A passage to India

I'm not much on semi-prepared foods -- stuff like Ragu spaghetti sauce.  I have always figured if you're going to make good spaghetti you need to make your own sauce, and my record is clear: I've never used a jar of that stuff in my life.

But that's Italian, my adopted heritage cuisine.  When it comes to other, more exotic ethnicities I'm open to all the help I can get.  I've recently started buying Indian simmer sauces and find them an easy way to get dinner on the table with a minimum of work.  (Even though I think the name "simmer sauce" is way too marketing-adorable for ordinary people to utter.)

Take the skin off a pack of chicken thighs, brown them (optional, I guess), then pour the sauce over.  I had some fresh ginger, so I minced up a good chunk of it and added it for more pep.  It simmered for a half hour or so, then I added cauliflower, ubiquitous on Indian menus.  Made plain white rice in the rice cooker.

The best part was what happened to the cauliflower -- bright delicate orange on the flowers, paler gold on the stalks.  I don't know what a real Indian would think of this dish but we give it an A for fast, easy and good.

No-work chicken-in-the-pot

A houseful of people came over for dinner the other night and I didn't want to do any serious cooking.  So I decided to make my one-dish no-work chicken -- nice enough for company and fairly easy to make.  I always like dinner menus where you can get your preparation done early in the afternoon, then retreat to sew, play Killer Sudoku or read a book while the food cooks itself.  And occasionally I like recipes where you can open some cans instead of making everything from scratch, thus getting me out of the kitchen faster.

This dish can be done on the top of the stove in a dutch oven or in a crockpot (that way takes a bit longer and probably isn't quite as delicious, but it's pretty darn good).

I had seven people for dinner, three of whom are BIG MEN, and I started with just over two pounds of skinless, boneless chicken breasts.  I cut each one into three chunks so those of us who are not BIG MEN could take smaller servings.  I browned them in a bit of olive oil over high heat and removed them to a plate.

I cut four onions in half and then sliced them into long skinny threads, put them into the pot that the chicken had been in, and cooked them for a while on medium heat till the onions got translucent.  Had I felt ambitious I might have kept on till they started to caramelize and turn brown, but I didn't want to spend the whole day in the kitchen.

While the onions cooked I chopped up some garlic and threw it in with the onions.  How much garlic to use in any dish is always a very personal decision -- use as much as you and your guests can tolerate.  But remember that cooked garlic isn't anywhere near as strong as raw, so be brave.

Our rosemary plant has been looking healthy and starting its spring growth spurt, so I cut a foot-long sprig and buried it underneath the onions.  Dumped the chicken back into the pot and added a can of cream of chicken soup, about a half can of white wine, and a can of artichoke hearts, cut into quarters.  Ground some black pepper over the top.   After everything had warmed up and started to cook enthusiastically I turned the heat down so the liquid was barely moving, with languid bubbles every now and then.  And went away for three hours.

While I did other things the ingredients cooked together and made their own gravy, which we ate over mashed potatoes.  If you didn't want to do potatoes, you could serve a sturdy bread to sop up the gravy.

If you use a crockpot, you wouldn't bother with browning the chicken or the onions -- just dump everything into the pot and go off to work.  The dish might be a bit paler but it will taste just fine.  You might even put some quartered potatoes into the pot and let them cook with the chicken.  (I guess you could do that in the dutch oven, too, and save yourself the trouble of making mashed potatoes.)

If you aren't having lots of BIG MEN over for dinner, use just one package of chicken breasts, about one pound.  But still use one can each of soup and artichokes.  You'll end up with proportionally more vegetables and gravy but it won't change the taste, consistency or effect.

Chicken salad days

I've always loved chicken salad.  High on my food nostalgia list is the chicken salad sandwich from the old Stewart's Tea Room in Louisville, one of those gracious dining spots in old-fashioned department stores where little old ladies would stop for a bite after a hard morning of shopping.  Younger women like me who worked within a couple of blocks of the store would also pop over for lunch when we needed some comfort food, and if we really needed comforting we might stop at the candy counter on the way back to the office and buy one piece of chocolate apiece for dessert.  (Men wouldn't be caught dead in the place.)

But low on my food nostalgia list are a lot of chicken salads I've ordered with mystery ingredients and strange dressings that made me think "never again."  I don't like pickle relish in my chicken salad, nor raw onions or carrots or dried cranberries or raisins, nor chow mein noodles, nor so much watery miracle whip that it  turns your toast soggy and runs down your face when you bite.  And I'm sure I've repressed a lot of other strange things that I've eaten under the guise of chicken salad. 

I would keep track of lunch restaurants by whether I liked the chicken salad and/or the tuna salad, and found that the ones where I didn't far outnumbered the ones where I did. 

For many years I've indulged myself in a container of chicken salad from the ready-to-eat counter at Kroger on days when I need a little something special, like on the way home from the hospital after outpatient surgery.  Kroger used to make two kinds of chicken salad, one with artichoke hearts and one with red grapes.  I much preferred the artichoke version, so of course they quit making it.  The grape version is OK, although I practiced delayed gratification and immediately ate up all the grapes so I could enjoy the rest of the salad unadulterated.  The salads from other groceries, many of which I bought and ate in my car in the parking lot or in motel rooms, were sometimes good, sometimes less so.

For some reason it had never occurred to me to make my own chicken salad, until I found myself with a three-pound pack of boneless breasts, only a half-pound of which were needed for my culinary emergency.  What to do with the rest????

I decided to poach them and turn some of them into salad.  There was celery in the fridge, and mayo, and this bare-bones recipe turned out to be the best chicken salad since Stewart's Tea Room closed its doors decades ago.  And best of all, there was enough for a couple of lunches and a couple of  breakfasts.

I was pleased at how quickly the chicken cooked (maybe 20 minutes at a simmer) and how easy it was to assemble the salad.  But three-ingredient recipes are always pretty easy.  Sometime in the future I might add some chopped walnuts, or mix some pesto in with the mayo, or add lettuce to a sandwich.  Or maybe not.  Plain was just about perfect.

A chicken in every pot

Every now and then it pays to review your recipe files.  You may find something delicious that hasn't made it into your mental recipe file.  The other day I came across a chicken dish that I forgot I ever made, although I must have liked it enough to type it in to my cookbook document.  So I made it and yes, it was good enough for company.  You might like it too.

This is one of these dishes where you spend a half hour in the morning or early afternoon chopping and slicing and sauteeing, getting the stove and the counter and yourself all greasy, but then you leave it to simmer by itself while you wash up and take a walk or work on your quilts or read a book until dinner.  Particularly nice in summer when you want to get your hot work out of the way early in the day.

This is a recipe that doesn't require much measuring or precision, since I don't like either one.   I call it Chicken With Onions, Garlic and Lemon.  In addition to the name partners, you'll also need some fresh herb (I used rosemary) and some wine.  And of course you can substitute if you want, with broth instead of wine, olives or capers instead of or in addition to garlic, and whatever else might strike your fancy.

Start with a package of chicken thighs, although you could use other parts.  Strip off the skin and put it into a big covered pot or dutch oven over high heat until it has rendered off some fat in which you can brown the chicken.  When the chicken is nicely browned on all sides, take it out of the pot and put it on a plate. 

Meanwhile slice two or three onions, which you will cook in the same pot after the chicken is out.  There should be a little fat left in the pot so the onions don't burn; if not, put the chicken skin back in for a bit and render off a little more.   Turn the heat down and let the onions cook for about 15 minutes till they get brown.  Stir every now and then so they don't stick.  Throw out the chicken skin.

While that's going on, dice some garlic.  I used five cloves and it didn't seem overwhelming, but we are garlic lovers; you may want more or less.   Finally, take the peel off a lemon and cut it into small pieces, cut the lemon into two or four pieces and remove the seeds.

Add the garlic to the pot when the onions are just about finished.  Then add a good schluck of marsala, sherry or vermouth to deglaze the pan, and stir everything around for a bit.  Lay a couple of big sprigs of your chosen herb on top of the onions, then put the chicken back into the pot, along with any juices that have leaked out onto the plate.  Rinse the plate but keep it around for a later step.  Squeeze the lemon into the pot, and throw it in, along with the peel. 

Now add about a cup of wine.  I used white, but red would do.  Cover the pot and adjust heat so everything is simmering.  Go away and have fun for at least two hours.

Then return to the kitchen and check whether the chicken is falling off the bone.  If it is, take each of the chicken pieces out of the pot and put on your work plate.  Separate the meat from the bones, and also pick out any nasty bits of gristle.  Put the meat back in the pot, and throw out the bones and other debris.  Also look at the lemon chunks; the pulp may have already cooked itself into liquid and disappeared, but if it hasn't, separate the pulp from the white pith, stir the pulp into the sauce and throw the pith away.

If you like, you could take the pot off the stove right now, stow it in the fridge and warm it up tomorrow.  Or put it back at a simmer and hold till dinner.

Do check every now and then  that the liquid in the pot hasn't boiled away.  You will want a good half cup or more of rich brown sauce to serve with the chicken, so if the liquid is getting low, augment with some water or chicken broth.

I had my sous chef make mashed potatoes to go with, but you could also serve with noodles, rice or bread.