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cooking with chicken
Sep. 6th, 2008 07:37 pmSince the addition of chicken to our household diet, I'm still figuring out just what to do with it. Used to be that, on the rare occasions I used a little chicken, I'd buy a can of cooked chicken for salads from the meat & fish aisle. But that was expensive, and the quality of the food has declined markedly over the years. Now I make it a habit that, whenever I have chicken on my own for lunch - I'm especially partial to the wonderfully tender grilled chicken from a supermarket near our old home (their secret, they once told me, is that they boil it, as if it were a bagel, before putting it on the grill) - I save the inner breast meat and take it home, cutting up and adding it to bulk up stovetop casseroles or such for dinner, the same or the next day. This suits me fine because I don't much care for the breast meat in whole chicken pieces, but it makes an excellent ingredient in something else.
Sometimes, though, there's a recipe that requires the chicken to be uncooked beforehand. For instance, with the aid of the seasonings to be found at the many fine Indian groceries around here, I've learned to make butter chicken from scratch, putting bliss on the face of my B. At first I bought what the supermarket calls "breast tenders", which can be added untouched. I have very old and sore memories of unsuccessful attempts to cut up raw chicken. But on my last occasion, much lower prices tempted me to buy a package of half-breasts. To my surprise it wasn't difficult to cut the inner breast meat out, and the remaining piles of skin and ribs with a little meat went back in the fridge, to be baked for my lunch the next day. (I'm the one who likes to savor the skin and munch on the bones. My favorite chicken piece, it will not surprise you, is the wing. Some critic once called the chicken wing "a little bag of bones." Yes! That's why it's so good.) Success, and I shall do this again.
There's also been advance on the veggie front. A short bike ride from here, I've learned from our neighborhood association, hidden in the back of the suburbs is a small educational farm that opens up for a couple hours in the afternoon three days a week to sell whatever produce they've harvested that day. I stopped by there yesterday and picked up some corn and green beans. My mother remembers from her midwestern childhood going out in the country and picking corn so sweet it could be eaten raw, on the spot. I tried munching on this freshly-picked (or so I'd been assured) corn raw without satisfactory results, but stripped from the cob it did cook up nicely along with the beans.
I'm not exactly sure what to call my favorite method of cooking vegetables. I put the vegetables in a pan with butter, but instead of sautéing them in an open pan, I cover it, turn the heat down, and essentially poach the veggies, except in a layer of butter instead of one of water. It's less work than sautéing and gives better results. Add a little seasoning (I have Italian and Provençal herbal mixes - which country do you feel like tonight?) and it's done.
Sometimes, though, there's a recipe that requires the chicken to be uncooked beforehand. For instance, with the aid of the seasonings to be found at the many fine Indian groceries around here, I've learned to make butter chicken from scratch, putting bliss on the face of my B. At first I bought what the supermarket calls "breast tenders", which can be added untouched. I have very old and sore memories of unsuccessful attempts to cut up raw chicken. But on my last occasion, much lower prices tempted me to buy a package of half-breasts. To my surprise it wasn't difficult to cut the inner breast meat out, and the remaining piles of skin and ribs with a little meat went back in the fridge, to be baked for my lunch the next day. (I'm the one who likes to savor the skin and munch on the bones. My favorite chicken piece, it will not surprise you, is the wing. Some critic once called the chicken wing "a little bag of bones." Yes! That's why it's so good.) Success, and I shall do this again.
There's also been advance on the veggie front. A short bike ride from here, I've learned from our neighborhood association, hidden in the back of the suburbs is a small educational farm that opens up for a couple hours in the afternoon three days a week to sell whatever produce they've harvested that day. I stopped by there yesterday and picked up some corn and green beans. My mother remembers from her midwestern childhood going out in the country and picking corn so sweet it could be eaten raw, on the spot. I tried munching on this freshly-picked (or so I'd been assured) corn raw without satisfactory results, but stripped from the cob it did cook up nicely along with the beans.
I'm not exactly sure what to call my favorite method of cooking vegetables. I put the vegetables in a pan with butter, but instead of sautéing them in an open pan, I cover it, turn the heat down, and essentially poach the veggies, except in a layer of butter instead of one of water. It's less work than sautéing and gives better results. Add a little seasoning (I have Italian and Provençal herbal mixes - which country do you feel like tonight?) and it's done.
