Chicken Marsala: Take Two

I made chicken Marsala back for Valentine's Day. Unfortunately made it a creamy version that, on top of whole grain pasta looked entirely too beige and therefore unworthy of Valentine's Day, much less a blog post.

In any event, this was very much a "let's do this from memory!" rendition.

I had half a bag of dried porcini mushrooms which I quickly rehydrated in my cast iron skillet with a little water and a pat of butter. When they looked thoroughly soaked, I added half a sweet onion in thin slices and a crushed garlic clove. I let the onions get about half way to absolutely caramelized, then I added two whole chicken thighs to the skillet. I let them develop a crust, then flipped them. After the second crust I gave a generous glug or two of wine (don't you love my precision?) to the skillet and put a lid over it. The chicken essentially wine steamed to done, the raw wine flavor melted away and the onions were super sweet. I "mounted the sauce" by melting another pat of butter to the skillet and served it, once again, over whole grain pasta.

I tell you, though my photography skills are lacking, it was very attractive. The Boyfriend made appreciative noises when he looked at his bowl.

I thought it was super tasty and visually pleasing, so I will be making this again.

Pot Pie is like Chicken Noodle Soup, right?

My readers, I am not a well woman. I seem to have caught some sort of head cold. Luckily, today and tomorrow are my days off.

After watching this video, I really wanted to eat chicken pot pie. I weakly called out to The Boyfriend "Will you buy me some chicken and a pie crust?" which he charitably did.

While he was out, I chopped and boiled carrots, potatoes, onion, and celery. Then I made a bachamel sauce and waited for the other two essential ingredients to show up. After frying the chicken and combining it with the sauce and vegetables, I ladled it into two oven proof bowls and lidded it all with the pie crust.

It was super delicious.

The reason why you don't have any pictures of the finished product is that my camera batteries died. That is a picture of left over fillings.



This, as I am sure you are aware, are flowers. The Boyfriend bought them to cheer me up. Even after trimming a good three inches off the bottom, they're still very tall. They're sitting in my rice jar.

I am sure that the pot pie and flowers will speed my recovery.

Soup what nourishes the soul

Or is just plain tasty.

Ah, my gentle readers, I'm such a negligent writer. I don't blame you if you seek comfort in the blog of another. But know that I am always thinking of you.

This soup was what happened when I went shopping for Italian chicken sausage at the Korean market. I ended up with chicken thigh.

For the soup, I slowly cooked half a large onion in a decent pat of butter. I cut two chicken thighs into bite size pieces and coated them in flour laced with salt and pepper. I added that to the pot, and cut my two red potatoes into chunks. Before adding the potatoes I deglazed the fond (the bits of flour and fat that had carmelized on the bottom of the pot) with a splash of cream sherry which I had looted from my former roommate's liquor supplies (Thanks Ellen!). The potatoes went in and I simmered it with enough chicken stock to cover until they were soft. I had already cleaned and stemmed perhaps half a bunch of kale. I tore it into bite size pieces as I threw it into the pot. This is perhaps the tastiest soup I have ever made. The perfect thing after tromping about in the rain.

The Boyfriend and I ended up finishing it off that night, so I'm planning on making another pot of it tonight. I often have problems making the same dish from scratch two nights in a row, but you have to understand how delicious this soup is. I recommend it to people who have the ingredients and enjoy delicious things.

That's the long and the short of it for this post, my gentle readers. I hope you have some delicious soup after your own trudgings through autumn.

Chanko nabe!

So, after watching this video by Runnyrunny999 I decided to try my hand at chanko nabe.

Chanko nabe basically means "sumo wrestler stew" (according to Raani-san), but this recipe isn't loaded with fat or anything. Sumo wrestler fat is actually very interesting, because of the amount they exercise, the fat doesn't penetrate the muscle or anything. The amount of rice they eat is what loads on the calories.



This is most of the ingredients here. I already had some dashi soup stock in the pot. Dashi is made from konbu (a kind of pressed kelp sheet thing, I think) and bonito flakes. You let it all rest in cold water for about twenty minutes and then you simmered it for a couple minutes, and then you strain out all the little fish flakes and such. It's used in a good portion of Japanese soups and dipping sauces.

Here we have tofu, aburage (which is deep fried tofu), enokidake (the white, thin mushrooms), shitaki (you're probably familiar), carrots and cabbage.



This is a small package of ground chicken with grated garlic and ginger, and a shot of soy sauce and sake. You mix this together really well, and make into small balls to drop into the soup.



I put the ingredients that would take a little longer to cook into the pot first. That includes the cabbage, carrots and the chicken balls.



I think I may have put too much into the pot already. I ended up putting most of the super firm tofu into a tupperware container with clean (filtered in my case), cold water. I only made a couple chicken balls, the rest also went into the refrigerator. The mushrooms basically covered everything up.



And here's the money shot. Don't you want to eat this up? We had white rice with this.

Torinabe or chicken soup served with rice in a fancy dish

The lighting wasn't really working with me on this, but in real life it looked pretty good if I say so myself.

Also, still no table top gas burner, so this was just cooked in a pan and then poured into my lovely pot. We both know things just taste better out of pretty dishes.



This was a very basic chicken soup with chicken broth, sliced up chicken thigh, purple carrots (from the farmers market), and onion. Then I served it with my new fancy rice.

Also, a fun thing to note is that my nabe has about a three cup storage capacity. This means if I ever want to throw that nabe party I either need to get the much larger one I saw (which is not a money/space investment I am currently willing to make) or cooking in rounds (meet round, veggie round, repeat) which is not a bad way to do it.



The carrots are more what I imagine "real" carrots ought to be (aside from being purple) in that they have a little bit more of a sweet potato flavor and are shorter but a little fatter towards the top. In fact, these ones reminded me a little of beets from appearances alone.

The interesting thing about these carrots is that only the skin is purple, the rest is a very vivid orange. For the soup, I thoroughly scrubbed them but left the skin on. I mean, what's the point of buying purple carrots if they're not purple when you get to eat them? Plus, I'm sure there's some vital nutrient in it. I mean... it's purple.



Anyway, something that was suggested in my nabe book was when you are finished with all the goodies in the soup (a.k.a. the solids) you just ladle that rich broth on top of some rice.

So good. Will do again. The Boyfriend really liked the new rice by itself and just had the broth after he'd finished it, but I liked the chicken stock and rice combo.

If you have a favorite pan or serving dish, you should write about it in the comments.

I'm alive!

To all three of my faithful readers, sorry I've been gone so long! I guess it's hard to remember to do something every day.

Anyway, I made a really good chicken salad. I bought one of those precooked chickens they sell at the super market and used the breasts for this salad. See, at work we do the same thing, but they always want the chicken chunks to be tiny and, well, spreadable. I prefer to reserve spreadable meats for pates and have my salad full of recognizable pieces. This may have something to do with the fact that if my try to eat a lot of something with the same texture throughout I get grossed out.

Anyway, my salad is made of two "chunked" chicken breasts, a sliced red bell pepper, two green onions sliced, baby spinach, mayo (store bought this time), mustard, and some of this Walla Walla horseradish mustard I bought at my produce store. The horseradish mustard really gave it a little brush of heat that was pretty pleasing upon the palate. I served this on flat bread from a local bakery, with lots of fresh ground pepper.



on another note, what do you think of my pictures? These were taken with my camera phone. Until such time as I find my camera's cable (I'm sure it's around here somewhere) I will be using my phone.

What are your favorite sandwich salads?

Tri Color'd Pasta and cold asparagus

Tri colored pasta is pasta that has dried spinach and tomato and stuff in it. I bought some that the red kind was actually beet flavored, which was not delicious by itself. However, in my super tasty "Clean out the fridge again!" recipe, it was quite good.

I personally don't like vinaigrette dressed pasta salad. It always seems too sharp with too many cold, squidgy bits. I'm also the kind of person who likes to chew, and find over cooked pasta pretty unappealing. I mean, it's to the tooth, not to the gum, right?

Anyway, I made a pasta salad with grilled, then cubed chicken breast, steamed asparagus, fresh cabbage (so sweet and crunchy!) good old mayo. I think maybe there was some garlic mashed in there somewhere. Probably.

Another reason for dressing my salad in mayonnaise is that homemade mayo is only good for a week, and I kind of freaked out about using it up. I actually ended up using the cup and a half I had left in this, but it was a fair amount of salad, so it was simultaneously quickly used up and spread out in portions.

I like making food on the fly. There's a satisfaction in me knowing that given a few basic ingredients I can have all sorts of stuff. It's a delicious satisfaction.

See, given half a chance I'll go all sorts of preachy on the sanctity of food. The meal is the gathering place. The food is prepared for you to go inside of you. It becomes what you are and you become what it was. Hell, do you know that nutritionists don't even say that U.S. citizens have meals anymore? There are "eating encounters". or some phrase like that, I already lent my book away so I can't reference it. But it's still true! Meal time is when you should be with other humans, communing in the most basic parts of life, not shoving burgers in your face at 60 mph.

Anyways, I'm trying to take back what's mine. I'm becoming priestess in my own temple and conducting my own delicious rites.

Well, another basic human feature (sleep) is calling, so I'm signing off. Do you have regular meals with other people? What is your take on American food fads and the lack of a traditional food culture?

The Almost Daily Sarah