Taking Stock and Chicken Stock

 

After being unable to navigate the new PicMonkey photo editor that began January first, I kept putting off my first 2021 post here at the Window.

Instead I jumped into 2021 wanting to pack away all my Christmas stuff, strange for me, and even stranger, I had a huge desire to declutter and simplify. After leaving behind and getting rid of so much stuff when we moved to Florida in 2016 and then back again nine months later, I think I was too shell-shocked to let go of anything more.

But I woke up January 2, 2021 ready for change and started in my kitchen, filling boxes of stuff to give away or donate. And then just as I was thinking about posting again, on January 6th I watched television in horror as our beloved Capitol Building was invaded and police attacked. The thought of more that could have happened has given me nightmares.  After what our country has been through lately, anything as trivial as blogging fled my mind.

I admit here that this has hit me hard. I haven't been able to keep from watching hour after hour of the news this past week. I hope that those responsible for what happened will be brought to justice, the violence in our country stopped, and that a peaceful inauguration will take place on Wednesday.

I finally felt drawn back to the blogging world and yesterday figured out the BeFunky photo editing that blog friends told me about. Actually I just put myself in the site's automatic editing hand for now until I have time and patience to try out doing it manually. And what important subject do I tackle for my first blog post here of 2021? 

The subject of chicken stock, what else?

While I've made my own chicken stock for years because it's so much richer and better than store-bought stock, I first began making it many years ago simply because we were broke, work dried up in our family business during the first Gulf war. I began saving all chicken bone scraps in the freezer for that purpose, something I don't remember even my frugal mother doing. 

I still do that even though I now keep organic chicken bone broth sold at Costco in my pantry too for backup as cooking for two just doesn't often produce the amount of carcass and bones needed for a large pot of stock.

Our New Year's Day roast chicken produced enough scraps and bones and drippings for two large jars of stock and the small jar shown below. See how rich it looks!

I used it this week to cook a bag of the fresh purple hull peas we froze last summer, using saffron in it to make my favorite peas.

Now I know that the Barefoot Contessa's recipe for roasted chicken is popular, but I remain faithful to Pat Conroy's recipe in his The Pat Conroy Cookbook.

 

 Basically, his recipe says to first heat 1/2 stick unsalted butter and 1/4 cup olive oil together till foamy, about 3 minutes. Then you fill cavity of bird with 1 peeled shallot, 2 garlic cloves peeled and mashed, sprigs of fresh thyme and rosemary, and a teaspoon of black peppercorns.

Then rub the chicken with 1/2 lemon and put it into cavity. Put other lemon half in pan along with extra cloves of garlic. Then baste bird with the butter/olive oil mix.

Dust with paprika, salt and freshly ground pepper and add bacon strips over top of chicken.

Roast at 375 degrees F. for 1 hour or more, wiggling legs, checking for temperature of 170 degrees F. in thigh.

Don't do as I did on New Year's Day! Don't forget about the chicken! 

 I have to say that it was delicious anyway, especially after dabbing on Conroy's Grainy Mustard Sauce that goes with the chicken. 

You combine 1/2 cup dry Vermouth (I don't keep Vermouth so substitute dry Sherry) with 1 cup chicken stock in saucepan over moderately high heat till reduced by half.

Whisk in 1/4 cup grainy Dijon mustard and reduce the heat, simmering until slightly thickened, about 3 to 5 minutes.

Add 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh tarragon (cold weather got mine so I used a teaspoon of dried tarragon) and 1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh thyme (I keep a pot of this going in my kitchen window year round), add kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

It's excellent sauce!

 With the chicken, New Year's Day tradition called for Gourmet magazine's collard greens in my largest pot.

Which wilts down a lot but still makes a mess of greens.

And black-eyed peas, soaked the night before, and some of my hot hot hot sauce on both the peas and greens.

For a starchy side I fixed Lee Bailey's orzo with onions sautéed in butter and oil-cured black olives.

 

By the way, the chicken stock this all begins with depends on what's in my produce bin but mostly contains the chicken carcass and bones and drippings along with onions and garlic, washed but not peeled, celery stalks, and a few carrots wshed and cut, and fresh herbs (I save herb stems in the freezer for this too), plus a tablespoon of herbs de Provence, 4 bay leaves, a dozen whole cloves, and 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce, and water to cover (I use distilled water for the clearest broth!). The herbs should have gone underneath the chicken carcass but I forgot.

 And never stir the stock! But do skim off the scum.

And that gives you some mighty fine broth!

I feel kind of foolish posting a recipe like this since most of you already have your favorite stock recipes. It's kind of like all the young YouTubers who do beautiful vlogs teaching how to do the simplest recipes you'd think everyone already knows. But even so, I love watching their channels and they do often teach this old dog some new tricks and inspire me with their enthusiasm and beautiful work. I admit that I've become a huge YouTube fan of so many of these young women. 

But I do wish they wouldn't twist their biscuit cutter when making biscuits, a big no-no, and that they wouldn't use a garlic press without first cutting out the germ inside. Even when it hasn't turned green it still has an objectionable taste and chefs from the 1960s taught me better than that.

But do I ever leave negative comments on those subjects for them? Not on your life! It amazes me that people do that. I cannot understand the thumbs down clicks on vlogs either. I mean, why not just unsubscribe if you don't like their channel? At least these people are brave enough to have their own channels, so more power to them.

Sorry for my first and probably only rant of 2021. I wanted to start this year off feeling washed clean.

But my rant is meant to be in support of anyone with the gumption to vlog about their personal home life without other women putting them down. 

Please excuse the length of this post! I'll work on my others being shorter, most of the time. And anyhow, you always have the option to exit. Which reminds me that I want to thank you for still visiting here. 

You're so very nice to still do that! 

I see a red light telling me my laptop is about to go dead so am publishing this without proofreading. I'll probably catch mistakes in the next few days and fix them. What, doesn't everyone correct their posts days after they're published? 

 

Judith Huxley's Marinated Olives with Alison Roman's Vinegar Chicken

It was a happy merging!

I wanted to try Alison Roman's Vinegar Chicken with Crushed Olive Dressing that was a most requested New York Times recipe after seeing it here on Ted Kennedy Watson's beautiful blog. Every recipe I've tried of Roman's has been delicious and I knew this one would be, too.

But as I read the recipe I thought of the partial jar in my fridge of Judith Huxley's Marinated Olives with Citrus and Fennel, the olives that my daughter-in-law loves and helps make when she visits. 

All of the ingredients in Huxley's recipe from her wonderful cookbook, Table for Eight, could only enhance Roman's recipe so I stirred them into all the good drippings of the chicken dish, the olives and remaining liquid in the jar.

It was amazing! 

I wanted to share this recipe with you so this week I made up another jar of Judith Huxley's marinated olives so I could take a picture of it. We'll snack on the jar of olives until there's about half left and then I'll once again use the remainder for another recipe of Alison Roman's Vinegar Chicken with Crushed Olive Dressing. 

 You'll need:

1 pound jar of olives, drained and rinsed under water.
     (She calls for calamata but I use these pitted Sicilian olives.)

2 garlic cloves, peeled and lightly crushed.

Rinds of 1 orange and 1 lemon, peeled with a citrus stripper in long, thin strips. (I just zest the lemon and orange but I'm sure the strips would be even better.)

Juice of the lemon and orange.

2 tablespoons of fennel seed. (And I use a little  oregano from Crete that is wonderfully aromatic.)

Pack the drained olives, crushed garlic cloves, strips (or zest) of citrus, and fennel seeds in a pint jar.

Add citrus juice and then fill to the brim with olive oil. Cover, refrigerate, and shake the jar when you think of it. Wait a day or two to use, bringing to room temperature before serving. 

I used this beautiful vintage pink Italian jar marked Abagal's Useful Jar. Isn't it pretty? I badly need a rubber gasket for it. 

 Again, the recipe for the chicken is here.https://www.tedkennedywatson.com/2020/01/02/vinegar-chicken-with-crushed-olive-dressing/ 

And a little extra cooking note--if you ever see this olive oil for sale, snap it up. I sipped this olive oil by the spoonful as well as making salad vinaigrette with it.

RH bought it at Costco around Christmas for about $14 and it was wonderful! Naturally they were out of it when he went back and I found it on Amazon for $40 a bottle. I just can't justify that but we will be watching for it next Christmas. 

And I hope that someone tries Alison Roman's chicken dish. With beef prices soaring, chicken is a good choice now. And I wish I could suggest Judith's Huxley's olive recipe to Alison Roman as it is a match made in heaven with her chicken dish.

Huxley's one and only cookbook was published posthumously. I read it year round as it is organized by the month. She was food columnist for The Washington Post and was married to Matthew Huxley who was an epidemiologist. And Matthew was the son of Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World and screenwriter for 1940s Pride and Prejudice. 

All of that has nothing to do with these recipes but I found it interesting. 

You Say Potato, I Say Potato...Salad

There is no such thing as really bad potato salad. So long as the potatoes are not undercooked, it all tastes pretty good to me.

Laurie Colwin in Home Cooking

   
I love good potato salad. Do you?

Everyone has their own favorite recipe for potato salad so the only reason I presume to give a recipe for it here is that my gal Nathalie Dupree's recipe has been our family favorite for two decades, and her technique in making it is different from most. 

 Here's her recipe with a few of my own additions.

Boil new potatoes until tender and drain on tea towel. I agree with Laurie Colwin about undercooked potatoes so I err on the side of overcooked.

While potatoes are cooking chop 6-8 ribs of celery and one large onion. Lots of nice fresh celery leaves chopped is a plus.

[If you love celery leaves as much as I do, this really helps to keep them pretty longer: before putting celery in the fridge after buying it, cut off the tops that have nice leaves and plop them in a bowl of cold water while you're putting other groceries up. Change the water a few times, dry well with a tea towel, wrap in paper towel and put in plastic bag or covered bowl in fridge to use as needed.]

Peel potatoes while still hot and put on top of the chopped onion and celery. I crosswise slice them with a knife while still warm in the bowl and then pour over equal amounts of a good apple cider vinegar and olive oil, about a 1/3 cup of each. 

Season with salt and pepper and chill in fridge overnight or at least 2-4 hours. 
 
Stir in 1 cup of mayonnaise and refrigerate another two hours. [I also then add hard boiled eggs, cubed, and sliced olives, and extra mayonnaise if needed.]

Just before serving stir in a few tablespoons of sour cream. Dust with paprika if you like it as much as I do. Delicious!

And how about some Caesar-crusted Crispy Chicken Strips on lettuce to go with it?

 Combine 1/2 cup of Caesar dressing with 1/4 cup buttermilk, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Add 2 pounds of chicken strips and toss to coat.

Combine 1 cup Japanese panko, 1/2 cup flour, and 2 tablespoons dried parsley. 

Dredge chicken in breadcrumb mixture, pressing crumbs in gently. Place on baking sheet. Chill at least 30 minutes in fridge.

Cook chicken in batches in coconut oil, not crowding, 3-4 minutes on each side till golden brown. Drain on paper towels.

Serve warm with Caesar dressing on Romaine leaves. [My favorite container for mixing a vinaigrette or dressing is a jam jar with handle from a thrift store!]

Comfort food! 

Another really good recipe for chicken strips I tried recently was from Half-Baked Harvest's Spicy Honey Mustard Pretzel Crusted Chicken Fingers. Recipe here. 

How are you doing this week? Anyone else feeling kind of jittery lately? When I realized it had been 39 days since I'd left our property, I asked RH to take me for a drive in the country. 

That helped and I took some pictures of pretty dogwoods in bloom and cows and horses grazing.

A post like this seems trivial, so much of social media does now. Next week some non-essential businesses here in Tennessee are set to reopen in Phase I. How about in your state? 

How are you feeling?

Pinecones and French China

I've long wanted to do a table around this pinecone pitcher we

found years ago in the mountains of East Tennessee.

These pinecone hurricanes that we got years ago in the

Bob Timberlake store in Blowing Rock, NC go nicely with the pitcher.

I use battery operated candles with them now.

Why buy flowers when the Kousa dogwood outside is still glorious?

But pinecones and fall leaves aren't all I'm thinking of as I set this table.

As we all have been, I'm thinking about Paris too.

I don't have many French dishes but I pull out what I do have.

These French faience plates we found in a Goodwill one day go on the bare table.

I posted about finding them one serendipitous day HERE.

We found these little bowls over 40 years ago in a restaurant supply store.

They aren't French but they read Petite Marmité Restaurant

and are perfect for the first course of Consomme Creams.

It's from Mildred O. Knopf's excellent 1986 Memoirs of a Cook.

She was wife of movie producer Edwin H. Knopf who was brother to

Alfred A. Knopf who published the cookbooks of a nice lady by the name of

Julia Child. Mildred was a star in the kitchen too.

We must have bread, so let's have a baguette.

And let's make it a baguette from France, non-gmo

with only flour, water, yeast and salt in it.

Costco carries it!

For our entree I followed Dorie Greenspan's recipe for Sheet Pan

Chicken with Apples and Kale.

The pictures on the right are before it went in the oven,

and the finished dish was delicious, as are all of Greenspan's.

She and her husband landed in France the night of the horrible attacks

and only heard the news when in their taxi.

HERE is a link to her recipe.

For our salad we'll have an avocado bacon salad from one of my favorite

regional cookbooks, Southern Sideboards. It's served on a French ironstone platter.

The dressing is yummy!

Juice from a lime or two, 1/4 cup olive oil, 1/2 cup of sour cream,

1/4 cup mayonnaise, and 2 cloves of garlic, minced.

Thank you for letting me make like a tablescaping and food blogger!

Don't you find that it's comforting to lose yourself in homey things

when your heart is heavy? I do.

I hope to post the dessert to this meal next.

It's by a French actress who is not so well known in this country.

I'll save her name for the post but she was "strongly considered for the lead

in Casablanca."

For the Price of a Bowl of Soup

"For the price of a bowl of soup I bought today at an old bookshop

a volume to me infinitely valuable--

a boon, a prize, a priceless possession.

All the way home on the train I read it:

I was enlarged, I acquired merit, I added to my life."

 David Grayson in The Countryman's Year
 

Have you ever felt that way about a book?

This old 1943 book, Richardson Wright's The Bed-Book of Eating and Drinking, found "for the price of a bowl of soup," has been a real treasure to me. In it he does for the table what he did for the garden in his classic The Gardener's Bed-Book.

This old first edition, while missing its dustjacket, is full of helpful tidbits from the longtime Editor in chief of House and Garden. And all from a man's viewpoint, or at least from the viewpoint of a man of his time. I honestly can't see R.H. caring whether his soup is served from a soup tureen or not, but Mr. Wright surely cared.

 

"Now the purpose of using a tureen at table,

apart from displaying a charming vessel, is to keep the soup hot...

Further, I believe that the soup should be a surprise,

the kind to come shouldn't be announced beforehand."

Richardson Wright

Do any of you have a soup tureen? Do you use it? I would love to have one like the Spode's Pink Tower above, or in any of the Spode patterns that I collect but wonder if I would actually use it.

 I like what Mr. Wright says about keeping the soup a surprise. Sometimes we give away all the fun of a meal by telling what's for supper, when it would be more dramatic to bring a soup tureen to the table and lift the lid. 

I'm not sure I would even have room for a soup tureen so I'll continue to use my favorite Le Cruset soup pot to serve from. 

We all have favorite chicken soup recipes so I won't put mine here but I do have a new favorite ingredient. Five minutes before serving the soup I stir in chopped baby bok choy. It is so much better than the large bok choy in soup.

I served mine with finely cut basil in two Mikasa "Chelsea Vine" bowls found at Goodwill. The placemats and napkins are from there too. 

This soup started off the night before as Roast Chicken, Pat Conroy's recipe--found HERE 
at my old blog--except that this time I included Richardson Wright's suggestion:

"Before you tuck away a chicken to roast,

rub it with this mixture:

1/2 powdered ginger and 1/4 mustard and 1/4 salt.

Things happen to that chicken's flavor."

I assumed he meant teaspoons here and dry mustard and it very definitely added to the flavor and color of the chicken.

I always save the leftover skin and bones and scraps to make broth the next morning, which is the basis of several different kinds of chicken soup the next day with the leftover chicken added. 

Maybe someday I'll find a soup tureen at Goodwill with my name on it. Meanwhile I always find other hidden treasures in the book aisle. Choose the sticker of the day color and their books are half price. 

"For the price of a bowl of soup" you might find a book to read or to read to someone else that is priceless.

Even magical?