I have a tradition, no tradition is too lofty a word. A habit, an almost weekly routine, of roasting a chicken early in the week. We eat about half that night. Then I strip off most of the meat, toss the bones and skin in a pot with a couple quarts of water and simmer up some stock. Sometimes the rest of the meat gets packed into school lunches for the rest of the week. More likely, the next night the rest of the chicken and the stock become risotto or pot pie or look or chicken stew or such.
Yesterday, we had chicken roasted with cured lemons and cumin, curtesy Mark Bittman and the NYT.
http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014407-roasted-chicken-with-preserved-lemons
I roasted one chicken instead of two, and skipped the honey. Still, surprised by how much sweeter the chicken turned out than when I roast it with preserved lemons. (Cured lemons = lemons aged in juice with equal parts sugar and salt. Preserved lemons = lemons aged in juice with salt. Plus some peppercorns, bay, etc in either case.) Nice moist bird with rich pan juices to kick start the stock.
Today, we triangulate between the jook, risotto and stew to land in the the South and try out Chicken Bog from Natalie Dupree.
My stepdad gave me this cookbook three Christmases ago. Years before he’d worked on a PBS cooking show with Natalie Dupree. I was a little leery because I wasn’t crazy about the recipes I’d tried from of one of her earlier books that he’d given me. But I was intrigued that she was paying homage to Julia with the title (or having the gumption to position her book there).
I was won over by the biscuit section. It runs 10 full pages, including three pages on equipment, ingredients and techniques before she even lets you get to the seven different biscuit recipes.
Back to today: I’d been heading toward Chicken and Dumplings, but was sidetracked by this “Chicken Bog” recipe on the facing page, since she intrduces it as “a comfort food for those who ate it sitting at their mother’s kitchen table.” While I didn’t eat it at my mother’s kitchen table (I’m from LA and my mom didn’t cook; we had burritos, or jook, or pad thai.), it sounded like the perfect and easy dinner for today with the first of the promised el nino storms drumming on the windows.
And, it fact, it was perfect comfort food. Warm, rich, smooth, spoon it up food. HBG described it as jook with more chicken. Super C called it “salmon rice but with chicken.” Always a good sign then the fam compares dinner to their favorite foods. Everyone had seconds. And I’d made 1 ½ times the recipe, so there will be leftovers for the kids to have when we go out tomorrow night.
(These are the left overs. They’ll set up like risotto does. Off the stove, it was much more like a thick stew.)
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