat and sauces and separate vegetable courses, but the backbone of the kitchen was still the one dish meal made of ingredients that were cheap and easily available. The potpie is only one of those dishes and it represents the idea very well.
By now there are a couple of generations who might think that Chicken Potpie comes from the freezer, mostly in single serving size, nestled in an aluminum dish. In truth, pot pies of all kinds are one of the more successful frozen foods. If they are made with good ingredients and if the manufacturer doesn’t rely on monosodium glutamate and high fructose corn syrup for flavor instead of meat and vegetables and herbs, it’s a product that it would be safe to rely on. I can’t tell you whether there remains a single brand that has a clean label, but don’t buy one without checking.
Even better, make your own at least once so that you know what potpie should be. Certainly any Italian readers will have to do that, because potpie, frozen or otherwise, is rarer than caviar in Italy.
When I made this potpie, it was at least thirty-five years since the last time. I really don’t remember when I last made it. I do remember making lobster potpie for Christmas Eve one year, quite another kind of thing with puff pastry and sherry and cream involved. Potpie originally was a way to use leftovers. Mum would make chicken stew or chicken fricasee and then the leftovers some days later would become potpie. The crust on top made the meat stretch farther so that half a chicken could serve five or even six. The crust might be pastry, like mine, or it might be biscuits baked on top of the bubbling casserole. I like both. As a matter of fact, I discovered that I love potpie. As soon as I finished eating this one, I started to remember beef potpies, meatball potpies, pork potpies and fish ones. I quickly put that out of my mind and photographed a serving for posterity. The calorie load in potpie is ideal for a teenager who is just in from practicing football.
Why is it so good? It’s the gravy. If you go to the trouble to get the stock reduced enough and seasoned enough, you will make a splendid gravy and your potpie can’t fail. So how does that happen? Pick the right fowl and cook it long enough. That’s it.
You may be surmising that you can buy cooked chicken and use instant broth—cubes, powder, canned or “Better than Bouillon”. Wrong. To get the depth of flavor that really pays off, you must really reduce the broth. All those purchased broths are too salty to reduce much. In the end it would taste way too salty.
The right fowl is a stewing hen or an old rooster. A mature fowl has many times the flavor of a young one. I don’t know what happens to old roosters in the United States. There are not so many of them as there are hens, and the hens aren’t so easy to find either. In Italy I can walk into any supermarket and find a whole or a half hen. She has spent her life making eggs and will finish it making soup. When I was in the US I used sometimes to find them frozen, but even more often I had to use a roasting chicken, which isn’t right, but is better than those juvenile fryers. They also run about 5-7 pounds, so you only need half to make this potpie, and you can roast the other half if you like. Ask the service man at the meat counter to cut it in two for you.
Potpie isn’t something I make all in one day, but like the generations before me, I make the meat and broth one day and the pie another day. It does cook for a long time, but almost all of that time you are ignoring it as you go about your day. I even went grocery shopping while the chicken simmered away on the cooker, and she didn’t mind a bit.
Chicken Potpie
For 6 servings
.
Stewed chicken
2-3 pounds of stewing hen or roasting chicken
1 leek, cleaned and sliced or one onion with 2 cloves tuck into it (if you use a yellow one, leave the papery skin on)
1 leg of celery chunked
1 carrot chunked
1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves or 3 teaspoons fresh
1 teaspoon salt
3 peppercorns
water to cover
Put all of those ingredients into a large pot and bring to a simmer. Lower the heat so that the surface moves gently, but does not bubble or boil. Simmer gently for at least two hours, checking to be sure the water covers the chicken, until the meat is tender, then remove the meat from the broth and allow to cool a bit. I use surgical gloves so that I can handle the meat quicker, but you don’t have to.
Remove the meat from the bones, fat and skin. Put the bones, fat and skin back into the simmering broth. Cut the meat into bite-sized pieces and chill.
Continue to cook the broth until it is reduced by at least half. Taste the broth to see if it is strongly enough flavored of chicken, and if it is, salt it to your taste, then strain all the pieces out using a fine mesh strainer. You can now put it into a container and chill it.
Pastry
1 cup regular flour
.5 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup lard or 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon vegetable shortening
2 tablespoons ice water
Cut the fat into the flour and salt until it looks like peas, then sprinkle the water over and using a fork, mix until it gathers together. Pull it into a ball shape using your hands, then press it firmly together. Wrap in plastic and chill until ready to roll it out.
To make the pie
If you made a stew, you will already have what goes into the potpie. If you did not, you must now cook the vegetables that go into it.
For 6 people, pare and chunk 6 medium potatoes, pare and slice 4-6 carrots, clean and slice 2 legs of celery and clean and quarter 2 medium onions. Cover them all in water in a pot of the right size and bring them to a boil. Add 1.5 teaspoons of salt to the water and cover, allowing it to simmer until the potatoes are tender. Drain, then toss in the pieces of meat that you saved after the stewing. Add a handful of fresh or frozen peas.
The gravy
In a frying pan, melt 2 tablespoons of the fat that rose to the top of the broth you chilled. Add 4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) of flour, stirring it in as it foams and bubbles. Remove the pan from the heat and slowly, slowly, whisk in 2.5 cups of the reserved broth, making it smooth. Cook for a minute or so over low heat. Taste and correct for salt and pepper. It should need little because you reduced the broth considerably. If your other ingredients are not already hot, you can heat them now in the gravy. If you’ve just cooked them, they should already be hot.
Heat the oven to 425° F. (220° C)
Choose a deep casserole that will hold 3 –4 quarts/liters. Measure the top diameter. Remove the pastry from the fridge and roll it out to that size. Unlike dessert pies, it doesn’t need to be very thin and is nice thickish. At this point I also cut vent holes into the pastry—this time I made them shaped like leaves, reserving the shapes that I remove from them.
Put the mixed meat and vegetables into the casserole, then pour the gravy over it. Add the pastry over the top, trimming to fit, then add the decorative shapes as you like.
Put it into the oven and cook for 25 to 35 minutes, until golden and bubbling hot. It will fill six mouths with flavors not often tasted in the last 40 years.
In Italiano
Di solito quest’ é un piatto fatto dei resti di un altro piatto di pollo in umido o stufato. La vera cucina americana era da secoli una cucina povera, e questo piatto pratico conteneva le calorie e le vitamine che ci vuole per il lavoro duro che hanno fatto tutti, dal bambino al papà. Ha tutto il gusto ricco che domanda un giorno tempestoso. Provatelo!
Pasticcio di pollo americano
Serve 6 persone
Un piatto unico
La gallina
1 gallina di circa 1.5 chili
1 porro pulito e tagliato a fette
1 gamba di sedano in pezzi
1 carota in pezzi
3 file di zafferano
circa 1 cucchiaino di sale
2 chicchi di pepe nero
1 cucchiaino di foglie secche di timo (o 3 di fresche)
acqua di coprire tutto
Mettete tutto in una tegame grande a portatelo a prebolle. Abassate il fuoco e lasciarelo cuoce molto lentamente almeno 2 ore, controllando che rimane abbastanze acqua per coprire la carne. Quando é cotta la carne, toglietela a una ciottola e seperate la carne dagli ossi e la pelle. Tornate la pelle e gli ossi al brodo. Continuate la cottura del brodo fino a é ristretto almeno la metà. Assagiatelo e coreggiate il sale. Passatelo tra una rete fine in un contenitore e mettetelo in frigo per rinfrescare.
La pasta
130 g farina 00
75 g strutto
.5 cucchiaino sale
circa 2 cucchiai di acqua ghiacciata
Tagliate lo strutto nella farina con due coltelli da tavola, e quando somiglia piselli, aggiungete l’acqua, qb per fare una pasta abbastanza compatta. Fatela in pellicola e mettetela in frigo per almeno 30 minuti.
Il Pasticcio
Riscaldate il forno a 220° C
6 patate spellate e tagliate a pezzi di circa 3-4 cm
4-6 carote sbucciate e tagliate a fette
2 gambe di sedano a pezzi grandi
2 cipolle medie, tagliate a 4 pezzi
1.5 cucchiaino di sale
In una tagame, fate bollire tutti le verdure fino alle patate sono tenere. Sciogliete l’acqua. Aggiungete i pezzi di carne avete preperato prima.
Aggiungete una mancia di piselli freschi o scongelate.
Scieglete una casseruola addata al forno, capacità 3-4 litri e misurate il diametro. Togliete la pasta dal frigo e distendetela alla misura del caseruola. Fate delle bucche per scappare il vapore nella forma di foglie, mettete aparte le foglie.
La salsa
In una padella larga, sciogliete su un fuoco medio 2 cucchiai del grasso di pollo dal brodo freddo. Aggiungete 4 cucchiai di farina, mescolando bene bene. Togliete la padella dal fuoco e aggiungete man mano circa 625 ml del brodo, mescolando in continuo per fare una crema liscia. Tornatela al fuoco basso per circa un minuto. Questa é la salsa, e tutto la bontà di questo piatto dipende della salsa.
Mettete la carne e le verdure nella casseruola, aggiungete la salsa. Aggiungete la pasta sopra e poi le foglie riservate.
Infornatelo per 25 – 35 minute fino é colorato oro biondo ed é bollente. Servitelo caldissimo.
March 28th, 2008
Today alisonk came to lunch. She is doing a low carbohydrate regime, so I had to whip up some flour-free goodies. For a first course in place of pasta or risotto, we had a mushroom soup. I made the basic soup a day ago because most soups get better for sitting. When I reheated it I added the part that might not have refrigerated well.
As you can see, it is very dark and filled with mushrooms. The following recipe made soup for two.
No Carbohydrate Mushroom Soup
1 pound (.5 kilo) champignon or button mushrooms, cleaned and sliced. stems chopped
2 tablespoons butter
about .75 quart or liter of strong beef broth
salt to taste
heavy cream to taste
In a heavy pot I sautéed the mushrooms in the butter until they were quite browned and almost dried. Then I added the beef broth. I allowed this to cook and cook down several times, adding water to bring it up to level each time. Because I used “Better Than Bouillon” for the broth I added and needed no salt. When the whole thing was thoroughly infused, I poured it into a container and refrigerated it.
Today, a few minutes before I needed it, I warmed it up almost to a simmer and then added heavy cream, stirring it in, until it tasted balanced and rich. I ladled it into two deep bowl/cups and this is what happened. 
The verdict was “Good!”
For main course, or secondo, we ate Pollo fra Diavolo from this page.
With it we ate a cabbage dish from Puglia that I once had made into a pasta, but today served it as it was meant to be. Because there is no chance at bread, pasta or dessert, I changed the fat used from oil to duck fat, but it will be good without it if you are not as lucky as we are.
Cavolo Pugliese or Pugliese cabbage
This would have been enough for four people normally, but this was a slender menu indeed.
about 3 cups of slivered fresh cabbage
2 small hot red peppers peperoncini
about 2 tablespoons oil or fat
salt to taste
5 cherry tomatoes, quartered
Heat a big frying pan with the fat you will use. Crumble the pepper into it (or take a pinch from a jar of crushed red pepper.) Add the cabbage and toss it about a bit to get the fat distributed. Continue to cook it, stirring once in a while, until some of the edges start to brown and there are no really hard parts left. Add about 1/2 teaspoon or a decent sized pinch of salt, stir and taste. Add salt until it seems right to you. Toss in the tomato pieces and stir until they wilt a bit. Serve.
I had prepared a salad, but there was no room left for it. We had eaten well.
March 4th, 2008
I’ve been reading lists all over the internet food world based on the best recipes of 2007, either their own trials or recipes they’ve picked up from this site or that one. I have never done a list like that for Think On It, so I thought I would instead farm the entire life of this blog and list what has been mentioned most often or eaten most often here casa mia.
Think On It, as a food blog, is in main dedicated to food prepared according to the basic tenets of Italian cookery, but simple enough for anyone to make. I mean anyone, and that includes you as well as the cook who has been turning out great meals for twenty years. I avoid piling up flavors and sauces, because that’s not Italian!
Toasted leeks and pecorino pasta is still Art’s favorite pasta. I am really proud of that, that living in Italy where pasta is tossed about like M&Ms Art still likes one of my original recipes the best! What would one do for reassurance without one’s friends?
The best carrots I know are still the best to me. I made this dish for a shared Christmas dinner this year and they disappeared like snow in Miami. I left out the thyme, too, because the real secret is the cumin, or comino. For a former carrot-avoider, this recipe has turned out to really have legs. Try them. (For some reason this link won’t work. Go to: http://www.judithgreenwood.com/thinkonit/the-best-carrots-i-know/
My vote for best one dish meal from the pages of Think On It, is Insalatona fra diavolo. I always freeze some pitted black cherries so that I can have this salad when cherries aren’t in season (and because you can’t buy bags of frozen plain cherries in my city.) When they are used up I have to wait until cherries come back in May and it makes me sad. The recipe actually makes two meals I love at once, and there can’t be anything wrong with that idea!
Antipasto is well represented here, but on another international food site Tiny Baked Potatoes has been the hands down winner, voted among the top one hundred appetizer recipes worldwide. I can only take credit for figuring out how you can make this Pugliese dish at home, if you, like I, can’t rush off to Puglia today. How I would love to.
My most often cooked non pasta first course, or primo, is surely Toasted Leek and Potato Soufflé, a dish I find beautiful and absolutely delicious. I know it looks difficult, but it isn’t at all, and you don’t have to use a soufflé dish to cook it, although if you have one, why not?
The vote for best vegetarian dish is split. The first one has to be Pasta e Fagioli which is a feel-good dish without equal. I can make a little for just me, or a lot for a crowd and it always is good. When the weather is awful, this makes up for it. Just leave out the ham and you can feed it to a Bhuddist.
The second one is la Bomba although it is not Italian other than that I developed it here in my Italian kitchen using ingredients I bought in Italy. My evenings in Paris are about food. Sad, isn’t it? Just leave out the ham, and you’ll never miss it. I love, love, love this way with lentils. Ahh, Paris, how you inspire me.
Best cucina alta, the Italian version of haute cuisine, dish is the veal stuffed with veal on that page. I’ve come up with one small improvement lately, which is the inclusion of finely minced prosciutto crudo, or parma ham in the stuffing. This is a dish that goes on giving, because if you don’t slurp the cooking broth down immediately, you can have it another day with some tiny stuffed pasta, like capelletti or tortellini, or you can freeze it and cook another meat in it another day. I consider that practical as all get out.
Okay, that’s nine choices, and everybody does ten. The tenth is waiting for you. Please comment and tell me about something you’ve cooked from here and how it came out for you. If it wasn’t a success, tell me, because I’m determined to make every recipe just right.
If you click on something and there’s no photo, it may be that it’s a Flickr feed that isn’t working. Flickr has become irregular in what they show and I can’t count on them any more. That’s a shame, ma è la vita, sì?
December 31st, 2007
Cold weather food happening here:
Cream of celery soup
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cups chopped celery
1/2 teaspoon salt
a few grains of cayenne (peperoncino in polvere)
2 tablespoons butter
Sauté briefly to soften a bit, then add a cup or so of water and let simmer for 30 minutes or so.
2 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 cup milk
Pot these together in a jar and shake like mad until well blended.
Raise the flame under the simmering vegetables and pour this into it slowly, while stirring. Bring to a simmer and simmer for a couple of minutes. Taste and correct for salt. Grind fresh pepper over it when serving it HOT!
Mashed celery root
1/2 of a medium celery root (sedano rape) cut into cubes
1/4 teaspoon salt
water
Put into a pot, cover and simmer until soft– it’s pretty fast compared to potatoes. Drain, mash with a potato masher, add butter and salt and pepper to taste. Eat it up with a big grin. Serves 2 normal people or just me.
Later on there will be fresh homemade tagliatelle with ragù frozen the other day and a baked half of a poussin, or weensy chicken.
December 17th, 2007
I’ve just had an odd experience in the kitchen. It started in Florence when my friends and I stumbled into a little and not at all posh restaurant for supper a couple of weeks ago. I don’t even know its name, but I could find it if I had to.
The special of the evening was “fried chicken and vegetables.” Two of us ordered it. What arrived resembled in no manner fried chicken as we knew it. Instead there was a platter for the two of us piled high with something pale, fluffy and crunchy. As we munched through the pile we found small bone-in chunks of chicken, redolent of chicken essence and crisp as rice crackers. Among those and sometimes stuck to them were batons of carrot and zucchini with the same light and crispy crust. It was delicious.
After my friends returned to the USA, I started to think about that chicken. How did they do that? Why was that crust so light and crisp and filled with bubbles? How come that chicken was so juicy, when chicken is so usually over cooked in Italy? I went to the store and bought some chicken. I looked through the flours for rice flour, but there was none. Then I saw the potato starch (fecola di patata) and picked that up. I reckoned that an Italian restaurant was most likely using something you could buy in Italian shops, right?
In the kitchen I made the decision to make just a small amount, because I might have to try several approaches before I found the right batter. I used my heavy Chinese cleaver to chunk up a leg into two pieces, a thigh into three. I scattered a mixture of rosemary, salt, pepper and cayenne over it. I made carrot and zucchini sticks.
Ahhhh, the coating. I tossed about a half cup of corn starch/flour (Maizena) into a bowl, then an equal amount of the potato starch. Why did I use those? Because they have no gluten to toughen the batter. I added some of the seasoning to that, too. Then I gradually added Chinese beer that was lying around until the batter was about the consistency of yogurt. I added enough sparkling water to bring it to the consistency of cream. It would be it, or it wouldn’t.
I made up another bowl of plain flour with more of the seasoning to help the batter stick.
I heated sunflower oil in a small but deep pot, enough to deep fry the chicken pieces. One by one I dipped the chicken pieces into the flour, then into the batter, and then laid them into the hot oil. I turned them once. They almost don’t brown at all, so it’s difficult to know when they’re done, but I winged it — ha ha like a chicken — you can hit me now. When they looked done to me, I took them out and laid them on paper towels. On and on, through the chicken bites, then the vegetables, I fried.
Friends, one of those two starches is the right one. I don’t know which. The chicken and the vegetables were both just delicious, but the coating was a little hard on the edges, not perfectly falling away onto the lip in spicy, crackling shards. I thought to try just corn starch next time.
And then I thought again. This was easy. A person could do this any time a chicken happened by the kitchen counter. I liked it. I liked it too much. Perfecting this chicken might be the dumbest thing I would ever do. Does the world really need another fried chicken recipe? Does my world really need me after eating this every week for a while?
For now, the answer is no. All my clothes but one skirt currently fit. If there is one thing I learned from the ‘Chinese dumplings made easy’ episode, it’s that truly delicious and fattening things that are too easy to make are just perilous. I’ve whipped the dumplings into a once a year treat, I don’t have the character to battle this chicken too.
So go for it. It’s either all potato starch or all corn starch, a bit of beer, a bit of sparkling water. But please don’t invite me.
November 4th, 2007
