Give schnitzel a try at Seven Hens in Decatur

“GBD. That’s Golden Brown Delicious.” That’s how 7 Hens owner Michael Gurevich describes his Decatur restaurant’s signature dish, the chicken schnitzel.

“We take a locally raised product, fresh chicken breasts from Gainesville, Georgia, pound them out, bread them and fry them to GBD, Golden Brown Delicious,” Gurevich says. The chicken gets a taste of international flavor using six profiles such as American, Mexican and French, and finishing touches in the forms of sauces and toppings. The schnitzel is served on a baguette, as a wrap, on a platter or as a salad. 

7 Hens chicken schnitzel wrap. Joseph Szala

 

Schnitzel is Israeli street food, Gurevich says, “But it’s more than that. You’ll find it cooked at home, too.” The entrepreneur came to the U.S. as a student and chose the Emory area to build the first of what could become a fast-casual schnitzel franchise.

A fast-casual chicken schnitzel restaurant, 7 Hens is now open in Decatur. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 The name 7 Hens is taken from the six variations on the schnitzel flavoring –  American, Mexican, Italian, French, Chinese and Indian, plus the build-your-own option, the Traveler. Finishing touches include olive tapenade aioli, chipotle aioli, barbecue, teriyaki, and Ranch, most of which are house-made. Toppings include greens such as lettuce and spinach, pickles, avocado and mushrooms. Sides feature fries made with Yukon Gold potatoes, chips or salad. Vegetarians are accommodated with schnitzel-fried tofu and those with a fear of frying may ask for their chicken to be grilled. My little one gobbled up the Lil’ Henny meal for children 12 and under. She chose the house-made Ranch dressing to accompany her sliced chicken schnitzel and loved the sauce so much we had to take the extras home.  

7 Hens' Brad Allan pounds out the chicken breast before breading and frying. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

7 Hens is located in North Decatur Plaza at North Decatur and Clairmont Road, the same shopping center as Rainbow Grocery and Mattress Firm. 2140 North Decatur Road Decatur, GA 30033. (404) 633-3000. The restaurant hours are Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. www.7hens.com

The chefs use a mezzaluna to slice the chicken schnitzel. (Ryan Kersting, left, and Brad Allan, right.) Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books.

Thanks for a lovely and fun meal, 7 Hens crew - owner Michael Gurevich, and Chefs Ryan Kersting and Brad Allan!

The American from 7 Hens. Photo by 7 Hens.

Weeknight Roast Chicken with Vegetables

Roasted chicken breasts with vegetables. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

It was a classic 70s Mom moment: I pored through my cookbooks asking myself, "what can I do with chicken tonight?" Of course, the 70s mom would have have worried about ground beef, but I had a 1-pound package of bone-in chicken breasts about a day past its expiration and due for a date with either the freezer or the oven.

In winter, I prefer bone-in poultry because I love to braise - making a hearty pot of chicken and dumplings that can simmer in the oven for most of the day, the chicken releasing its juices into a savory broth. In the summer, however, I avoid these kind of kitchen-warming projects. But my husband found some chicken breasts on sale at the market and I needed a quick and easy supper idea.

Roast chicken and vegetables. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

I guess most folks would coat the breasts in barbecue sauce and grill them, but given the stormy weather, an indoor recipe would need to be found. I checked through two favorite cookbooks, a cherished ring-bound Pillsbury Cookbook, missing its covers, but still holding its own as a home cooking go-to resource; and my favorite cookbook, Big Orange, the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, revised edition. My search this time yielded a Roast Chicken with Vegetables in ATK that used bone-in chicken breasts and required just one pan.

Potatoes, carrots, celery & onions coated with olive oil, salt and pepper. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

I cut up two carrots, six red potatoes and two onions, mixed them with a double glug of olive oil and a couple sprigs of fresh thyme from the garden, spread them in a pan and baked them for 15 minutes in a hot, 450 degree oven. The chicken breasts were placed over the vegetables, brushed with a few tablespoons of melted butter and seasoned with salt and pepper. Both chicken and vegetables returned to the oven for about 30 minutes (this was convection, allow longer for conventional). When I opened the oven door, the aromatic chicken was a sight to behold - skin the color of aged cherrywood and juicy, tender flesh. The potatoes cooked in melted butter, olive oil and melted chicken fat were a guilty pleasure.

Ready for the oven. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Roasted Chicken Breasts and Vegetables

6 to 8 medium red potatoes, peeled and quartered 


4 carrots, peeled and sliced into 2-inch lengths


2 medium onions, peeled and quartered

2 sprigs fresh thyme

Olive oil

Salt and freshly ground black pepper


3 bone-in chicken breasts

2 tablespoons melted butter

1. Preheat oven to 450. Toss vegetables and thyme with olive oil, salt and pepper and spread
 on baking sheet covered in heavy duty foil. Roast for 15 minutes.
 Remove from oven and stir vegetables.


2. Place chicken breasts on top of vegetables. 
Brush with melted butter and season with salt and pepper.
Return to oven for 30 minutes. Near the end of cooking time, check for doneness by piercing
the chicken breasts with a knife or fork and looking for juices to run clear. You're looking
for 165 on a meat thermometer, too. Remove tray from the oven and serve chicken with
vegetables. 

The noblest of emulsions

Tie-dye Easter eggs by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

This is my contribution to April's #LetsLunch Twitter Party on the theme of eggs. I got a bit mixed up in the Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg riddle, but there are eggs in here if you have the patience to read it.

When I last wrote about mayonnaise, I described a fish stew with red pepper aioli and my husband's Proustian childhood treat ~ pound cake slices spread with mayonnaise and pan-fried. At the time, my new foodie friend Pedro commented "mayonnaise is the noblest of all emulsions!"

Two years later, I still consider that a great comment because it touches on how Southerners feel about the French-by-way-of-Spain sauce. It's omnipresent, particularly in the sandwich realm. It's the glue that keeps my minner cheese together, the binder for the tartar sauce that augments our Friday fish fry, the finishing touch to my lunchtime ham and cheese sandwich.

Mayonnaise wasn't always the ubiquitous sandwich spread. Time was, another egg-based spread was whipped up for sandwich- and salad-making, boiled dressing. This old-fashioned sauce is similar to mayonnaise - it uses egg yolks and a tiny bit of mustard for flavor and thickening, but whereas mayo relies on oil and a prayer to emulsify, boiled dressing adds flour and cream, caressed with a finishing swirl of butter. Mayonnaise is only slightly acidic, but boiled dressing will pucker your mouth with the tang of cider vinegar.

If mayonnaise is the noblest of emulsions, then boiled dressing is the tarted-up, some might say eccentric, Aunt Flossie brought out for non-public family occasions. Non-public, because by today's standards, it's really a bit of trouble and yields a small quantity. And family because, this is secret recipe kind of stuff, the kind of sauce on which legends and maybe fortunes can be made.

Boiled dressing is properly made in a double boiler, and it's sometimes called cooked dressing. As in Cole Slaw with Cooked Dressing, or Potato Salad with Cooked Dressing. I prefer boiled dressing on that staple of the Steel Magnolia circuit, chicken salad.

Easter eggs. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Forgive the tangentially-interesting pictures of the Easter eggs. We decorated 10 dozen Easter eggs, that's a lot of vinegar and color tabs, don't you think? Back to the subject at hand: eggs and chicken salad:

Southern boiled dressing. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

You use only white meat on your chicken salad, right? You know the girls in Junior League will talk behind your back in you put dark meat in your chicken salad. Just kidding. Here's how I poach chicken for chicken salad:

Poached chicken breasts

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, about a pound and a half

Juice of half a lemon

1/2 teaspoon salt

A few grinds of coarse black pepper

Water

1. In a skillet with a lid, set over medium heat, place chicken breasts and just barely cover with water. Add salt, lemon juice, and fresh ground black pepper. Let water come to a boil. Cover with lid, set heat to low and cook for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, use a fork and knife to determine doneness of the meat. If meat is still pink, cover and cook for an additional 5 minutes. Repeat as necessary until meat is cooked through.

2. Remove chicken breasts from broth (which may be saved for another purpose). Let cool enough to handle comfortably. Chop into smallish bites for chicken salad. And here's something I like to do before I mix together the chicken salad: I sprinkle a teaspoon or two of good-quality red wine vinegar over the chicken, and maybe a 1/4 teaspoon salt, just a tetch.

Favorite tip for bringing refrigerator-cold eggs to room temp: place in bowl of warm water. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books.

 Old-fashioned Boiled Dressing

1 teaspoon dry mustard

2 teaspoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons flour

1/2 cup water

2 egg yolks, beaten

3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons heavy cream

1. Place a double boiler on stovetop over medium heat. Fill bottom with enough water to just touch the bottom of inset. Let water come to a gentle boil.

2. Add dry ingredients into top of double boiler, whisk to break up lumps. Gradually whisk in water.

3. Add the egg yolks and vinegar and continue stirring. Let cook for at least five minutes, continually cooking. When mixture is thick, remove from heat and stir in butter, then cream. Season to taste, adding salt and pepper as needed. Ladylike cooks will add white pepper so as not detract from the creamy yellow sauce. I think white pepper tastes like soap, so I leave it out.

4. Let sauce come to room temperature. Use immediately in a recipe or store in a tightly covered jar in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Chicken salad on croissants. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

 My Chicken Salad


3 boneless chicken breasts poached according to recipe above, or 2 cups chopped, cooked chicken


2 stalks celery, chopped fine


2 green onions, chopped


1 recipe Boiled Dressing from above recipe


1/2 to 1 cup mayonnaise or sour cream, depending on your preference


1/2 cup chopped pecans

Salt and pepper to taste


1. Toss together chicken, celery and onions. Add boiled dressing and taste. Add mayonnaise or sour cream, stir together, then taste. Adjust seasonings and dressing. Stir in chopped pecans. Serve.


For more egg-citing recipes, check out these #LetsLunch posts: 

- Cheryl‘s Singapore-Style Chai Poh Scramble at A Tiger in the Kitchen

– Charissa‘s Gluten-Free Leek, Ham & Pecorino Souffles at Zest Bakery

– Denise‘s Beet Dye & Pink Deviled Eggs at Chez Us

– Emma‘s Eggs In A Hole at Dreaming of Pots & Pans

– Felicia‘s Perfect Sandwich at Burnt-Out Baker

– Grace‘s Scrambled Eggs & Tomatoes at HapaMama

– Joe‘s Kim-Chi Deviled Eggs at Joe Yonan

– Linda‘s Home-made Cadbury Eggs (Maple Chocolate Eggs) at Free Range Cookies

– Lisa‘s Legendary Egg & Onion at Monday Morning Cooking Club


– Rashda‘s Bombay Toasts (Spicy French Toasts) at Hot Curries And Cold Beer

– Vivian‘s Oeuf Chaud Froid at Vivian Pei

Chicken Salad Sandwich

Chicken salad on croissant by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Sandwiches get us through the day – from the ubiquitous fast food offering of a breakfast sandwich, to ham and cheese at lunch and meatball subs for supper, whatever meal you’re preparing, there’s a sandwich for it.

Susan Russo, author of the new "Encyclopedia of Sandwiches: Recipes, History and Trivia for Everything Between Sliced Bread" (Quirk, 2011) and blogger at Food Blogga knows this well. “The Encyclopedia of Sandwiches is a belly-filling book of over 100 of the world's most beloved sandwiches," she said recently. "It's got all sorts of tasty sandwich trivia, history and recipes.”

Food photographer and blogger Matt Armandariz (Matt Bites) photographed every sandwich for the book, artfully and attractively. Perhaps the handiest feature of the book is the alphabetic listing with colored index tabs along the page edge – looking for a Fluffernutter? – flip to “F.” Have a hankering for a Hamburger and its 8 variations, including vegetarian? Just skim to “H.”

Along the way, readers can pick up some helpful history, such as the origin of the Fluffernutter: “In 1913 brother and sister Armory and Emma Curtis opened the Curtis Marshmallow Factory, and their most popular product was Snowflake Marshmallow Creme, a spreadable marshmallow confection which Emma suggested would be delicious paired with peanut and sandwiched between two slices of white bread. They tried it. People loved it. And eventually it became known as the Fluffernutter, a trademark of Durkee-Mower Inc., the maker of Marshmallow Fluff.”

Narrowing the field of recipes to try, I lighted on chicken salad, the Southern standard, and served it to my writer friends for our ladies' lunch. Russo’s recipe delivers a delicious chicken salad filled with cranberries and pecans, and she assures me that it’s from the Loveless Café, in Nashville, Tennessee,  one of my all-time favorite restaurants (don't even get me started on Loveless biscuits, dripping with homemade blackberry preserves).

Chicken Salad
from "The Encyclopedia of Sandwiches" by Susan Russo

4 cups (2 ½ pounds) diced cooked chicken

1 cup finely diced celery

½ cup sweet pickle relish

1 cup mayonnaise

¾ cup dried cranberries, such as Craisins

½ Vidalia onion, finely diced (about ½ cup)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 cup pecan pieces, optional

8 slices white or whole grain bread, or 4 croissants

1. Combine chicken salad ingredients in a bowl. Cover and chill at least hours to let flavors meld.

2. To make each sandwich, scoop about ¾ to 1 cup chicken salad onto a slice of toasted to untoasted bread and top with a second slice of bread. Makes 4 sandwiches.

Be sure to check out these upcoming sandwich stories, also from "The Encyclopedia of Sandwiches."

• Pound Cake Sandwiches stuffed with strawberries
• The Jucy Lucy cheeseburger (that's right, Jucy)

Mulligatawny: Indian-spiced chicken soup

Mulligatawny by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Mulligatawny, the richly flavored Indian-Anglo soup is so much fun to say, it's almost disappointing to find out the mellifluous name just means "pepper water" in Tamil. It still means delicious.

This curry-spiced soup is loaded with vegetables like carrots, celery, red pepper and onion and makes a convenient weeknight meal. The apple may seem an unusual ingredient, but it blends into the flavorful broth and lends body and sweetness to the dish. Look for curry powder in the spice aisle of the supermarket - I like to order curry powder from Penzey's Spices, also.

Mulligatawny (Indian-Spiced Chicken Soup)

recipe adapted from Family Fun magazine


2 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, diced 1/4 inch

2 carrots, diced 1/4 inch

1 stalk celery, diced 1/4 inch

1 red pepper, diced 1/4 inch

1 apple, cored, peeled and diced 1/4 inch

1/2 cup flour

3 teaspoons sweet curry powder

5 cups chicken or vegetable broth, homemade if you have it

1 (14 1/2 oz.) can petite diced tomatoes

2 cups cooked chicken breast, diced 1/2 inch

Salt and pepper to taste

2 cups hot cooked rice to accompany

1. In a Dutch oven over medium heat, pour in olive oil. Add onion, carrots, celery, red pepper and apple and saute for about 15 minutes, until the vegetables are soft and beginning to brown.

2. Turn the heat to low and add the flour and curry powder. Stir and cook for about 5 minutes. Add the chicken broth and diced tomatoes and simmer for a half hour. Stir in cooked chicken. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Let soup simmer for up to an hour - the flavors will continue to develop as it cooks at a low temperataure. Serve with hot cooked rice.

Text and images copyright 2011 by Lucy Mercer.

In praise of braising: Early spring menu + giveaway!

Asparagus Spears by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books




  With a glimpse of pale purple gray on the empty corner lot by my daughter's school, I know that spring is here - wisteria's annual show, gnarly and regal, is the harbinger. The glories of vernal produce will soon be known at the farmer's market - the local strawberries and tender greens, tiny new potatoes and baby Vidalia onions. To my mind, the official sign of spring is cheap and plentiful asparagus, grown, if not in Georgia, at least the Western hemisphere.

It's difficult for me to just jump right into the warm season - I carry a sweater with me when I leave the house, because you just never know when the weather will turn. And I still employ my Dutch oven for hearty oven-braised dishes like chicken legs cooked for hours with bacon, mushrooms and carrots. Do you braise? It's not a word to fear - it just means meat and/or vegetables nestled in a dish, covered with liquid such as broth or wine, and cooked until the meat falls apart and the vegetables are tender. I make this chicken dish frequently through the fall, winter and spring because it's simple and filling and just lingers in the oven, ready for the family to gather around the table. I filled out the plate with my go-to brown rice pilaf, mashed potatoes would be a good substitute, ready to soak up the plentiful juices from the braising dish. And asparagus, who can forget asparagus, skillet-roasted with butter and toasty shallots.

This is one of those dishes that works well for a carpool mom with a slow cooker. I use a Dutch oven and the convection feature on my oven to simulate the slow cooker, but if you have a crockpot, just assemble the ingredients ahead of time, place in the stoneware and cook for about 4 hours. If you haven't invested in a Dutch oven like Le Creuset, check them out. An enameled cast iron pot like Le Creuset will give you a lifetime of lovely braises and stews.This is my cooking timetable: after lunch, I brown the chicken, chop the vegetables and get the sauce prepared and place all in a Dutch oven. The dish will braise in the oven for a few hours, yielding fall-off-the-bone chicken and rich broth.

Braised chicken legs with carrots, bacon and mushrooms by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Braised Chicken Legs with Carrots,
Mushrooms and Bacon

4 slices bacon, sliced into narrow strips

6 skin-on chicken legs (thighs may be substituted)

1 onion, peeled, halved and sliced into wedges

1 (4-ounce) package sliced cremini mushrooms

4 carrots, peeled, sliced lengthwise and into 1-inch pieces

1/2 cup white wine or vermouth

Salt and pepper to taste

Sprig of fresh thyme, 1/2 teaspoon of dried if you're not a gardener

2 cups chicken broth, or more if needed

1. In a skillet set over medium heat, brown bacon until crispy and cooked through. Remove bacon and drain on paper towels. Pour off the bacon fat into a metal bowl and return two tablespoons fat to the pan. Brown the chicken pieces, making sure to season as you go, turning once each side is sufficiently brown (remember that more brown = more flavor). This takes about a half hour to do properly.

2. Heat the oven to 300. Have a Dutch oven (or slow cooker) on standby. As the chicken pieces are thoroughly browned, place them in the main cooking vessel with the chopped carrots and cover with lid. When all chicken is removed, saute the onion and season with salt and pepper. Add the mushrooms and continue the saute until the shrooms are brown and toasty. Deglaze the pan with the white wine, stirring and scraping thoroughly. Add chicken broth and bring to a simmer. Pour the broth over the chicken and carrots, add the thyme and cooked bacon pieces. The goal is for the chicken pieces to sit in a bathtub of broth, so if the sauce doesn't come up to nearly the top of the chicken and vegetables, add more broth, if you have it, or water.

Braised chicken sealed with parchment by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

3. Tear a piece of parchment paper just large than the circumference of pan. Crumple it and place on the top of the liquid. Put the lid on the Dutch oven and place in real oven, or slow cooker in its cooking unit and let simmer for at least two hours, preferably up to four. I cook on convection at 300 for about three hours, any longer and I reduce the temp to 250. Check every 45 minutes to an hour to make sure the liquid level is sufficient; make adjustments if necessary.

Brown rice and shallots by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

The chicken and vegetables are a fine supper all alone, but I like to add a starch, like brown rice pilaf, and a green vegetable, because I'm the mom.

Brown Rice Pilaf

In a nonstick skillet with a lid, melt one tablespoon butter and add one tablespoon olive oil, cook over medium heat. Saute one chopped onion and one chopped celery stalk until translucent (for the onion, until soft for the celery). Add two cups brown rice and stir. Add four cups chicken broth, or a combination of chicken broth and water, and stir. Season with salt and pepper, place lid on pan and let cook for about a half hour. Check on the liquid level every five minutes or so.

Asparagus spears by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Sauteed Asparagus with Shallot

In a skillet over medium heat, add a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Add one shallot, chopped, and cook until soft. Take a bunch of asparagus, or if feeding just a few, a handful of asparagi, and cut off the woody ends. Slice remainders into 3-inch pieces. Add to skillet and toss in oil and shallot until bright green and crisp. Serve immediately. Save the asparagus scraps to make creamy asparagus soup.

Braised chicken leg with carrots, mushrooms and bacon; brown rice pilaf and sauteed asparagus.
Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.

And now for a giveaway!

CSN, which sells Le Creuset Dutch ovens at Cookware.com, will give a $50 gift code to a member of the A Cook and Her Books family. Before I tell you how to win, I need to remind you that only entries with valid email addresses will be eligible to win. There are four ways to get an entry in the giveaway. Each person may accumulate four chances to win by doing the following:

1. Leave a comment on this entry.

2. Subscribe by email or RSS to A Cook and Her Books (see the boxes on the right). Leave another comment on this post telling me that you subscribed.

3. Become a fan of A Cook and Her Books on Facebook. If you're already a fan, thank you! Just leave another comment telling me that you're a fan.

4. Follow me on Twitter, @acookandherbook (no "s"). If you already follow, thank you! Just leave another comment telling me that you're following.

In summary, you have four chances to win a  $50 gift code from CSN stores. The deadline for entries is midnight on March 31. I will draw a winner using random.org on Friday, April 1. This contest is for U.S. and Canada residents only. Disclaimer: CSN is offering the gift code and I'm not compensated in any way. My opinions are my own. Thanks for being a part of this exciting giveaway!

This giveaway is now closed. Thanks to everyone for participating and I look forward to more great giveaways in the future!



Good Gravy

Gravy for poultry by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Good gravy is a godsend, whether you need it to dress the bird, the dressing or the mashed potatoes, having homemade gravy on the Thanksgiving table pretty much separates the real cooks from the duffers.

There's no particular magic to gravy, just attention to ingredients and proper stirring to eliminate lumps will carry a novice through. Here's the recipe that I've used for years - it's based on canned chicken broth, but substitute homemade turkey or chicken or vegetable broth as you wish. For the Thanksgiving feast, combine the gravy with some of the pan drippings from the bird for a truly spectacular gravy (if the bird has been brined, add drippings judiciously, the salt can quickly overwhelm the sauce).

Gravy for Poultry

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped

1 carrot, peeled and roughly chopped

1 stalk celery, peeled and roughly chopped

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 bay leaf

1 sprig fresh thyme, if available

1 (32 oz) package low-salt chicken broth

Salt and pepper to taste.

1. In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Add the vegetables, all roughly chopped, and let brown, stirring occasionally. Pour chicken broth into a microwavable container and zap for 1 minute.

2. Stir the vegetables until they are nice and caramel-colored, about 10 minutes, then add 1/4 cup all-purpose flour. Stir this into the vegetables for an additional 5 minutes or so. Then gradually add 4 cups of warm broth. Strain the broth through a sieve, discarding the solids. Season to taste. Cool and store the gravy in the fridge for a day or so, or place in the freezer until Thanksgiving Day.

3. On Turkey Day, stand by the stove, lovingly stirring the gravy, adjusting the seasoning and admiring your kitchen skills. Homemade gravy without lumps, and not requiring a packet or a pocket or a jar.

Apron Strings

Chicken & Dumplings. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

My mom is cleaning out. She says that she's doing my brothers and me a favor by doing a big clean before, heaven forbid, something happens to her and Dad. Mom remembers too well cleaning out her father's basement when he passed away at age 89. That basement could have been a time capsule - suitcases with Aunt Eloise's x-rays, discarded wheelchairs and crutches from various family hospital stays through the years, cancelled checks from 1910. I wish I could say I was making this up, but I was along for the emptying of the basement and I remember it well.

My mom's big clean means that my brother got the telephone lamp - you hang up the receiver to dim the light, something we could do for hours as children - and I got Mom’s collection of aprons. Does anyone outside of a restaurant kitchen wear aprons anymore? I don't always remember to wear them, but my mom always did when preparing dinner. She kept them in the bottom drawer next to the Harvest Gold side-by-side refrigerator, separate from the kitchen towels. That’s right, she had a drawer just for aprons. She made them herself, cotton gingham with rickrack trim and a single pocket. When I helped in the kitchen, I’d pull one out, asking first for the organza hostess aprons that weren’t practical (they were dressy aprons meant for tea and bridge parties), but settling for the gingham and rickrack version with the gathers at the waist. The aprons would circle my waist, fully covering me and the ties would wrap twice or sometimes three times around. Those days are gone.

On some of those apron-wearing days, Mom would let me choose a recipe and we would cook together. She didn’t have a lot of cookbooks, but she did have an old-fashioned recipe folder stuffed with yellowed newspaper clippings. There were more than recipes in the binder - vintage Erma Bombeck columns, clipped because they made Mom laugh out loud; a real estate listing of a log home by a river, complete with a working mill; these were Mom’s life and dreams. And there were recipes, tried and true gems from the newspapers where we lived when my family was young - the Nashville Banner, the Tennesseean, the Spartanburg Herald and Charlotte Observer (we lived in Gaffney, South Carolina, and subscribed to the Gaffney Ledger, and occasionally the Spartanburg paper, but Mom insisted that the Observer had the best food section).

Mom’s chicken and dumplings recipe came from one of these clippings, in a story from the Charlotte paper about a woman who raised a dozen kids in the darkest days of the Depression. She lived on a farm and learned to make great quantities of food for her family. Her recipe produced tender chicken and fluffy dumplings and was finished off with the odd choice of a ½ stick of margarine melted on top. Over the years, Mom and I have each changed the recipe to suit our cooking styles. She makes hers with boneless chicken breasts and canned broth. I prefer meat on the bone and the broth from a gentle poach. Neither of us adds the margarine at the end.

Making broth. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

When I think of my inspiration in the kitchen, I know that it most surely comes from my mom, but I can’t think of a single recipe that is all hers, that I make just the way Mom taught me. My mom is an excellent cook, but I have to say the greatest cooking lesson she ever gave me was to be open-minded and to learn where I can - from other cooks, from books, from TV. I absorb it all and the results are my own.

I make chicken and dumplings about once a month, especially during the winter. When I make this recipe, it makes so much more than my family can eat, so I will pull out a couple of servings and give them to her. She says my chicken and dumplings are better than hers. Can you believe that?

Dumplings ready for the stew-pot. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

My latest variation is in response to some folks who claim a metallic taste in baking powder. I understand this, especially with these dumplings which require three teaspoons baking powder to 3 cups flour - that’s a lot of baking powder. I borrowed a technique from "The Gift of Southern Cooking" by Scott Peacock and Edna Lewis. Miss Lewis made her own baking powder of ¼ cup cream of tartar to 2 tablespoons baking soda. I mixed this up and used it in the dumplings with great success.

Dumplings in broth. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

When I make this recipe, I don't always use a whole chicken - it's quite good made with just chicken breasts or chicken thighs, but if using the latter, I always brown the skin first and remove it, scraping up the tasty bits in the bottom of the pan to enhance the broth. I will also use chicken broth, homemade or canned, instead of the water. But the dumplings are never altered. They are different from most dumplings - they puff like biscuits in the stew. After reheating, they absorb the broth, swelling into yummy pillows.

Chicken & Dumplings. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Chicken and Dumplings

Stew
1 (3 lb.) chicken
1 onion, peeled and cut into wedges
1 bay leaf
Salt and pepper to taste
Water
1 onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, diced medium
3 carrots, peeled and diced medium

Dumplings
3 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup shortening
About 1 1/2 cups milk, more or less, for the dumplings
Additional milk for the stew

1. Wash chicken and place in pot with water to cover. Add onion and bay leaf, salt and pepper. Bring to boil and simmer until meat is tender, about 30 minutes. Remove chicken from pot, let cool and remove meat from bones. Throw away carcass, chop meat. Reserve broth.

2. To make dumplings, mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Cut in shortening by your preferred method (I’ve given up on pastry blenders; hands are my favored tool for this), until mixture is mealy and the particles are small. Add enough cold milk to make a workable dough, up to a cup and a half. Knead the dough and lightly press out 1/2 inch thick with floured hands onto a floured counter. Cut into 1 - inch strips.

3. Bring broth to a gentle boil, using a fine mesh skimmer to scoop up the fat and gray crud from the surface. In a separate pan, cook celery, onions and carrots in a small amount of water until soft, about 10 minutes. Add cooked vegetables to broth, then chicken pieces, then gently drop dumplings into pot, allowing each to puff up and rise to the surface. When all dumplings are in, add milk to the stew to achieve proper consistency, about a cup or two. Taste for seasoning. Let simmer about 15 minutes. Feed to your hungry family.

© 2010, Lucy Mercer.

The Wing's the Thing

Chicken wings are not meant for tea parties. Greasy, saucy and sloppy, they are a guilty pleasure, best served with a handy roll of paper towels. They must be mouth-watering from the git-go, brown and succulent, and require a dipping sauce to suck all the juicy goodness from the bone.

They are one of those foods that I eat only in restaurants, mostly due to the fear of frying factor - I’d rather not subject my kitchen light fixtures to airborne grease. My husband agrees - but he believes that fried wings are the only way to go. If you don’t see scorch marks on the ceiling, the cook obviously hasn’t put forth sufficient effort. If the wings are to be worthy, the cook must brave the shrapnel-spitting cauldron of boiling oil. As if that isn’t intimidating enough, our two daughters can detect a speck of ground black pepper at three hundred paces, while my husband and I like our food with some kick. This leads to a house divided, sort of like what we witnessed this week when Congress voted on healthcare reform.

My goal with a home-cooked chicken wing recipe was to find a relatively clean cooking method and a family-friendly spice level. After giving it some thought, I developed a strategy of roasting wings in a spicy warm tandoori sauce that my girls love. High-heat oven roasting (a technique endorsed by Pam Anderson at Three Many Cooks) browns the wings and keeps them juicy inside. The tandoori marinade is a winner - my family set upon these wings with the same ferocity as a GOP strategist on a yellow-dog Democrat.

And for the grown-ups who like to kick it up, I created a spicy Tikka Masala sauce to serve alongside. The wings are fine without the dip, but they make a pretty picture together - ochre wings and rosy sauce.

Roasted Tandoori Chicken Wings with

Tikka Masala Dipping Sauce

4 pounds chicken wings, tips clipped

Marinade:

2 cups non-fat plain yogurt

8 cloves garlic, peeled

4-inch piece ginger, peeled

1 tsp. turmeric

1 tsp. ground cumin

1 ¼ tsp. garam masala

1 tsp. salt

Juice of 1 lime

Place marinade ingredients in food processor and puree. Place chicken wings in a shallow container and pour marinade over the wings. Let marinate at least 4 hours. Pull the chicken from the marinade and place on foil-lined baking sheets sprayed with canola spray. Bake at 450 for 30 minutes. Start with skin side down and flip halfway through roasting.

Tikka Masala Dip

1 small onion

2-inch piece ginger

5 cloves garlic

3 tbsp. butter

¼ tsp. turmeric

1 tsp. garam masala

½ tsp. cumin

¼ tsp. cayenne

¼ cup cashews, ground in the food processor (optional)

1 (14.5 oz.) can crushed tomatoes

1 tsp. sugar

Salt to taste, if needed

½ cup half n half (or more)

1. In the food processor, blitz together the onion, ginger and garlic to make a paste. Melt butter in skillet over medium heat and add onion-ginger-garlic paste. Cook gently, then add spices and stir for about a minute. Add ground cashews, then tomatoes and sugar. Season with salt and pepper. When cooked through, add half-n-half to arrive at taste and texture you desire.

2. Serve wings with tikka masala dip alongside. And lots of napkins.

A note on clean-up for these and other wings: don’t even bother with the cheap single-ply paper towels, for wing clean-up, go to the auto parts store and get what the mechanics call shop towels and industrial strength soap. You can thank me later.

A Meal to End the Week

Friday night used to be our going out night. The end of the work week meant a restaurant meal, either Cajun or Chinese or the Japanese Steak House, or our favorite, Italian. The economy and the fact that we always have our children with us, means that we eat at home more than ever, including Friday night. I think I hit a home run tonight:

Braised Chicken Legs with Carrots and Bacon

Brown Rice Pilaf

Sauteed Asparagus with Baby Vidalia Onions

Chocolate Ice Milk

Recipes and pictures will follow this week.

Poached Chicken a la Francis

My idea of the perfect chicken salad is firmly rooted in my Southern upbringing. It's the centerpiece at a bridal luncheon, plated on Lenox Eternal, eaten with Francis I sterling and wiped from delicate Southern Belle mouths with starched linens. A few weeks ago, Francis Lam posted on Salon.com about the proper method of poaching chicken in order to achieve the perfect chicken salad and 'fessed up that he thinks chicken salad is sexy.

I love chicken salad, but I can't say that it's particularly sexy food. For a Southern belle, there's a contextual burden: chicken salad is bound up in too many memories of lunches with Mom at Rich's Magnolia Room in downtown Atlanta. (Did I hear a sob out there? We'll talk later.). There are, of course, Great Chicken Salad moments in Literature. If you've ever read "A Southern Belle Primer: or Why Princess Margaret Will Never Be a Kappa Kappa Gamma" by Maryln Schwartz, then you know that you can never put dark meat in your chicken salad and still hold voting privileges with the Junior League. The perfect chicken salad is a plot point in chick-lit mystery author Mary Kay Andrews' rollicking novel "Little Bitty Lies." Beyond the Grave Chicken Salad is, pardon the pun, to die for.

I rarely attempt it at home, especially since my family is happy with the Almond Tarragon Chicken Salad from Publix, one of the few packaged foods I will purchase, although I personally find the salad to be overwhelmingly salty. On a recent supermarket trip, with the thought of chicken salad in the back of my mind, I purchased a pair of three-pound birds for about $3 apiece. The first became the centerpiece of my standard roasted chicken dinner: a brined, butter-basted, heat-blasted bird; accompanied by homemade mashed potatoes with individual lakes of from-scratch gravy. Although the remaining bird was due for poaching, I decided to brine it just the same as my roasted bird.

I picked this technique up from Cook's Illustrated, which seems to brine everything that clucks. (The test cooks are also obsessed with thyme, but that's another matter). I take a large plastic container, put 1/4 cup Kosher salt and 1/4 cup brown sugar in the bottom and pour in about three or four cups of water, being careful that the chicken will not displace liquid clear out of the container. I remove the giblets and clean up the fat around the cavity a bit, then submerge the bird. If more water is needed to cover the bird, pour it in now. This goes in the fridge for at least two hours and no more than 10. (I recall a saline-intense experience with a bird that was left in brine for 24 hours. I won't make that mistake again.)

I then followed Francis' technique for the perfect poach and the resulting chicken was the most succulent, tender bird, ever. I'm not saying the brine made a difference, but I will definitely do the brine and poach together again.



I pulled the meat from the chicken, using the white meat in my chicken salad - enough mayonnaise to bind, the juice of half a lemon, and for crunch, thinly sliced celery and sliced almonds, finishing with a pinch of salt and a few cranks of the pepper mill. The chicken salad was, as my grandmother, Kitty Warren, a Birmingham society lady whose sterling pattern was Calvert by Kirk, would say "out of this world." Hear "world" as "wuld" drawn out into at least four syllables.


I saved the dark meat for soup - just adding chopped celery and onions, along with the chicken, seasoned with salt and pepper. For an investment of three dollars, along with a handful of vegetables and pantry ingredients, I had tasty lunches for a week. Looking at this delicious food on my everyday Fiestaware kind of makes me want to iron the linen napkins and pull out Kitty's silver and my Lenox china...

Pork Chile Chowder for Gringos

Reminiscent of a winter vacation in New Mexico, and a warming meal for a cold night: Pork Chile Chowder. Of course, we're not chile heads and I'm responsible for feeding little ones, so we go with "gringo heat," enough spice to tingle the palate, not enough to require tissues, or gallons of cold water.

This recipe took shape after a foraging mission in the freezer which yielded both boneless chicken thighs and pork chops. I couldn't think of a recipe that would serve four out of each protein alone, so I used both meats in the chowder. You can use either pig or chicken or both in this recipe.

Pork (or Chicken) Chile Chowder

2 boneless pork chops, cut into 1-inch pieces

3 boneless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces

4 slices bacon (I use thick-cut bacon)

1 (32 oz.) container low-salt chicken broth (or homemade)

1/4 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon adobo seasoning, or more to taste (I use Penzey's)

cumin to taste

salt and pepper to taste

3 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks

1 cup frozen corn kernels

1 (7 oz.) can diced green chilies, or more to taste

1. Find a heavy soup pot for the stove and place over medium heat. Cut bacon into 1-inch pieces and fry until crisp. Remove the bacon pieces and drain on paper towels. In remaining fat, brown the meat. When meat is seared, remove pieces to paper towels to drain.

2. You should have about 3 tablespoons of fat. If you have more, pour excess out of pot. If you don't have enough, add vegetable oil for a sufficient quantity. With a whisk, stir in 1/4 cup flour and seasonings. Slowly pour in chicken broth and whisk until smooth and thickened.

3. Return meat and potatoes to pot and heat through, up to a half hour. Add bacon, chilies and corn and warm up for at least five minutes. This step can be done in a slow cooker or as an oven braise: put the chowder base, meat, potatoes, bacon, chilies and corn in an oven-proof casserole or stockpot, cover and place in a low oven for a couple of hours. In my convection oven, I would put it on 300 for two hours and check every half hour to make sure the liquid level was adequate. If using a slow cooker, put it on the low setting for a couple of hours.

4. Taste for seasoning and serve.

Sunday Night Supper

Menu

Bathed-in-Butter Roasted Chicken

Braised Green Beans with Cherry Tomatoes and Onions

Cantaloupe Rainbows with Honey and Lime Dressing

Creamy Vanilla Rice Pudding

Today's menu was filled with tried-and-true favorites. The dog days are wearing on me and my mind is turning to the comforts of cooler weather and heartier cooking. While the baby napped on the sofa, I roasted a whole chicken in a cast-iron skillet. My method combines two techniques: the first is brining, and the second is a high-heat roasting technique that I first read about in Fine Cooking. I will write later on the butter-basted roast chicken.

The braised green beans are from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison. The CSA bag includes green beans each week -- big, fat pole beans. I cooked them with country ham last week, so I thought I'd try a vegetarian option this week, and they were yummy. The cantaloupe was a satisfying texture, but lacking in sweetness, so I spiked it with bit of honey and lime, an all-time favorite with my older daughter.

And for dessert, rice pudding, using the method in America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, first cooking a cup of rice in 2 cups of water, then adding four cups of whole milk and 2/3 cup of sugar, before simmering and stirring in a teaspoon of vanilla. The last of summer's peaches will top off individual servings. In fact, it's dessert time now....

The Queen of Chicken Casseroles

I took a Tex-Mex turn today, stirring up my version of the King Ranch Casserole, a tasty dish popular with can opener cooks. I'm not a food snob, my kids love the blue box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese (or is it Cheese and Macaroni? Not.) and there's always a couple cans of Campbell's in the pantry. I have, in fact, made the can opener version of King Ranch, which involves opening cans of Cream of Chicken soup, diced green chilies and Ro-tel and stirring them together with sour cream. This sauce is layered with cooked chicken and tortillas and topped with cheese before baking.

While reading through Art Smith's Kitchen Life, an excellent home cooking resource, I came upon his version called From-Scratch King Ranch casserole. OK, I love Art, but I find it difficult for a cook to call something "from scratch" when you open three cans and a jar (in this case, chicken broth, tomatoes, roasted red peppers and chopped green chilies). At least the recipe called for cooking chicken thighs in the broth and then creating a spicy veloute to layer with the chicken and tortillas.

My version used what I had on hand - leftover roasted chicken breast meat, fresh sweet peppers from this week's CSA bag, and leftover homemade vegetable broth. I clean forgot about using tomatoes, a key ingredient in typical versions, and the recipe did not suffer for it. In fact, my recipe is better without tomatoes and the mushrooms in Art's version. Here's how I made

Queen Ranch Casserole

9 corn tortillas
2 cups cooked chicken, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 cups broth, vegetable or chicken, or use water
2 roasted red bell peppers, freshly made or from a jar, chopped
1 small can diced green chilies
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon grill seasoning
2 cups milk
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese or Mexican cheese blend
1/2 cup sour cream, for serving

1. Preheat the oven to 350 and position a rack in the center. Lightly coat a 9 X 13 inch baking dish with the oil spray.

2. Arrange the tortillas directly on the oven racks. Bake until the tortillas are dry, about 6 minutes. Remove the tortillas from the oven and let cool.

3. In a bowl, combine cooked chicken, chopped bell pepper, and diced green chilies.

4. In skillet, melt butter and saute onion. Add chili powder and grill seasoning. Cook until onions are soft. Whisk in flour and stir until smooth. Slowly add milk and broth and season to taste.

5. In baking dish, place three tortillas, breaking into chips to create a complete layer. Add half of chicken mixture and then cover with a third of the sauce. Top with a third of the cheese. Repeat these layers. Add the final layer of tortillas, cover with remaining sauce and cheese. Bake in a 350 oven for about 30 minutes, until bubbly and golden and the cheese has melted. Serve individual portions topped with sour cream.

Slaw & Order

Every cook needs a good potluck dish. Just like some folks memorize the pizza delivery number, I've memorized the ratios for my favorite potluck dish, a filling, vamped-up salad with the intriguing name of Chicken Slaw. Never before have I heard those two words together, but they do indeed make a rustic, crunchy, flavorful main dish salad. Shredded cabbage is tossed with pieces of chicken, two kinds of cheese and finished with a Dijon vinaigrette. The result will be the hit of any event you take it to.

Through the years, I've ad-libbed the recipe, but here's my official version with variations noted:

Chicken Slaw
2 cups shredded purple cabbage (1/2 small head)
2 cups shredded green cabbage (1/2 small head), I usually use all green
2 cups poached, shredded chicken
1 1/2 cups (6 oz.) shredded cheddar cheese (medium or sharp is what I have on hand)
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
2 large green onions shredded in the food processor with the cabbage
Handful of Italian flat-leaf parsley shredded in the food processor, aussi
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tbsp. raspberry vinegar (or white wine vinegar, in a pinch)
1 tbsp. Dijon mustard, country style is ok
1 clove garlic, or more to taste
1/4 tsp. lemon pepper
5 slices bacon, cooked to crisp then crumbled (not essential, but a worthy addition)

1. In a very large bowl, combine cabbage, chicken, cheeses, green onions and parsley; toss to mix.
2. In small saucepan, off the heat, combine with the whisk the remaining ingredients. Whisk vigorously to emulsify the ingredients. Over the heat, bring to a slight boil, whisking constantly.
3. Pour dressing over slaw mixture, tossing well to coat. Add bacon, if using.
4. The yield is at least 8 generous servings. You'll probably have some leftovers. It's ok on the second day, but past that, the wateriness really affects the texture of the cheese.

Lost and Found in the Freezer

The plastic container tumbled out of its precarious position in the freezer, narrowly missing my bare foot before shattering on the oak floor. Time to clean out the freezer again, a chore that always gets put off until the day I can no longer gently place containers inside and be able to find them when I need them. A stock making binge and an overflow of overripe bananas pushed the freezer's capacity to the limit, so I began purging what I no longer could identify and what I could use today.

I found a frozen chicken carcass and two cups of meat, leftover biscuits and cornbread. All this provided the makings for Chicken and Dressing, a hearty, filling dish for a March night's supper.

First, I made a broth from the carcass. I put it in my favorite stockpot with water to cover with an onion, a carrot and a stalk of celery, all roughly chopped. A bay leaf and just the slightest amount of salt (perhaps a teaspoon) joined in. This came to a steady boil which I reduced to a barely bubbling simmer, skimming away any flotsam that surfaced. While the broth simmered, I tore the biscuits and cornbread (about 5 cups each) into small chunks and placed them in a casserole to dry out.

When the water was sufficiently enriched with chicken essence, I strained it and discarded the solids. The yield was about a quart of broth. In the clean stockpot, I melted 2 tablespoons of butter, and sweated two stalks of celery, chopped, and an onion, also finely chopped. As the vegetables softened, I added the broth, a bit of water (less than half a cup) and whatever appropriate seasonings were found in the spice drawer (poultry seasoning, salt and pepper). At this point, the oven was heated to 350 degrees.

The broth was poured over the chunked breads and the sauteed vegetables, along with three slightly frothed whole eggs stirred in as well. The final addition was the two cups of chopped, cooked chicken. I wrapped the casserole in foil and placed it in a moderate oven (300 to 350) for most of the afternoon. About 15 minutes before mealtime, I removed the foil and allowed the dressing to firm up and brown a bit. I probably overuse the word "yummy," but this was indeed a good, filling meal that pleased all three of my eaters. There were plenty of leftovers as well, which must be eaten tomorrow, because they most certainly will not end up in the freezer again.

Chicken & Dumplings Just Like Somebody's Mom Used to Make

I like to think that one of my mother's legacies will be a folder stuffed with yellowed newspaper clippings. Vintage Erma Bombeck columns, clipped because they made Mom laugh out loud, a real estate listing with a picture of a log home by a river, complete with a working mill, these are my mom's treasures and my inheritance. And recipes, tried and true gems from the newspapers where we lived when our family was young - the Nashville Banner, the Tennesseean, the Spartanburg Herald and Charlotte Observer (we lived in Gaffney, SC, and subscribed to the Gaffney Ledger, and occasionally the Spartanburg paper, but mom insisted that the Observer had the best food section). About 20 years ago, I found a clipping from the Charlotte paper about an elderly woman who raised a dozen kids in the darkest days of the Depression. She lived on a farm and learned to make great quantities of food for her family. This is her recipe for Chicken and Dumplings and now it has become mine.

I don't always use a whole chicken - it's quite good made with just chicken breasts or chicken thighs, but if using the latter, I always brown the skin first and remove it, scraping up the tasty bits in the bottom of the pan to enhance the broth. I will also use chicken broth, homemade or canned, instead of the water. But the dumplings are never altered. They are different from most dumplings - these have a strong shot of baking powder and puff like biscuits in the stew. After reheating, they absorb the broth, puffing into yummy pillows of chickeny goodness.

Chicken and Dumplings

1 (3 lb) broiler/fryer chicken
water
salt
3 cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening
about 1 cup milk, more or less,f or the dumplings
additional milk for the stew
2 good-size carrots, peeled, sliced lengthwise and chopped into 1/4 inch pieces.

1. Wash chicken and place in pot with water to cover. Add other seasonings such as herbs, bay leaf, onions, salt and pepper. Bring to boil and simmer until meat is tender. Remove chicken from pot, let cool and remove meat from bones. Throw away carcass, chop meat.

2. To make dumplings, mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Cut in shortening until mixture is mealy and the particles are small. Add enough cold milk to make a workable dough. Knead the dough, it will be slightly shaggy like a pie dough. Lightly press out the dough 1/2 inch thick with floured hands onto a floured counter. Cut into 1 - inch strips.

3. Bring broth to a gentle boil, add chicken and carrots and gently drop dumplings into pot. They will rise to the surface. Add milk to the stew to achieve proper consistency. Taste for seasoning. Let simmer about 15 minutes. When friends are under the weather, buy two chickens and make two pots of c&d, one for your family that you love and one for your friends.