First, Happy Remembrance Day, Armistice Day, Veteran's Day, what you will.
This Week's Lunch
The adulterated can of chili last was a bit too greasy and rich for me, and I wanted to move away from buying something in a can or a box or a bag and turning it into lunch. It's easy, but it's not as much fun.
This week my stomach wanted something like comfort food, so it was chicken, gravy and noodles. Sort of.
The noodles are oriental egg noodles, not as broad as western ones, with a slightly different mouth feel, a bit firmer and fatter, and certainly longer. They frequently come in bundles, and one makes a person/meal. I normally use them with
psatay sauce. I cooked them up this time with peas added after they were mostly cooked, mainly to get some veggies into lunch.
My stomach decided it wanted chicken chunks in gravy, so off to the supermarket yesterday. I got chicken leg quarters (none in the freezer), brought it home, cooked two of them in the oven with a bit of salt on the underside (about 2 lb). I didn't buy bottled gravy. It's frequently too watery and too salty. I wanted to make it myself, and checked our cookbooks to see what each suggested.
They all called for chicken drippings, flour, chicken broth, maybe some light cream (if I wanted a richer gravy) and time, but didn't agree on what ratios, or exactly how much time. They all seemed to presume that I was either making it with pan cooked chicken, or the like. I took guesses, tasted and came up with rather tasty.
I didn't have enough chicken drippings in the baking so I added some drippings from previous baked chicken and some butter (about a teaspoon).
I wanted to make it richer, but didn't have light cream. I used half and half, about an ounce.
I used about 2 tablespoons of flour, and mixed it, the butter/drippings and heated it until the flour was cooked and everything was sticking to the pan.
No chicken broth on hand (I didn't want to use a full pint), so I heated water and chicken soup base from Penzey's
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| you can't see the gravy! |
The result was rich, golden, and a bit under-salted, once I got the chicken off the bones, cut it up and threw it into the pan for some last heating. then divided it all up and put the two parts of the dish into separate containers, so I can heat them up separately and combine. I find that cold noodles frequently clump so I like to heat them with some water, dump the water and then throw the heated sauce on top.
But I understand why medieval recipes are frequently just a list of ingredients without instructions on how to combine or any sort of intermediate steps. I look at what I wrote and I could re-create it or something very close to it, but I'm not so sure a stranger could.
Dessert is a snack box of raisins, because sweet and yummy.
What I would change
A bit more salt in the chicken as it's cooking, remember to drain the drippings back into the pan after I've gotten the meat off the bone.
Italian Sausage in Cream Sauce baked over Spaghetti Squash (think Sausage Alfredo sauce over Veggie Noodles) The squash came from the local farmer's market and I cooked it in a crockpot after finding a recipe online, and the sausage was from a local supermarket's reduced meats section. the combination turned out well, although I've been told that spaghetti squash should be eaten with "a hearty sauce" like marinara.
Turnips, cooked with carrots and all mashed together (it's peach colored!) with chicken bits that were dredged in flower with salt, pepper and garlic, then baked. Not too imaginative, but filling, even if it needs to have salt added. Dessert is either plain greek yogurt with raspberry jam spooned in or a soft flour cake
