Roast Chicken Day Two: Broth

As promised, I culled two dinners from the four-pound chicken I brought home the other day. The first was roasted breast with rosemary. Simple and delicious. The following day I submerged the carcass, with some of the dark meat still attached (and the rest chopped and set aside in the fridge) in a deep pot with about eight or nine cups of water. I added one onion quartered, one carrot cut down the middle lengthwise and then in half, a stalk of celery, and two parsnips cut in large chunks.

As directed by Alice Waters, I brought the pot to a boil, then immediately turned it down to a simmer. I skimmed off the foam, which she said can make the broth cloudy if allowed to stay. Mine ended up cloudy anyway, but that didn't seem to matter. I simmered it at medium-low heat for about five hours, adding a bit of salt every so often and giving it a stir.

The picture above is from the third hour.

The chicken carcass eventually broke down completely as the cartilage dissolved. When it was finished (and there's no exact time, but I think four hours is minimum) I strained it and threw away the bones and depleted vegetables.

I let the broth cool and skimmed off the fat. Meanwhile, I melted butter in a clean pan and sauteed some chopped onion, one carrot sliced, and, because we were both feeling a little sinusy, a lot of garlic (the cure for everything, I believe in my heart). I poured the skimmed broth back into the pan with the reserved dark meat from the day before and a generous teaspoon of oregano, more salt, and black pepper. I brought this to a boil, then added two big handfuls of fettuccine, broken into pieces. I wish I would have added a little more because I like a noodleful soup.

The main event here is the broth, though. It was so rich, so flavorful--I would have enjoyed it without anything in it at all.

Please go forth and do this immediately.

Foods you should really be eating: Part 1

Lima Beans. Wait--come back here. Just give me a second to explain . . .

If you've only ever had them out of the can, you haven't really had them. Dried lima beans are about a dollar a pound (and half a pound is plenty to feed two). Fresh are best, but I've only ever had them once in my life. They can be pretty tough to find. Considering the nutritional bang you get for your buck, these babies are quite possibly the most valuable food in existence.

One quarter pound serving contains:
19 grams of fiber -- that's 74% of RDA!)
21 grams of protein -- almost as much as a piece of fish
42% of your RDA of iron

Vegetarians, rejoice. You'll be able to give blood and maybe even lift things over your head again. The rest of us: LBs will go perfectly well with some bacon!

More Home Cooking has a great recipe for succotash. I have modified it as to be unrecognizable. The thing about this dish is, you can't really fail.

Soak a half pound of lima beans overnight. Rinse, cover with four cups of water, then boil vigorously for ten minutes. Turn the heat down and leave them for a long time. Write a couple chapters of your novel. Alphabetize your books. Braid a rug. Whatever. They'll be done in about an hour and a half. Drain.

If it's summer, shuck some fresh corn and cut it off the cob; if you are in the bitter depths of January, as we currently are, stoically remove one bag of frozen corn from the freezer.

Chop up a small onion and a couple cloves of garlic. Sautee until very soft in olive oil or butter. Add salt and pepper. If you are brazen and unafraid of the seasonal food police, this would be the time to chop and add that four-dollar red pepper from Chile. These are too rich for my blood, honestly. It's not a guilt thing--I just can't pay that much for one vegetable. Also, as mentioned above, bacon could be a very good thing here. Or ham. Or even sausage. Chorizo . . . Dios mio! Yes, please.

Now add your cooked lima beans, about a cup or so of the corn, and whatever else you have lying around. I love peas, but you could add just about anything. Laurie Colwin says to add some ginger. Add about a cup of water. Simmer 8 minutes, then remove the lid and boil off the water.

Heat up a little garlic bread and voila! A healthy dinner that easily costs less than five dollars.

Eat it, McDonald's! No, really--eat it. You're looking kind of fat.

Three cheers for good bacteria!

If I was trapped on a desert island in some weird scenario where I still needed to cook (and had a fridge), I'd be calling Peapod to deliver some yogurt. In which case I could probably hitch a ride back to civilization . . . So, yeah, this desert island lead is kind of falling apart on me. Perhaps I should change gears.

Yogurt has wooed me away from many of my former condiments. Allow me to let them down easy.

Mayo, I am sorry to report that I am in love with someone else. Plain yogurt can do everything you can do, but it doesn't taste like a petroleum product. Chicken salad with yogurt, walnuts, grapes, curry powder, and celery. Check. Tuna salad with yogurt, grated carrot, onion, and lots of dill. Check. Poached salmon with a yogurt lemon sauce. Check. Baked artichoke dip. CHECK.

Bottled salad dressing: You are dead to me. Your list of ingredients is about three inches long and includes stabilizers, thickeners, corn syrup, and cheap oil. Yogurt makes a wonderful base for a creamy dressing. Add olive oil, white wine vinegar, dried onion, and herbs and you have something almost like ranch dressing but not disgusting. For a sweet dressing: Yogurt, white wine or cider vinegar, honey or maple syrup or jam. Maybe a little ginger.

Sour cream, we had a good thing going, but yogurt is so much leaner than you are and, frankly, could totally kick your ass in a fight. Spicy foods and soups, plus starchy potatoes, are nudged toward the divine by yogurt's lively cultures.

Canola Oil: I would still like to keep you around on an as-needed basis. But yogurt makes sweet breads and muffins moist without your help.

Sorry guys. I'd like to be able to say, "It's not you--it's me." But it's you.

Wheat Berries and Roasted Root Vegetables

If this isn't cold weather comfort food, nothing is.

First, let me expound on my love for the wheat berry.

I mustered the courage to try cooking these babies after reading about them on 101 Cookbooks. Heidi Swanson is my hero. Her recipes are always beautiful, always wholesome, and usually pretty easy.

Wheat berries are a slow-cooking grain. The texture, taste, and nutritional value in these little gems make them worth the wait. As with beans, you can soak them in water overnight to reduce the cooking time. Or you can just rinse them and boil them in water for about an hour. They're finished when they plump up and retain a chewy texture. This is a versatile base for salads, pilafs, and even hot breakfast cereal.

So, while the wheat berries are boiling away, peel and cut whatever root vegetables you happen to have lying around. Winter is the time for these hearty standbys: carrots, parsnips, potatoes, turnips, onions, fennel, squash, celery root, beets, what have you. Cut them into one to two-inch pieces, and try to keep them all about the same so they cook evenly. Put the prepared vegetables in a large bowl and toss with olive oil to coat, sea salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, lots of finely chopped garlic, and/or oregano. Spread them on a large baking sheet with a lip to catch the juices. Roast at 400 degrees for about twenty minutes, turning them once in a while. The sugars in the carrots and parsnips will caramelize and the olive oil will make them a little crispy on the outside.

Drain the wheat berries and toss it all together. Make sure to scrape all the juices from the vegetable pan into the mixture--this adds a lot of flavor. Maybe a little cheese on top. Whatever. It's good.

Roasting a Chicken

Yesterday, I conquered what I now know to be a very silly fear. I roasted a chicken.

For some reason I had come to believe that this was a task best left to the experts. A whole chicken? What will I do with it? Will I have to pull anything disgusting out of the cavity? How the hell are you supposed to know when it's done?

I knew if I could figure out how to do it, roasting a chicken would be a frugal choice. A 3 1/2 lb. free-range bird costs about $12.00 and can produce a dinner for two, a lunch, and a soup if handled with prudence. Perhaps Obama's inspiring inaugural address gave me hope: After lunch I set out in the snow for the market. Walking down King Street with the bird in my bag, I caught sight of myself in a store window and felt a flood of joy. I didn't know how to articulate it ten years ago when I was just starting college, but when I looked ahead at what I hoped my life would be someday, I am now fairly certain that my wistful fantasy involved trudging through the snow in a bright-colored hat with a chicken I planned to roast for my husband. That's a pretty happy spot in one's day.

So, still believing I was attempting culinary rocket science, I cleared the afternoon and read through the instructions in a couple tried and true cookbooks. Alice Waters kept saying it was simple, but I knew she was obviously lying.

As she recommended, I salted the skin on the breast and back thoroughly and put it back in the fridge to rest for an hour or so. Then I let it come to room temperature for an hour before I put it in the oven. This helps ensure it will cook evenly. While I preheated the oven to 400 degrees, I cut a lemon into quarters for the cavity, shoved a little rosemary under the skin as directed, and put it in a greased pan the same size as the bird--in a large pan the juices will pool away from the bird and burn.

I put it in the oven for an hour, uncovered, breast up for twenty minutes, breast down for twenty minutes, and then breast up again to finish. And people--that's it. I paced back and forth in front of the oven, waiting for something to catch on fire or need basting, but nothing happened. After an hour I removed a beautiful brown masterpiece from the oven.

I would have taken a picture, but we promptly descended on it like dogs. Check back for Roast Chicken Day Two: Broth.

Welcome to Home Food.

I work from home--at the kitchen table, actually--and because of this have the luxury of cooking our meals at home almost every day. I do this because I love everything about food and cooking: planning meals based on what's in season, selecting the ingredients, learning to use new techniques and create flavor. But I also cook because I believe we spend too much money on food that doesn't nourish our bodies, and we have to change, for both our economic and physical health. This blog isn't a diatribe about organic food or militant seasonal eating (though I will talk about them both). It's about reclaiming joy in simple food, thinking about what we put in our bodies, and learning how to cook things from scratch.

Choosing the title for this blog, Home Food, was easy. I first learned to think about food that way reading Laurie Colwin's food essays in Home Cooking and More Home Cooking, which originally appeared in Gourmet Magazine in the 1980s. Home Food is just what it sounds like: familiar, simple, easy-to-prepare dishes that remind us of home. I have read everything Laurie Colwin wrote about food--and life--in her essays and novels, and I love her work so much that I tear up every time I remember there won't be any more. She approached cooking, writing, and life with humor, insight, and pragmatism. This one's for you, Lady Colwin!

So, welcome to the kitchen! I hope you're hungry!