comfort food, harry potter, resolutions.

ina garten's chicken stew with biscuits.

last night my lovely neighbors came over to help me prepare a delicious feast. now, the more cynical of you may challenge: "um, kristina, one dish is not a feast." and to you i say, obviously you have not had Ina's (the Barefoot Contessa for non-Food Network viewers or those of you living in the mountains in caves) chicken stew with biscuits. Not only is it hearty, buttery and delicious, the damn thing weighs in at about...6 pounds. this is a guesstimation, but cannot be far off; i am rather fit and strong and i had trouble pulling it out of the oven and placing it on my stove.

it is not something you would want to make:

1. on a night when you only have 30 minutes to round up whatever is in your fridge for dinner
2. when it is over 75 degrees out
3. if you are on any sort of diet or have concerns about consuming a dish containing 3 sticks of butter
4. if your goal in life is to eat cardboard to stay thin rather than eat deliciously
5. if you have been ignoring your push-ups--you'll need some upper body gusto to drag this thing outta the oven

i would not say it is a complex recipe to execute, but i will say it is time consuming--prep would be about 30-40 minutes, cook time about 45--and you will use every dish, utensil, and gadget in your kitchen, therefore leaving you with a mountain of floury, stew-y, crusted things to wash afterwards. (this will be impossible without help because you will be in a food coma after consuming.)

serves 8-12

you will need:

• 3 whole (6 split) chicken breasts, bone in, skin on (or 1 whole pre-roasted chicken from your grocery store, with all the meat shredded)
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 5 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade (for those of us without 3 freezers to store Ina's 6 quarts of stock, Kitchen Basics brand is best)
• 2 chicken bouillon cubes--i forgot these
• 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 2 cups chopped yellow onions (2 onions)
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup heavy cream (i used half and half)
• 2 cups medium-diced carrots (4 carrots), blanched for 2 minutes (forgot to blanch)
• 1 10-ounce package frozen peas (2 cups)
• 1 1/2 cups frozen small whole onions (< ^ this is a lot of onions, folks. i now use green beans instead)
• 1/2 cup minced fresh parsley

For the biscuits:

nocoupons

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 pound (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, diced
• 3/4 cup half-and-half
• 1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 1 egg mixed with 1 tablespoon water, for egg wash

preheat your oven to 375.

if you are roasting chicken breasts, place on a large sheet pan, rub with the olive oil, generously sprinkle with salt and pepper. roast for 35-45 minutes, set aside to cool, and shred the meat. if you want to save time and got a whole pre-roasted bird (like i do) shred all the meat and set aside.

now, you want to get a medium sized pot to heat your chicken stock in. heat it on medium low heat and let it get warm, also here is where you would add bouillon cubes if you remember.

in a very big pot--seriously, get the biggest one you have (not a 12 quart stock pot, but a big ole pot) melt the 1 and a 1/2 sticks of butter. when it is melted, add the chopped onions and let soften. this will take about 10+ minutes. while they are cooking, blanche your carrots (and green beans if using) in boiling water (see how many pots you're using already?!).

add the flour to the butter onion mixture and cook on low heat for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. you want this to get very thick, and you need to try not to salivate IN the pot. strap a cup to your chin--do what you gotta do. now pour in the chicken stock, and simmer for another minute or so, stirring to combine.

now stir in 2 tsp salt, and 1/2 tsp pepper along with the heavy cream or half and half. add the chicken, carrots, green beans, peas and parsley and mix well. pour this super thick and heavy stew into a very large pan. the biggest size i had was 13" x 9" x 2", this will work but it will be filled to the brim. place your pan on a baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes.

while the stew is cooking, make your biscuits. and if you have extra hands, get them washing!! combine salt, sugar, flour and baking powder in the bowl for your mixer--Ina says use the paddle attachment--i say my mixer is like 25+ years old and i dont got one-a-those, so just use your normal beaters. add in the butter and mix until the butter is chopped up into bits the size of peas. add half and half and mix on low speed until combined. scrape the bottom and sides of your bowl with a rubber spatula, or if you have an old mixer, you will have to stop 3 times during this process to peel the dough out of the beaters because it will all get stuck and rise out the top like a dough volcano. once mixed, add parsley and beat a few more seconds.

flour your work surface and plop the dough down. here is where we separate the men from the boys (and no i don't care about saying men instead of women because who the heck does...its an expression, not a statement of women's inability to whatever...) if you own a rolling pin, roll out your dough to less than an inch thick. if like me all you own is your wits (most days) and your hands, press the dough out as evenly as you can. now, all you fancy folk can take out your shiny biscuit cutters (1 1/2") and cut out as many biscuits as you can--for us common folk, grab a cup with a nice thin edge and do the same.

you probably had to take the stew out of the oven at this point, so take the biscuits (that i know you remembered to egg wash**) and arrange them atop the stewy goodness. bake for 30 more minutes and digg in!
**ok--for those of you who did not egg wash because i didn't explain it--after you cut out the biscuits, crack your egg in a bowl and add 1 Tb water, whisk. brush (or use your fingers) to coat the tops of the biscuits with the egg mixture then place on top of stew and bake. it gives them that nice goldeny color!

if you're real smart, you'll have a great movie (harry potter and the deathly hallows part 1) in your dvd player, ready to play as you sit down and enjoy your delicious feast!



PS-- the "resolutions" part of this post is this--i really need to step up my photography game. honestly, i never remember to take the pictures of my meals until i've already eaten some (or all) of what on my plate, then i have to go back and get more and pretend like i didnt eat it all. i also do not have the luxury of cooking during day light hours more often than not, so the yellow-y light is a problem. and since i forget to snap shots until the last second, i dump some food on a plate and click without any real thought of where i'm putting my plate (like all the pretty grey countertop and carpet backdrops?!) and this results in just ugly photos. i will try to be better at making the food look good so you will actually want to make it instead of thinking....um...yeah i'm not cooking that.

food pics!

in college, inspiration was a huge topic of conversation. as an artist of any kind, you need to be inspired. it is that first critical step in the design/art making process. it is very hard to create work (of any kind, much less beautiful work) without having that spark of an idea, something that makes you go "oh! i love _______, i want to do/make/paint/draw something like that" and then in a tornado of excitement the work can kind of pour out of you. this is on a very good, highly motivated day, mind you.

personally, i find inspiration everywhere. from food, to fashion, interior design, graphics and typography, nature and gardens, photography...its all over. to help reign in the images i find that inspire me, mood boards are helpful. this started in college as a way to express an idea for a collection of prints and now at my job i pretty much do exactly the same thing. since i have a few folders of over a thousand inspiring images, it helps to organize everything. (which, i have not done. completely. or really at all when it comes to filing these images. its a project i need to start!)

here are some delicious and beautiful pics i have come across in the last several years. i don't have specific "cite" info for them, but all were found on pinterest.com, ffffound.com, or creaturecomfortsblog.com

Chicken Salad in Avocado

jewel carrots

dark chocolate panini. omg

lemonade

green pasta. this was like some sort of herb pesto-y dish

key lime fudge

this is how i would eat lucky charms too

mmm mac and cheese!

macarons. which i have never tried, but see images of them everywhere

melons in a lime bowl

lasagna cups

can't wait for peach season!

 

pretty pears

i thought this crust was so cool! even though i don't like most pies

i want to know what this frosting is!

and what makes this so pink

this looks delicious, and i wish i had some

never seen a turq cupcake

crudite

white strawberries?

:( someday i will have one

i want this every sunday for...forever. or waffles, i secretly like them better

i think this is such a pretty cake!

i have MANY cake photos i will share later on, mostly wedding cakes. but they are all so pretty and impressive.

now go eat something gooood.

a note on chocolate chip cookies.

in this post, i said i wanted to try the chocolate chip cookie recipe.

well, i did. during my week from hell two weeks ago, i prepared the dough and refrigerated it for 36 hours (longer than it said to but i couldnt make them until then) and they turned out, well, awful.


i was to say the least, very disappointed. the post i found the recipe at (link above) said how amazing these cookies were and blah blah on and on. i must have screwed something up along the way but mine, baked on a pizza brick/baking stone for several minutes longer than called for still turned out gooey--and not in a good way. so gooey that after sitting out of the oven for a few minutes, they drooped pathetically into piles of goosh off the end of my spatula before i could even attempt to place them on a cooling rack. i tried 2 different times to bake these, both times with utter failure.

this has never happened to me before. i don't know what happened but all i can say is i felt jipped and i'll never get that flour back. and now all i want to do is make my normal cookie recipe, which as it happens is delicious and always comes out perfect.

i'm going to need to do a lot more of that exercise junk if i'm going to be eating decadent baked spaghetti and cookies...

mmmm.

so things around here have calmed down. put away the guest bed, did (most) of the laundry, picked up the approximiately 1,239 tissues littering the  house, car, my desk at work....and the three, yes three empty tissue boxes from last week. it's been a long journey, filled with freezer burned bagel bites, cereal, and boxed macaroni (with hot dogs, obviously). not that i'm complaining, i do love me some mac and dogs, ask anyone.

so after this verryy long stretch of getting myself together and making my dwelling fit for others (because really, if you're house is so gross you wouldn't want a close friend or relative taking too close a stock of the situation, it's time to clean. you deserve the same cleanliness as your guests, or cat or whatever..) i finally cooked a meal! it was different. i used many more dishes than i would have done say, a week ago.

i will compare it to something akin to missing your workouts for almost two weeks (because hey! i did that too, and this morning's dive back into fitness was not pretty, nor very coordinated. i'll pretend it was because it was 6 am) when you work out fairly regularly for a month or so then stop completely for half that time...getting going again is hard. like, i did half of my normal workout and let's just say i didn't give it my all, or even my half? i was dying, gulping water, stopming around and bending over, hands on knees WAY more than is necesary. i think it's harder to get back into a workout routine if you've only slacked a little than it would be if you started from scratch with nothing under your belt. it's like your body knows what it SHOULD be doing, what it is capable of and is so confused by your inability to get yourself to that previous peak that you just kind of stumble around in a twisty haze.

this was similar to my last two nights of cooking. while both meals turned out fine, i did dumb things that made no sense. i got out some but not all the ingredients, or i didn't chop the right thing or couldn't remember what directions i read long enough to complete them and used 4 different spoons in my attempts to get the food from pot to oven. mannny dishes here, and i don't have a dish rack (really need to get one!) so my dishes sit in a weird, very precarious pyramid on my drying mat. that stays full of dry dishes until i have already washed the next batch and have no where to put them.


so anyway, i made cashew chicken salad last night, and tonight made this pot of deliciousness:

baked spaghetti

i found the recipe at How Sweet Eats. and it was awesome.


(please ignore the fact that her pictures are amazing and mine is...well. substantially less melty, which is what makes it look so divine. i added parsley!)

serves 4-6

you will need:


    3/4 pound whole wheat spaghetti
    1/2 onion, chopped
    3 cloves garlic, minced
    1 tablespoon olive oil
    1 1/4 pounds ground beef (I used 93% lean)
    1 teaspoon salt
    1 teaspoon pepper
    10-12 fresh basil leaves, chopped
    2 cups of your favorite pasta sauce
    1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
    1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

as usual, i decreased the quantity of everything, and measured like...nothing. but it was still great!


preheat your oven to 350.

boil spaghetti about 3 or so minutes LESS than the box says, because it will be cooking the rest of the way in the oven. drain it and set it aside.

heat your olive oil up in a pan on medium high heat, add onions (i also added chopped fresh mushrooms here because i needed to use them--very good) and saute for several minutes, until softened. i also just realized i did not use any garlic, i just plain forgot. see what i mean about not cooking for a while?! madness.

anyhow, you would add the garlic to the pan and saute for a minute at this point, then add the ground beef and the salt and pepper. the let meat brown up and then drain the fat off, because if you don't, well that's just gross. trust me, i've been there. some people don't drain the fat off, and it is not a desirable situation to be in people.

take that bowl of cooked spag (i always find it fun/funny to say this instead of spaghetti.) and add the meat and 1 cup of whatever tomato sauce you chose. also the basil. i did not have basil, and therefore stirred in a dollop of pesto. because i am a master chef who is cool under pressure and limited supplies. (ignore the fact that i did not add the garlic, which in fact i did have. irrelevant)

find a baking dish, i used "the green bean dish" which, obviously, is the dish my grandmother made green beans in every year at thanksgiving and christmas for forever. it is a round dish that is 3-4" deep and 7-8" in diameter. spread a layer of the spaghetti mixture in the bottom, top with some sauce, parmesan and mozzarella cheese (i had fresh, so i froze it for 20 minutes while i prepped everything else and sliced it very thin, and i recommend this. because fresh mozzarella is the most amazing cheese ever.) the freezing is to harden it enough to get those thin slices, because it is a very soft cheese. in case you don't use it or didn't know you could do that.

add another layer of spaghetti and repeat the above process. pop the dish in the oven for 20 minutes (you could also broil for a few minutes at the end to make your cheese brown and bubbly) and then dig in and make sure your elastic pants are close by. also a napkin and some garlicky garlic bread, which sadly i did not have. but it would be yumyumyum!

it's very surprising...

...how dirty my kitchen can stay when i haven't cooked a meal in it in over a week. between last week's terrifyingly late (12:30 am and 10 pm respectively) nights, the weekend's company, and the senses-obliterating allergies/cold i now am wrestling, all i have made lately is a pot of tomato soup. out of necessity, because everyone needs soup when they are home sick, and since my momma is 13 hours away...welp, i had to hike up my (sweatshirt)sleeves, pull back my (unwashed)hair, clean off my (wet/snotty/used tissues-strewn) countertop and go to work.

i do feel the need to explain that i did attempt cooking a meal over the weekend for my lovely guests, but it was a failure of epic proportions. let me preface this 12 part miniseries by saying i love roast chicken. it is delicious and juicy and i love the crispy skin and i love making BBQ sandwiches out of the leftover shredded meat and eating them with sam.

now for a confession: i have never successfully made roast chicken. ever. i did "help" momma make one one lovely sunday (who the hell knows what day of the week it was, i am guessing a sunday because it sounds nice and feasible) and granny and pawpaw came over and we ate carrot souffle and it was all very nice. and by "help" i mean i rubbed butter on its' skin and sprinkled salt and pepper on it. she handled the yanking-out-the-guts, washing its insides business because...well its just disgusting. i don't like raw meat, and if i thought resigning myself to a vegetarian lifestyle was a reasonable option, i wouldn't eat meat at all. i believe at some point i have discussed my distaste for most meat, although i eat chicken and turkey with the occasional ground beef thrown in. to be honest, if i have not ingested meat in a while, those first few bites (or meals) kind of gross me out. especially chicken. i don't know why this is, but i have my suspicions.

it began in 9th grade in mr. gambon's biology class. who knew it would be a critical life lesson-type moment, and that 8 (dear god i'm getting old..) years later i would remember it clearly. he told us meat was muscles. now...i know i am opening myself up to ludicrous ridicule with this revelation, but here it goes: i never knew the meat we eat was muscles. maybe somewhere deep inside my subconscious i realized this fact (i think it must have been self preservation that kept this knowledge from drifting to the surface), but seriously what teenager thinks about A. what they are eating B. where it came from C. whether or not it is some vital organ. i don't like thinking about my meat. anyone who has eaten with me or within a 5 mile radius of me has probably heard someone making fun of how i pick apart my meat, removing the gluey, gummy gel-like substance that i do not want to consciously identify and the offending veins and sometimes TENDONS. gross, who wants to eat that junk?! no one. people who can suck chicken wings dry in one fowl swoop (i am looking at you SAM) just must not realize how many foreign objects they are ingesting into their bodies. it's bad enough that we eat muscles, no other tissues please.


back to the roast chicken story.....

so i don't like touching raw meat because of aforementioned reasons #1-5687. so yeah, all i did to that big nasty gutless bird was rub it a little, and let me tell ya if it wasn't a little squishy (pretty much my only fascination with meat, ask mom) i wouldn't be touching it at all.

the whole prospect of roasting an entire animal is just so daunting. you have to search from the bakery to the clorox aisle at the grocery store to find one that isn't 12 pounds (what are they DOING to these birds?!), then if you do find one that's somewhere between a game hen and an ostrich you gotta make sure it isn't frozen solid. (obviously it will be, why do you think no one else swooped in to buy the only bird small enough the fit in a trunk). SO, if you find a bird and its frozen you have to thaw it for about a month in your fridge, and OH since there aren't any normal sized ones, the rest of your fridge's contents are: that 15 year old box of baking soda at the back you're half sure came pre-assembled inside the unit and a container with half a can of beans in it. (i can never seem to use a whole can of beans, so this is the other constant in my fridge life)

so you have no food because your fridge can't fit anything, you've been starving for weeks waiting for the bird to thaw....it's been a rough ride people. roasting chickens is a month-long commitment. once its thawed, cleaned, rinsed, stuffed with whatever squashed veggies you threw it on in the fridge, and ready to be roasted....oh yeah. you need a roasting pan and rack. this for me is very frustrating, because these cost about a million dollars and don't fit ANYWHERE and since you never roast stupid chickens because they are such a pain in the butt....you see my point.
 no one has one, except ina garten, martha stewart and God. God probably has one. He is God afterall...maybe God hates roasting chickens too. rightly so.

if you are still alive after the last 3 weeks of preparation and anticipation for your birdie, you have to decide which lying cookbook author to believe. "Bake at 425 for 1 hour and 30 minutes" "Start at 425 for 20 minutes, reduce heat to 325 and cook for 6 more hours" or my personal favorite, from the lovely Julia. "Bake breast up at 425 for 15 minutes, turning to the left side after 5 minutes, then to the right side for the last 5 minutes, AND basting it with butter and oil after each turn"......obviously i stopped reading here, and cried for an hour. and the damn chicken probably wouldn't even be WARM by the time this ridiculousness was over, much less cooked.....you basically baste and turn the stupid thing every 30 seconds for hours on end. if you were curious, this was what P90x looked like before tony came along.

so to finally get to the story of my failed attempt(s) this weekend, here are the facts:

1. whole chickens were BOGO at giant eagle (my sad excuse for a publix here in ohio)
2. i selected two
3. the smallest bird was over 5 pounds, the next smallest, 6 pounds. (why i didn't walk away here, i  don't know)
4. i tried roasting the small (ha!) one, and over cooked it, shredded the meat, and never ate any (but not on purpose)
5. i froze the other one, and put it in my fridge to defrost on tuesday morning.
6. saturday evening it was still frozen solid inside--like can't-rip-out-the-bag-o-guts-out frozen
7. sunday, after leaving it in the sink for 45 minutes to thaw, i shoved some junk around it and cooked it at 425 for 20 minutes, then for 325 for 2 hours.

....and still it was not cooked. the thigh (although my meat thermometer registered a perfect 165 degrees) was slowly leaking pinky juices. so we threw it back in, but i don't know for how long.

note: it is now about 10:30 pm

and the damn bird that wouldn't thaw now wouldn't cook. and so you know what i did? i threw it in the trash and went to bed. i am ashamed of myself for wasting an entire chicken (ok, 2, since i never ate the other--i'm only one person!) but i was not having anymore of this garbage.


now i have to get a sam's club membership just to buy their $5 roast chickens twice every 6 months.

i think the correlation between this debacle and my illness (and now, throbbing headache) is obvious.

reliving this experience has sucked all the lifeblood out of me, and i will now crawl in my bed and sleep the peaceful sleep of one who will never roast a chicken again.