Like a big warm overstuffed chair, snuggle in




Nabbing a fresh chicken is not
the same as nabbing a frisky chicken

  CHICKEN AND DUMPLINGS 
(it was DUMPLIN’S when I was a kid)    
serves four to six

If I were to choose my number one comfort food, it’d have to be this one.  Only good things happened to me when I was served up this one.  The check didn’t bounce, the test was negative, friends would come over and they’d bring the wine, and there’s a bonus in my paycheck.  Yup, all because of this dish.  Really. No, really.

My only issue with this dish, if there were to be any kind of negativity, is that sometimes eating boiled chicken skin doesn’t set well with me.  Well, let me re-phrase that . . . eating boiled chicken skin never sets well with me.  But I love the flavor that chicken skin can impart, and I also love the texture of simmered chicken meat, so what to do? 

My recommendation, should you wish to use cut up chicken parts and leave the skin in the dish, is to broil the salt and peppered pieces briefly (skin side up, shallowly slit at quarter inch parallels in the skin with a very sharp knife) on a flat pan to set the skin (but not to a dark color) while rendering some of the fat, then continue with the chicken in the dish as usual.  This, along with the salt and slits, will render out some of the fats (a good thing), set the skin, and give the surface a little more ‘solidity’ without forfeiting the moist tenderness that the simmer brings.  Don’t have a broiler? or don’t want to heat up the oven?  Well, in a non-stick fry pan, salt and pepper the pieces on all sides, slit the skin as above, then fry roast skin side down in a minimum of oil for a few minutes at a medium heat.  You can’t walk away, just watch the chicken, you don’t want to brown it, only give a barely golden touch and melt away a good amount of the skin fat, and set the skin. 

If you don’t care to keep the skin, then the answer is obvious.  Either purchase and use frozen, boned/skinned chicken parts; or boil the fresh chicken pieces to done in lightly salted water and remove the flesh and skin from the bones; or boil the larger parts for five minutes, remove and cool enough to remove the skin but keep the parts intact.  Use this water for the recipe broth, as the flavor has been contributed without too much fat along with it. 

As you may know, dark meat can't really 'overcook', and has the ability to remain more 'juicy', while white meat has the propensity to go 'dry' if overcooked, so I recommend installing the white meat into the dish at a later point (by about five minutes); but if not, it is, after all in liquid and won't dry out all that much. 

Tools:  large (at least 4 quart) saucepan or Dutch oven, with lid; non-stick frying pan; large mixing bowl; two smaller bowls to hold some ingredients temporarily

Prep:  Most all the vegetables will simmer along with the chicken in the broth/gravy for easily twenty minutes; so keep the simmer very low to avoid scorching and overcooking.  I recommend to flash sauté the vegetables to bring out maximum flavor and a bit of caramelizing first – sautéing the vegetables quickly in hot oil for a brief amount of time can do that, not really cooking as much as ‘forcing flavor’.  Prepare the salt pork for cutting by placing in freezer for ten to fifteen minutes prior to dicing.

Ingredients:

     10-12    cut up chicken parts, 3-4 lbs  (approx one
                       whole chicken); whether skinned, 
                       pre-broiled or pre-seared, or chunked

            1    pkg salt pork or fat back, about 8-10 ounces,
                       chilled firm, rind removed, diced ¼ inch

            1    tsp each dried thyme and basil, or 1tbs each fresh

          2-3    tbs flour (or ¼ cup if you like the gravy thicker)

            2    tbs canola oil and/or butter or 3 tbs canola and/or
                       butter if the gravy is to be thicker

            1    tbs chicken fat (reserved from making broth) 
                       Optional, but terrific here

1    medium onion, diced ½ inch; or one leek (white
                      part), split, rinsed well, and cut
                      ¼ inch slices

          1½   quarts (6 cups) low sodium chicken broth, and/or
                      reserved boiling broth.  This is where you
                      want the MAXIMUM in flavor.  Choose a
                      quality low sodium store bought option,
                      but best is to use home made, plus any
                      reduction 'demi-glace'you may have saved.

           ½    cup dry white wine or sherry

           ¼    cup regular cranberry juice cocktail (sweetened
                      with sugar or corn, not aspartame --
                      Nutrasweet)

            1    tbs Worcestershire sauce

            1    tsp Dijon mustard mixed in 1 tbs canola or olive oil

            2    small-medium carrots, diced ¾ inch

            1    lemon-sized shallot, diced ¼ inch (a back-up flavor)

            3    stalks celery

     1/2-3/4  lbs white button or Crimini (immature Portabella) or
                      Portabella mushrooms (the greater amount if
                      you like mushrooms like I do) sliced ¼ to ½ inch

            1    10 oz pkg frozen petite or regular peas, separated
                      if not thawed

            1    10 oz pkg frozen sweet corn, or 2-3 ears fresh
                      sweet corn, kernals trimmed from the ear

          2-3    cloves garlic, minced  

            1    cup heated milk, or ½ cup canned milk (best) plus
                      ½ cup milk or broth 

           ½    tsp each salt and fresh grated pepper and salt

                      adjust llater)                                                                             

                Dumplings:

                        3    cups biscuit mix (Bisquick or trusted brand)

                        1    cups milk

          1-2    tsp finely chopped parsley, chives and/or
                      tarragon (or dried flakes)

Preparation:   First off, in a smaller quart-sized bowl, prepare the dumpling dough.  Place the biscuit flour mix first, add the herbs to the flour mix and blend with a fork, then add the milk.  With the fork blend gently, not working too much as not to develop the gluten.  Dough should be sticky, not dry.  Set aside and let rest.

In the frying pan on a medium-high setting, fry the diced pork until it begins to render fat.  Add diced onion and/or sliced leek, and bring both to golden brown.  Remove pork and onions with slotted spoon and place in mixing bowl.  Drain off all fat and set aside in smaller bowl or coffee cup.

Take 1 tbs of reserved pork fat from the rendering and place back into the frying pan.  In the medium hot frying pan, add mustard/oil mixture to the pork fat, quickly blend well, then add carrots, half the salt and pepper, and sauté a quick stir then leave untouched for thirty seconds to lightly golden -- then stir again with wooden spoon while adding garlic, celery and mushrooms – and the other half of the salt and pepper.  After that addition and a gentle mixing, then leave untouched again, supervised, until you can smell their aroma -- about a minute max.  Stir and remove, and add to the bowl of pork and onions.   Stir in the frozen separated peas and corn to this warm set-aside mix to help defrost/warm.  Deglaze the frying pan with cranberry juice drink, remove and save separately, and bring saucepan or Dutch oven to heat. 

Begin heating the saucepan with just a drizzle of rendered pork fat and add the chicken parts until you hear the ’sizzle’ begin, and flip the pieces to their opposite side.  After a minute or two, over the chicken pour the deglazing liquid (if using frozen and thawed chicken bits, add them here), the Worcestershire sauce, and enough of the broth to cover, and bring to boil, lower heat and gently simmer for a good ten minutes, covered, adding broth or water as needed to keep the chicken barely covered.  The unique blend of the cranberry, mustard, Worcestershire sauces and pork flavors caramelized in the frying pan makes a great flavor base of rich, sour, sweet and bitter that perfectly complements the chicken. 

Replace the frying pan to heat and add 1 or 2 tbs of the rendered pork fat (depending on how thick you wish final gravy sauce to be) plus equal amounts of oil and bring to heat.  At this time also add chicken fat (schmaltz) if you have it.  Lovely.  Add the same amount of flour as the amount of fat/oil you selected (4 tablespoons equals ¼ cup) and blend.  Whisk well to make a roux, add spices and cook the roux for about thirty seconds.  Add the wine to the roux, whisking constantly, and then add enough of the broth slowly to alter it from a rough paste to a very thick cream.  Carefully add this frying pan roux mixture to the saucepan of chicken and minimal broth and any of the unused broth from when making the roux plus any dem-glace (reduced chicken stock) you may have.  Then add the milk, stir till well blended, then diced shallots and all the vegetables and pork reserved in the mixing bowl and bring to heat.  Stir well while bringing just to a boil then lower heat to a very gentle simmer.  The pot should be just creamy.  It shouldn’t be too thick or it could burn -- just a nice, light creamy thickness (it will thicken a bit with the cooking of the dumplings).  Adjust this thickness and level with a tiny bit more broth, water or milk if necessary.  The pot should be fairly dense of chunks of chicken and vegetables.  The reason for the low flame is a caution; the ingredients are all already cooked, except the par-cooked vegetables, and none can be touched to stir away from the bottom after the dumplings are added. 

For only a brief bit of time, raise the heat to a boil.  Stir up all the ingredients from the bottom one final time.  On the simmering surface of the ‘gravy’, drop the dumpling dough with the fork and a spoon (the back of the spoon pushing from the fork), a ‘golf ball’ sized round -- and yeah, that fork-shaped round will be all rough and not perfect, as it should be. Drop it gently onto the surface, don’t drop it into the depth.  You should be able to place ten to twelve rounds over the entire surface.  Cover, reduce to a gentle heat and simmer (steam) very low for ten minutes; then remove the cover and simmer for another ten.  These last twenty minutes may be instead done in a 350° oven if the cooking vessel is a Dutch oven or similar vessel, and you've brought the mix to a boil first. Cover for ten minutes, and uncover for ten minutes as with the stovetop preparation.

Next step, call me for dinner.

Options:  Use prepared frozen chicken parts, boneless and skinless thighs, wings, breasts, and/or tenders.  Place frozen in saucepan with thyme and basil when adding the deglazing liquid and slowly heat to thaw.  If using larger parts, like the breast or full thigh pieces, then those parts can now be carefully removed to a cutting board and cut to more practical generous bite-sized portions (they’ll shrink some) and replaced to saucepan.

Other tasty vegetables to add:  greens/chard, turnips, parsnips, green beans, or any personal favorite.  A dusting of lemon zest just before adding the dumplings on top will perk up all the flavors nicely.

Something new?  Canned water chestnuts, baby corn, bamboo shoots, or hearts of palm; par-cooked diced winter squashes like butternut, acorn or delicata – or the summer varieties like yellow crook neck, zucchini or calabacita; other meats in addition to the chicken, like diced ham, duck, sausages and salamis, or veal, organ (liver, heart, kidneys) or other light beef cuts (tongue, sweetbreads); or added liquids such as heavy cream (kinda bad but so good); or prepared vegetable liquids such as creamed corn, any ‘baby food’ puréed vegetables, or small quantities of canned soup varieties such as creamed celery/mushroom/potato or asparagus (but watch the salts).  Pay ‘flavor’ attention when walking through the isles of the supermarket.

OPTIONAL:  Many restaurants, kitchens and home cooks also opt to cook the soup and the dumplings separately.  Prepare and simmer the soup to a perfect done to your liking without the dumplings.  In a separate sauce pan in about an inch of salted broth, carefully place the dumpling dough as with the original soup recipe - gently in the simmer, ten minutes covered, ten minutes uncovered.  Upon completion, add the dumplings with each serving at the table, or for a perfect presentation - place the soup with dumplings carefully placed on top in the serving tourine. 

The trade off with this method is that the preparation is easier to make without scorching or ending up with mis-cooked ingredients - however, the the luscious myriad of flavors in the soup won't be as deeply imparted into the tender dumplings as if they had been cooked together.  But all in all, it's a good opt - especially for the first timer. 



Coppery orange, creamy white or golden brown  -
pasta and cheese were made to live together!



MACARONI
AND CHEESE 

(aka MAC & CHEESE) PLEASE        serves six to eight

You can’t praise chicken and dumplings without quickly also breathing out the words ‘macaroni and cheese’ – especially if you’re speaking somewhere in the heading of the popular term, ‘comfort food’.  Hey, when I was a kid, that term didn’t exist.  Mom definitely served all kinds of comforting food dishes, but we knew them by what they did to our mouths and bellies, not that they were categorized into a genre of food type.

And I have to confess, Mom made hers with Velveeta along with other cheeses, and I loved it.  I virtually lived on mac and cheese in college, the kind that comes powdered in a little blue box, and amazingly I still love that variety today as well.  I don’t mind if my mac and cheese is a quick stovetop throw-together or a gooey creation of munchy goodness that was lovingly baked in the oven.  You just can’t – and don’t dare – ignore a superstar.

So one of the many ways to make it, here be it:

Preheat oven to 350°

Prep:  I use four cheeses, well, actually five, in my mac and cheese, so fresh grating of the necessary cheeses recently before using is best.  I know, busy folks and even busier moms choose the pre-shredded cheeses, but just remember – they have been chemically altered in texture and use preservatives to be able to stay so ‘fresh’ in spite of all that surface area exposed to air.  There is a compromise of flavor and texture in action with this selection, but it’ll 'do'. 

Grate the solid cheeses while cold, for best gratability; but allow the cheeses to come to room temperature so that they might better meld with the hot white sauce.

Tools:  Grater (box type, or wheel in the processor), saucepan, mixing bowl, 3 qt (minimum) casserole dish for baking

Ingredients:

               4     tbs butter, ½ cube (or half it with olive oil or
                           heart-healthy margarine)

              ¼     cup flour (I’d stick with AP wheat flour here)

             2-3    tbs (splash) dry white wine or sherry

              1      pound of small to medium sized textured pasta
                           (elbow mac – the ‘traditional’, or spiral,
                           wagon wheel,  small rigatoni, small shells,
                           penne, etc)

             6-8    oz each of these four cheeses:  Swiss/Gruyère,
                           Monterey Jack (try pepper Jack!), white
                           cheddar (for color consistency, but orange
                           is ok), and cream cheese

              3     cups milk (whole; 2%; and/or canned/evapo-
                           rated, thinned slightly with chicken stock/
                           2% and/or water), room temperature if not
                           warmer, best is to start with canned and
                           proceed from there

             ¼     tsp (pinch) nutmeg

             ¼     tsp (pinch) cayenne

             ½     tsp crushed dried oregano or marjoram

              1     tbs dry mustard, added to flour

              1     tbs Worcestershire sauce (added to milk)

             ½     tsp salt (remember, the cheese element is
                           loaded with salt)

             ½     tsp pepper

              1     clove garlic, crushed or minced

           

            1-2    slices bread (crust removed as you like),
                          broken into bits

            2-3    leaves fresh basil             

             ¼    cup Parmesan cheese

             ¼    cup broken up thick potato chips (like
                          what’s left in the bottom of the bag)     

Preparation:  Bring a saucepan to medium hot heat and add the oil/butter and allow water content to evaporate.  Add the garlic and herbs and spices and allow to bloom to fragrant, just a few seconds.  Stir in the flour and mustard and make a paste, gently moving and stirring to cook the ‘raw’ from the flour.  Add the wine/sherry and whisk to incorporate; it will be a thick stretchy paste that will ease up bit by bit as you add the milk.  Slowly add about a half-cup of milk at a time, whisking with each add into the mass; and as you add, the base sauce (this is called a white gravy or a ‘Bechamel’ sauce – pronounced besh-a-mel) will loosen to a gravy consistency.  When nice and rich, just barely approaching ‘thick’, lower the heat way down, drop in dollops of the cream cheese and stir in well to melt and blend.  Taste and adjust seasonings.

Meanwhile you’ve boiled the pasta in lots of water (at least a gallon) and a few tbs or so of salt and brought the morsels to a nice just barely under-done state, or al dente.  Test by biting a bit.  Drain and shake water off well.  Do NOT rinse.  The pasta will finish cooking in the cheese sauce while in the oven.

To the still very warm sauce, fold in the room temperature cheeses, just a bit or handful at a time (all at once will make the sauce do ugly things), and blend well.  You may want to trade the whisk for a wooden spoon.  When completely brought together, in the mixing bowl (or if you’ve used a sizable enough saucepan to start with, keep on using it) carefully fold the cheese sauce and still hot pasta together with a very gentle stir.  Both should be warm, but not scalding hot, so mixing should be relatively easy to do.  Just don’t hurry, as you could break apart the pasta bits.

Carefully pour this mix into your casserole and level it out. It may help to pre-grease or use a release cooking spray into the casserole first, but hey, cheese is cheese, and it will stick.  A good, soapy hot water soak after emptying the casserole with a bit of vinegar and baking soda or salt will make it all clean easier.

Whirl bread chunks, basil, finely chopped garlic, Parmesan cheese and chips in the processor, pulsing to make into a crumble and sprinkle this mix over the top of the macaroni and cheese sauce mix (or try Panko bread crumbs over the cheese).  Gently press the crumble partially into the mac and cheese with the back of a spoon or spatula.  Place in the oven just to bring to heat, to finish the pasta, and to bring to golden the crunchy herb flavored top, about twenty to twenty-five minutes.  Don’t walk away or get distracted.  A timer is a great friend here.

Go back in your mind to all those kid days.

Options:  Four to six individual casseroles, ramekins, or soufflé dishes may be used instead of one large baking dish, and reduce the cooking time to fifteen to twenty minutes.

You can certainly keep this as an easier stovetop creation.  Just bring the pasta to done, drain well, and fold completely while hot with the hot cheese sauce (make the white sauce a bit thicker) in the large-enough saucepan and serve (don’t try to heat it on a burner while combined, you’ll just scorch it).  I can’t wait either.

Want to ‘adult’ it up a bit?  Just a quarter to half a cup of grated/crumbled feta, fontina, bleu/Gorgonzola/Stilton, Brie, Camembert, goat cheese/chevre or whichever your personal favorite might be, and the flavor is upped just a nice bit.

It’s all good, and adding another texture and protein to the mac and cheese is a fun one-dish meal alternative.  Bits of chicken (even nuggets stirred in the last is great for the kids), beef (kielbasa, leftover roast, diced steak etc), and pork (the pulled pork in this book, sausages, chorizo, bacon, roast etc) are all wonderful to add, but also consider shellfish – shrimp, mussels, clams, oysters, lobster, crab – added last (to finish in the oven, keep the oven time guarded), can you taste it now?   A perfect finish to a classically wonderful dish.

Some folks sauté diced up vegetables to golden to add at the beginning, like cooked-till-done red or green bell peppers, mild chile peppers, onions, celery, and/or broccoli, green string or French beans, diced yellow/green squash (zucchini and crook neck), cauliflower, roasted eggplant, artichoke hearts, and on and on.  A cheesy way to get those good things in there.  Rough chopped olives, bits of sun-dried tomatoes, bits of anchovies, capers (both a great salt replacement) add a nice flavor spike.

Want to go off the charts?  Gently sauté up a half pound or so of your favorite mushrooms, sliced:  Wild, button, Crimini, re-constituted shiitake, morels, portabella – you can’t go wrong.  Just gently fold in with the pasta.

Got enough munch?  Well, we always have the ever-faithful toasted nuts; water chestnuts; baby corn; fresh or freshly un- frozen peas, sweet corn, or beans.  Hey, it’s your childhood!