Tag Archives: Chicken Broth

Abbodanza!

Posted in Recipes, Side Dishes by

I have told you how much I love Thanksgiving, but I’m aware that this holiday isn’t as happy for some people. Perhaps, for example, they live far away from home and are looking at the grim prospect of eating a turkey TV dinner in front of their television, all by themselves.

It is for that very reason that I have often included non-family members at my holiday table. Perhaps one of our kids’ college roommate who can’t make it home for Thanksgiving, or a newly-divorced friend facing their first holiday alone. When it comes to our holiday table, anyone who lands there is part of the family.

When Bill was much younger, he was faced with the prospect of a Thanksgiving alone. For most of the time that he was in the Army, he was stationed at Frankfort Arsenal in Philadelphia. It was too far for him to make it home to Chicago on that first Thanksgiving that he was away. He was kindly invited to eat Thanksgiving dinner with the family of a friend who was of Italian descent.

Bill says he sat at the enormous table surrounded by the raucous and joyful family, and he really felt at home. The first food to come out of the kitchen was a huge antipasto plate filled with roasted red peppers and salami and cheese and tomatoes and spicy peppers and artichoke hearts and olives. Delicious, he recalls. He filled his plate.

Soon after, his friend’s mother brings to the table a huge platter of spaghetti and meatballs. Bill says he clearly remembers thinking, “Well, this is certainly not the traditional Thanksgiving meal that I’m used to, but boy, is it ever delicious. I’m just going to enjoy it.” He commenced loading his plate with a big helping of the delicious pasta, and eating and loving every bite.

He was really getting going on the spaghetti when he hears his friend say to his mother, “Mama, how is the turkey coming?” Bill said he laughed out loud, amused at the joke about having turkey after all of the food they had already eaten.

But he laughed too soon, because Mama got out of her chair, went into the kitchen, and began bringing out all of the traditional Thanksgiving food – a great big turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, and so forth. Poor Bill; all that food and not much more room in his stomach!

The meal, he recalls ended with Mama bringing out platters of dates and candied fruit and nuts in addition to the traditional Thanksgiving pies. The meal concluded with cigars and Bushmill’s Irish Whiskey for the men, and washing many, many dishes for the women. Some things are the same in all cultures!

His story always reminds me that every family has its own traditions, even if they aren’t quite as unique as Bill’s meal with the Italian American family. We all have our own dressing recipes. Some families have a special cranberry salad; others open a can of jellied cranberries. Sweet potato casseroles can be sweet or savory. Jello salad or no jello salad?

But what is generally the same, no matter the traditions, is the family and friends gathered together, thankful for the gifts they have been given over the past year. The sound of children playing and noisy kitchens. Football games as background noise. Leftovers somewhere around 9 o’clock. Even if the leftovers are warmed up spaghetti and meatballs.

Now for another Thanksgiving recipe…..

My mother never, as far as I recall, made her gravy any way except from the little packets. I don’t know why this was so, though it perhaps had something to do with the fact that she mostly prepared the meal all by herself. Perhaps making turkey gravy from scratch just felt to her like the straw that broke the camel’s back. All I know is that I grew up thinking that gravy must be really difficult to make, so for many years I did the same thing – gravy from the little packets.

Now I know that making gravy is really very easy, and I do so often (though I must admit that I still occasionally use the packets if I am making something just for Bill and me). But a number of years ago, I found this recipe for gravy that you make ahead, and it is such a cinch that I have done it every year since.

Make-Ahead Turkey Gravy, Women’s Day Magazine, November 15, 2005

Ingredients
4 turkey wings (3-4 lbs.)
2 onions, pulled and quartered
8 c. chicken broth
¾ c. chopped carrots
½ t. dried thyme
¾ c. flour
2 T. butter
½ t. freshly ground pepper

Process
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Have ready a large roasting pan, a 5-6 qt. pot and a 3 qt. saucepan. Put wings in a single layer in the roasting pan, scatter the onions on top. Roast 1-1/4 hours, or until wings are browned.

Put wings and onions in the pot. Add 6 c. broth (refrigerate remaining 2 c.), the carrots and thyme. Bring to boil, reduce heat and simmer uncovered, 1-1/2 hours.

Remove wings and allow to cool. When cool, pull off skin and meat. Discard skin; save meat for another use. Strain broth into saucepan, pressing vegetables to extract liquid. Discard vegetables; skim fat.

Whisk flour into remaining 2 c. broth until blended and smooth.

Bring broth in the saucepan to a gentle boil. Whisk in the flour mixture and boil 4 – 5 min. to thicken gravy and remove floury taste. Stir in butter and pepper.

Freeze up to one month. When serving, add pan drippings from the turkey to the hot gravy.

Makes 8 cups.

Nana’s Notes: I frequently have been unable to find turkey wings, so I substitute turkey legs. Also, since I am generally cooking for the mighty hordes, I have to at a minimum double the recipe. That has always worked fine. Finally, make sure you strain out the grease from the pan drippings if you use them at the end. Making the gravy ahead is just one less thing you have to do at the very end when it seems so chaotic getting the food on the table, and the gravy is really very good.

Spanx for the Memories

Posted in Main Course, Meat Dishes, Recipes by

My sisters and I were all born before 1960. Dressing up in the 50s and 60s meant something a bit different than it does now. For example, outer garments often included a hat and gloves, at least if we were going to church (which was generally the reason we dressed up).

For women of the 50s and 60s, undergarments included nylons with garter belts (which, for my sisters and me, were not sexy, mostly twisted and beige with age as they were inevitably Mom’s hand-me-downs). And of course, the dreaded girdle. As young women (meaning puberty and beyond) we, too, wore these restrictive undergarments because that’s what “ladies” did.

Yesterday I attended the funeral of an acquaintance. I generally only dress up on Sundays, and mostly I wear a pair of black pants with some kind of a jacket, blouse, or sweater. So I put on a pair of black pants and a brand new lightweight knit shirt.

I took a glance in the mirror before I went downstairs. Yuck. Panty lines. I could hear my mother’s voice in my ear saying, “Nobody is looking at you, Kris,” and knew this to be true. Still, panty lines. Yuck.

So I went to my drawer and dug deep for a pair of long-unused Spanx. You know Spanx: Torture device of the old and unfit. Purportedly good for slimming your abdomen and bottom. “It takes off 10 pounds,” according to the advertisements. Yes, but those 10 pounds have to move somewhere….

Mostly I was just trying to get rid of those panty lines.

I pulled them on and had no more panty lines. But it made me think about my mother as a young woman, likely wearing a girdle much more often than I and never complaining. It really was quite horrendous when you think about it.

So, I guess I won’t. And it sure was nice when I could take it off.

I don’t usually post a recipe on Saturdays, but I wanted to be part of the family and let you know what recipe I would have my mother make if I got that last chance for her good cooking. Spareribs and sauerkraut. Yum.

I’ve mentioned before that Mom was not big on recipes, unfortunately. She wrote down a few of her specific dishes, such as her cole slaw dressing or her gazpacho. But as for her regular main dishes, not many recipes. Sometimes I try to recreate her meals from memory, but mostly I call one of my siblings, go on the Internet or look at my cookbooks and see what I can find.

That’s what I did when I decided to recreate her baked spareribs. And I found my recipe in a somewhat surprising place – one of my Lidia Bastianich cookbooks!

The recipe comes from Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen, copyright 2002.

Spare Ribs Roasted with Vinegar and Red Pepper

6 servings

Ingredients
1 rack (about 3-1/2 pounds) pork spare ribs
Sea or kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1/3 c. extra-virgin olive oil
12 cloves garlic, peeled
4 fresh or dried bay leaves
1 cup (or as needed) canned chicken broth
1 cup dry white wine
½ cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons honey
1 to 2 teaspoons crushed hot red pepper

Process
Cut the rack of spare ribs between the bones into single ribs. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Pat the spare ribs dry and season them with salt and pepper. Toss them in a roasting pan into which they fit comfortably with the olive oil, garlic, and by leaves. Pour in the broth and roast, turning occasionally, until the liquid is almost completely evaporated and the ribs are golden brown, 45 minutes to an hour.

Meanwhile, stir the wine, vinegar, honey, and crushed red pepper together in a small bowl until the honey is dissolved.

Brush all sides of the ribs with some of the vinegar glaze, and then pour the remaining glaze into the roasting pan. Continue baking, turning every few minutes, until the glaze is syrupy and the ribs are mahogany brown and sticky to the touch, about 30 minutes. Spoon off as much of the fat as you like before serving the ribs.

Nana’s Notes: I used a rack of baby back ribs instead of spareribs since they seem more manageable, and I was cooking only for my husband and me. It took the whole hour before the liquid came close to being evaporated. And I’m not sure my ribs were ever sticky to the touch, but they did turn a lovely golden brown.

Lidia’s recipe doesn’t include sauerkraut, but I just buy a package of the lovely, ice-cold sauerkraut you find in the deli case at the grocery store and add it to the pan towards the end or heat it separately. To be honest, I like it cold! At some point my mom started putting apples in with her sauerkraut, I assume to make the kraut less sour. I didn’t like this, and remember trying unsuccessfully to eat around the apple. So I served the sauerkraut without apples.

It’s been fun cooking with you all week, Mom!

Mickey Mouse Visits the House

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So enough of my waxing eloquent about autumn. Football, baseball, cool weather. Blah blah blah. In the first place, the weather only stayed cool a couple of days, and has been near or above 80 most days since. Now I just feel foolish.

Plus, there is a lot about the fall that makes me cranky.

Every summer we have a bird feeder. Our feeder attracts the prettiest little birds – chickadees, house finches, wrens. Some bigger birds graze on the leftovers that fall to the earth. Squirrels too, but that’s a given. Anyway, I enjoy watching the little birds all summer long.

However, as with most things good, there is a down side. In this case, it’s the mice that appear around this time each year. They are apparently stocking up for the winter months, and they like the seeds that drop to the ground. I see them scurrying around, in and out of the rocks that make up the garden area in which our feeder is located. I really don’t mind seeing them running around outside. After all, they are God’s creatures too, and part of nature. But the other evening as I was sitting at my kitchen table near the back door, I looked out to see a tiny little mouse sitting just outside the door looking in at me. I half expected him to knock on the door and ask to come in. Perhaps I have been watching too much Mickey Mouse Clubhouse with my grandkids. He did kind of look like this, however.

Anyway, all of my warm feelings about the sweet little mice being part of nature went out the window. I pounded heartily on the door and yelled, “Scram!” at the top of my lungs. He did. Probably through a tiny hole into my basement.

So it was time to set the traps. We started out with the old standby traps, but quickly learned that the squirrels are able to trip those bad boys and get the bait without a problem. So my husband sent me to the hardware store for Plan B, the covered traps. Squirrel-proof. Unfortunately, apparently our mice are too small to trip the traps, so they can just munch on the bait without a care in the world. I expected them to wave over at me and tell me thanks for the snack.

Finally, my husband sent me to the store for Plan C. (By the way, in case you are wondering why my husband is sending me to the store rather than going himself, it’s because he is in the final stages of a room remodel which has been going on for approximately 750 years. I am so ready for him to be done that I will do anything to keep him working. I would sleep for him at night if that was possible.) Anyway, Plan C is the sticky trap. I’m not even going to talk about that.

But I will talk about this delicious soup. It is a copycat version of Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana, and I think it is very close. How can you go wrong with Italian sausage and cream in the same recipe. I got this recipe from Annie’s Eats.

Zuppa Toscana

Ingredients
1 lb. Italian sausage
1 large onion, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 c. white wine to deglaze the pan
1/2 t. red pepper flakes
2 potatoes, peeled and cut into small chunks
2 c. fresh kale, chopped
3 c. chicken broth
2-1/2 c. water
1 c. heavy cream
salt and pepper

Process
Place a large stockpot on the stove over medium heat. Crumble the sausage into the pan and cook until well browned. Remove the sausage with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add the onion to the pan and saute until tender, 5-7 min.

Add the garlic and red pepper flakes to the pan and cook for a minute more, just until fragrant. Add the wine to the pot and stir, scraping the bottom of the pan to loosen any browned bits. Add the potatoes, kale, chicken broth and water to the pot. Return the sausage to the pot. Increase the heat to medium high, bring to a boil, and then reduce heat to simmer. Cover and let simmer for about 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are fork-tender.

Stir in the heavy cream and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Bon appetito! Don’t leave any crumbs for the mice.

Dodging Raindrops

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Last night, probably around midnight, I woke up to the sound of falling rain. I’m not sure how long it had been raining, but the sound of the steady falling raindrops was soothing.

Before going to bed, I had taken dose of Nyquil because somewhere along the line I have managed to catch a cold and I felt like a good night’s sleep would be helpful. So I was in kind of a groggy, Nyquil-induced coma-like state as I listened to the rain fall. It was really raining hard.

All of the sudden, I remembered that when I drove to the mall yesterday afternoon, I had cracked the sunroof on my little yellow Volkswagen Beetle (dubbed Nana’s Bug by all of the grandkids), which I left outside rather than parking in the garage. Had I closed the sunroof? Couldn’t remember. Being anesthetized by Nyquil didn’t help my memory.

I leaped out of bed and ran to the window, but I couldn’t see a thing. I did, however, awaken my husband, who can generally sleep through anything, but apparently not me running around the bedroom in only-somewhat-controlled hysteria.

“What’s the matter?” he asked. I explained, and asked him if he knew the location of any of the 40 or 50 umbrellas we own. Of course he didn’t. And I’m not complaining about him, because I had no clue as to where they were either. That’s why we own 40 or 50. We can never find one when we need it, so we buy another. Somewhere in this house there is a pile of umbrellas the size of Mt. Fuji.

I don’t own any rubber boots, but I knew I didn’t want to go outside in my bedroom slippers. So I put on a pair of hiking boots. And I don’t own a raincoat. (Hey! I live in Denver, not Seattle. I own a ski jacket.) So I grabbed the jacket to my workout clothes and threw it over my shoulders. There I was, wearing a blue nightgown, hiking boots, and a bright green Nike jacket. I looked like Granny Clampett. But it doesn’t matter how I looked. The point is I was wearing absolutely nothing that would keep me dry.

Anyway, the good news is that I hadn’t left my window open and my car was locked up tight as a drum. More good news is that I didn’t even have to go outside, which I would have realized had I not been medicated. Kids, don’t use drugs. I simply opened the garage door and looked outside at my cozily-locked-up-tight-as-a-drum car.

Bill had fallen back to sleep, but I laid awake a long while listening to the rain.

Soup’s On

This week I am going to feature recipes for soup. Soup is one of my favorite things to eat, and my mom had a lot of soup recipes. She prepared soup every day for the little coffee shop/restaurant they owned in Leadville, Colorado, for a few years. She gave me this recipe that she called Cream of Anything. I always thought it was very clever of her to have come up with the idea.

Cream of Anything Soup

Ingredients
¾ c. butter
1 onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 c. chopped vegetables
2 T. chicken broth seasoning, or 2 chicken bouillon cubes
2 c. milk
2 c. half and half
1 qt. hot water
Salt and pepper
Seasonings

Process
Melt butter in Dutch oven. Add onion and celery. Sauté until onion is translucent, about 5 minutes. Add chopped vegetables, and sauté, covered, for about 10 minutes, until the vegetables are becoming tender. Stir in flour. Cook, stirring occasionally, 2 or 3 minutes. Add water, chicken seasoning and milk. Cook, stirring, until thickened.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. Stir in half and half. Bring to simmer, but not to a boil. Add seasonings according to vegetables used.

Slurping

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Today I ate noodles with two of my granddaughters, both of whom love noodles.

I don’t think I have ever come across a noodle I didn’t like. I particularly like the long, skinny kind that you try with great persistence to wrap around the fork, and then just finally quietly work into your mouth using that same fork.

(In our travels in Italy a few years ago, we learned that the Italians wouldn’t even consider cutting their long pasta. They instead wrap and wrap and wrap it around their forks, without the use of a spoon. If all else fails, the Italians will slurp.)

So will my granddaughters. And one of the best things about being a grandparent is that you aren’t necessarily responsible for teaching your grandchildren their manners. So it was with great joy that I challenged the two of them to a noodle slurping contest. For the next two minutes, the sounds of slurping filled the kitchen. The 3-year-old won handily. Nobody slurps like a toddler.

As I said, I like noodles of all kinds. The two little girls prefer Asian noodles – especially ramen and pho. Here is a simple recipe for ramen noodles that I got from Rants From My Crazy Kitchen.

Easy Homemade Ramen Noodle Soup

Ingredients
1 package Chinese noodles
12-16 c. chicken broth
2 carrots peeled and diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 scallions, thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 T soy sauce
1 t. sesame oil

Process
Bring the broth to a boil in a large pot. Add the carrots, celery, scallions, and garlic. Reduce heat to medium and cook until vegetables are soft. Add in the noodles, soy sauce, and sesame oil. Continue cooking for 3 minutes.