Cozy Food on a Snowy Day: Almost Chris's Chicken and Rice

I've talked a lot recently about "comfort food" - you know, the stuff we turn to for consolation when something is wrong in our world. I propose we establish a parallel category, "cozy food," for days when things are perfectly fine (or better!) and you want something that's warm and comfy without all the implied therapeutic overtones.

This particular dish has been on my mind a lot lately. My stepdad used to make a massively unhealthy chicken and rice that was utterly, utterly delicious. It involved a stick of butter and 2 cans of condensed soup, and my arteries twitch just thinking about it. I remember making it several times for a great-aunt of mine who passed away recently, and at least once for an uncle (who, ironically, is dealing with serious heart problems right now. I'm sure that neither of these things is *directly* related to that chicken recipe, but it certainly does give one pause). There's no way to justify making the original dish given (1) our household food restrictions and (2) a grain of sense, but that hasn't stopped me from craving it on cold, snowy, cloudy days.

Imagine my delight when this turned out to be nearly as good as Chris's chicken! The recipe that follows made us dinner with a bit left over for a lunch the next day; it could scale up easily as needed, and is straightforward enough that you could easily cook it in someone else's kitchen. Adapted ever-so-slightly from Mark Bittman's marvelous How to Cook Everything.

Almost Chris's Chicken and Rice 

olive oil for the pan
4 chicken leg quarters (or other bone-in chicken pieces - I'd suggest sticking with dark meat)
2 medium onions, chopped
1/2 cup mushrooms, chopped finely (you can also skip these, if you're a mushroom hater)
2 cups long-grain white rice
2 cups chicken stock
2 cups water
salt and pepper

Heat a generous splash of olive oil in a large skillet (one with a lid) over medium-high heat. Salt and pepper the chicken, then brown on both sides and remove to a plate. While the chicken is browning, saute the mushrooms in a separate pan with a little more olive oil until they're softened.

In the same pan, saute the onions until they start to soften. Remove the mushrooms from the other pan with a slotted spoon and add to the onions (if you just dump the contents into the onion pan, you'll get more liquid than you want). Add the rice and stir until the rice is coated with oil.

Return the chicken to the pan, on top of the rice. Add the chicken stock and water, cover the pan, and lower the heat to medium-low. Cook for about 30 minutes or until the chicken is done.

Ridiculously good dessert: Grated Apples in Syrup

It occurred to me last night that many of my blog posts make me seem sort of hapless in the kitchen. I'm actually fairly competent; but I think that my life, like that of so many other people I know, feels continually harried and rushed and teetering on the brink of calamity, and this general sense of panic spills over into the one place in my life where I actually feel like I know what I'm doing.

We had a dinner party last night. It was a great joy to sit down with guests at a dinner that I'd put a lot of thought and effort into, and to really feel that I was in my element. That sense of competence is sorely lacking from many other parts of my life right now so last night's dinner was especially gratifying. Our theme was "Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Liberation of Ioannina." (Yes, very random. We chose a date and looked for holidays to match.) It's a region in northwestern Greece with food that is very different from the coastal/Mediterranean dishes we usually associate with Greek cuisine, so it turned into a bit of a research project as well. I highly recommend 'The Glorious Foods of Greece" by Diane Kochilas if you're interested in learning more about this - I now have sufficient inspiration for a decade's worth of dinner parties.

The menu:
Mixed olives and Greek cheeses
Broiled prawns with skordalia
Taramasalata with pita, cucumbers, and tomato

Grilled lamb skewers with fresh bay leaves
Baked gigantes beans with tomato, feta, and leeks
Cold turnip greens with lemon
Winter squash pilaf
Batter pie with feta and egg (as opposed to a phyllo pie)
Baked onion and paprika relish

Date and walnut balls
Chickpea and raisin sweet (similar to halvah)
Grated apples in syrup with Greek yogurt


The gigantes didn't turn out as I wished, but everything else was good - the winter squash pilaf was an especially nice surprise. The big hit of the night was the apples, however; some of us had fourths. This recipe is taken from "The Glorious Foods of Greece."

Grated Apples in Syrup 

3 lbs Macintosh apples
2 1/2 cups water
2 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Peel and core the apples. Put the peels in a pot with the water, then cover and bring to a boil. Turn the heat to medium-low and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove the peels, add the sugar, and simmer for another 10 minutes.

While the syrup is simmering, grate the apples coarsely (the food processor does a great job and spares your knuckles). Add the grated apples to the syrup and simmer until the mixture is thick and the apples are softened but not mushy. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla. Cool before serving.

This was absolutely fantastic on its own, but it's even better spooned over a big bowl of Greek yogurt with a sprinkling of slivered almonds. The recipe alleges this will keep up to 3 months in the fridge, but I can't imagine it's going to last that long.

Nothing says "I love you" like peppermint fudge

I originally got this recipe from a friend, who graciously lets me "borrow" her copies of Everyday Food every summer when we spend a long weekend up north. (I finally caved and got my own subscription, only to get a notice in the mail that the magazine is being discontinued and they're sending me a substitute subscription instead. I just got rid of 14 years' worth of complicated cooking magazines so I'm not terribly excited about this. But I'm also too disorganized to actually find the notice and cancel altogether. I suppose there's a lesson in here, something like Clean Off Your Desk Already. Whatever.)

It's a Christmas favorite, because it's fast and easy and keeps forever and travels well, and also gives you a way to use up all the random broken candy canes that have fallen off the tree. I made it for my daughter's holiday party at school and was mobbed by 4th graders when I walked through the door. "We love the fudge!" "This is the best thing I ever tasted!" "Please make this for every party!" and the real clincher: "You are the awesomest cooker ever!"

If you know nothing else about me, it's insightful (and possibly useful) to know that I am a slut for praise about my cooking. Compliment me and I will cook for you again and again. Invite me to dinner once in a while and you have an invitation for life. (There's an episode of "Friends" about this, btw - Monica and the chocolate chip cookies.) I really do genuinely enjoy cooking for people but I'm helpless in the face of flattery even when I know it's not a good idea.

Fast-forward to the Valentine's Day party. Anna made it very clear that I was expected to produce a couple of pounds of peppermint fudge, and that to fail to deliver would not only break the heart of every child in Mrs. Anderson's 4th grade class, it would personally crush her AND practically guarantee that she would be a social pariah for the rest of the year. And of course there is nothing that I could (conveniently) purchase that could possibly compare to the utter marvelousness of the fudge. (This is how Mom Guilt works. Ask me about the strawberry cake sometime. Also the Elmo balloon.) Happily, we had the ingredients on hand and it really wasn't that big a deal to actually make the fudge. But here's where I got stupid: this being Valentine's Day, I was thinking how cute it would be to cut the fudge into little heart shapes and put them in individual cupcake liners and pipe a little pink heart on each one.

Regrettably, the heart-shaped fondant cutter is just a little teeny bit shorter than the fudge; if you've ever has this experience you know that it's never as easy as just pushing harder so the fudge (or cookie dough or whatever) comes out the top of the cutter, because everything is sticky or slippery or messy in some way. Also your hands get very inconveniently in the way. I figured that if I whacked it with the flat end of the meat tenderizer the cutter goes all the way to the bottom of the fudge so I don't have to cut that jaggedy edge off. Good. But now the cutter is embedded in the cold fudge, and I can't remove it without making a giant mess and getting telltale fingerprints all over the fudge. Also I'm not entirely sure that this is going to work out to 24 pieces so I'm trying not to waste any. Hmm. OK. Pliers. Pliers will do the trick.

This would have all been much funnier if it wasn't 6 a.m. on the morning of the party. Yes, I should have started earlier but no, I didn't; it's been a busy week and drinking a bottle of wine and watching 4 episodes of Downton Abbey last night was much more important for my mental well-being. So here I am, whacking the cookie cutter with a mallet and pulling it out with pliers and making every little damn heart-shaped piece of damn fudge damn perfect in its individual color-coordinated damn cupcake liner. There are chocolate handprints all over my coffee cup. It's just too early for this. Screw the little pink icing hearts. Whatever.

Fittingly, this recipe is from Martha Stewart. She and I need to have a little heart-to-heart about unrealistic standards, one of these days.

Peppermint Fudge

16 oz. semisweet chocolate (get the mini chips if you can find them)
1 cup peppermint candies (or broken candy canes)
3/4 cup heavy cream (if you only have milk, use 1/2 cup and add an extra tablespoon of butter; it's not worth an extra trip to the store if you don't have cream on hand)
3 1/2 cups mini marshmallows
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt

Line a 9-inch baking pan with parchment paper and spray with nonstick cooking spray. (You can also use a 9x11 baking pan if you want flatter fudge but be warned that this doesn't always work out as expected. Damn cookie cutters.)

Put the chocolate in a bowl (if you're using chocolate bars, chop them up or grind them in the food processor). Put the candy in the food processor and process until finely chopped. Place in a large saucepan with the rest of the ingredients and heat over medium-high heat. Whisk frequently until the marshmallows are completely melted and the mixture is smooth.

Pour through a strainer (don't skip this step) into the bowl of chocolate. Let it sit for a minute or two, then whisk until the chocolate is melted. When the mixture is smooth, pour it into the prepared baking pan and smooth the top. Refrigerate about 3 hours or until set.

IMPORTANT: Wash your pan and strainer IMMEDIATELY. Hardened peppermint candy on your good saucepan is going to ruin your day.

As a final note: I was mobbed by 4th graders when I walked in the room today. They were very, very happy to have gotten fudge at the party, and Anna beamed at me from across the room and did that kid mental telepathy thing that let me know she was really happy and loves me and I'm the best mom ever. So it was totally worth it.

Fake Cassoulet

January kinda kicked my butt. And February looks like it's well on the way to doing the same. So lots of comfort food is going on in our house - all things squishy and soft and not requiring much chewing are making their way to the top of the menu plan. Fortunately for me, we have a lot of good comfort food options so it's not immediately obvious that we're self-medicating with food these days.

This particular recipe (originally from Real Simple magazine) has been a favorite for years. An actual French person would probably be rendered speechless with horror that we dare to call this a cassoulet - nary a Toulouse sausage or duck confit to be found - but it can put together without a lot of forethought and it's great for cloudy, grim Sunday afternoons when it feels that winter is going to last forever. We haven't actually tried making this in the crockpot but I imagine it would work just fine; or you can do all your browning and chopping in advance to speed up a weeknight preparation, or cook the whole thing in advance and just heat it up.

Fake Cassoulet

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound sweet Italian sausage (turkey is fine, but the pork version is much tastier in this), removed from the casings
1 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 onion, thinly sliced
3-4 carrots, peeled and diced
3-4 parsnips, peeled and diced
1 8-oz can chopped tomatoes,drained (fine to skip if you're avoiding tomatoes)
3 15-oz cans Great Northern beans, rinsed and drained
5 sprigs fresh thyme (or 1 teaspoon dried)
salt and pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup plain breadcrumbs, preferably fresh (grind up the crusts of your GF bread and keep them in the freezer)
1/2 cup chopped parsley
2 tablespoons melted butter

In a large Dutch oven, brown the sausage in the olive oil. Drain off the extra fat if you're feeling motivated to do so; there's typically not enough fat rendered from the meat for me to think it's worth the bother.

Add the next 8 ingredients (through "salt and pepper") and about a third of the garlic and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce the heat, and simmer for about an hour or until the vegetables are very soft and your house smells incredibly good (these things reliably happen around the same time so I feel very comfortable using this as an actual cooking instruction).

This next step is optional, but makes the dish a little nicer: Mix the remaining garlic, butter, breadcrumbs, and parsley together and sprinkle over the top of the casserole. Bake at 400 for about 10 minutes or until the topping is crispy and golden brown. If you used fresh thyme sprigs, it'll look like there are little twigs in the pot; warn your kids or they'll try to eat them. Or maybe that's just my kids.