Easier Chicken and Dumplings

Chicken and dumplings. Laura Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

If there is one hour in my day that I wish to have all to my own, it would be 3 p.m. Back in the day, before work and school schedules conspired to block that hour nearly every single day of 30 something weeks of the year, 3 o'clock was naptime for the kidoodle and my time to leisurely begin supper. Two to three hours was a generous amount of time to prepare a meal ~ enough for a braised chicken with vegetables, or maybe a pot roast. I could turn out a dessert in that time frame, too, with a bit of luck and the right ingredients in my well-stocked pantry.

These days, I rush from work to two different schools, gather and sometimes redistribute children to piano lessons, play practices, what-have-you. And I rush back home to come up with supper. Sometimes, my wonderful husband will cook, usually a roast or lasagna that he prepared ahead of time, or a quick meal of fish and vegetables. And I get my act together occasionally, making stir-fries and fried rice and roasted chicken. And there are other nights when dinner is a grilled cheese sandwich or its South of the Border cousin, a cheese quesadilla.

So I await with interest what my fellow #LetsLunchers will create under the theme "3 Ingredient Recipes." #LetsLunch is a monthly gathering of food writers and bloggers who post on a given subject. This month's topic is quick recipes using just 3 ingredients. My go-to 3-ingredient recipe is pimento cheese, so maybe I'm not the best choice for this go-round.

Back to that magic hour that I wish I could call my own ~ in the past year, I've given up on Top 40 radio and NPR and switched to the Fish, the contemporary Christian radio station. All the girls in the car, from elementary to mommy agree. And one of the best reasons to listen to the Fish is afternoon drive host Beth Bacall ~ she's a mommy and a foodie, so I'm fed spiritually and mentally while I'm listening to her. 

One day Beth happened to mention that she had a recipe for "3-Ingredient Chicken Parmesan" and she would happily reply to email requests for the recipe. Here's the link for the recipe ~ it's one of those "dump and do" recipes that I need more of in order to turn out a tasty dinner in a reasonable amount of time. The recipe calls for boneless chicken breasts, coated in mayonnaise and shredded Parmesan cheese and baked. I served it with rice and a green vegetable and my girls ate every bite. I'm sad to say that I didn't get a picture of the chicken, it was nice and roasty-toasty looking when it came out of the oven.

I decided to make the recipe a second time and grab a picture for this post, when my eldest daughter revealed what she really wanted for supper, and it was not a 3-ingredient recipe: Chicken and Dumplings. Done properly, c and d is not a 3-ingredient recipe, it's a 3-part recipe: Broth, chicken, dumplings. The three components harmonize into a complete and completely satisfying dish.

Dumplings. Laura Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

In the spirit of 3 ingredients, I therefore present my streamlined recipe for chicken and dumplings, perfect for those weeknights when you have a little extra time and some helping hands.

Chicken and dumplings. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books.

Easier Chicken and Dumplings

My from-scratch recipe can be found here. It starts with a whole chicken. Here, I use boneless, skinless chicken breasts and doctored-up stock-in-a-box to speed things up. If you have leftover cooked chicken, save even more time by using it here.

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced into 1-inch pieces

2 tablespoons oil

1 medium onion, chopped

2 stars celery, chopped

3 medium carrots, chopped

1 (32 oz.) package low-sodium chicken broth

1 bay leaf

Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a nonstick skillet over medium heat, cook the chicken until cooked through, about 10 minutes.


2. In a soup pot or Dutch oven set over medium heat, pour in oil and saute onion until translucent. Add celery and carrots, cooking until soft, about 10 minutes. Add chicken broth and bay leaf and bring to a boil. Add chicken. Season to taste with salt and pepper.


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. 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. Gently drop dumplings into broth, 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.

This post is part of #LetsLunch, a global blogging party. Check back here for more links to fabulous food stories.

Party on Mardi with this Seafood Creole

Seafood creole with rice by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

Devotees of party schedules know that Tuesday is Mardi Gras, the big blow-out before the six weeks of Lent leading up to Easter Sunday. We can't all be in New Orleans or any of the Gulf coast towns that celebrate Mardi Gras, but we can bring a little of Louisiana creole into our kitchens. For about 20 years, I've made seafood creole, a great quantity of crowd-pleasing goodness meant to warm body and soul.

The keys to good creole are quality Gulf Coast seafood and the roux, the butter and flour mixture that flavors and thickens the stew. Taking your time to cook the roux to a deep, dark brown is crucial, and it's really not that much time. The butter and flour are chocolate brown in under 20 minutes.

Give this recipe a try the next time you need to serve a crowd. With a salad and bread on the side, it's Southern comfort in a bowl.

Seafood Creole

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

4 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 large onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 ribs celery, diced

1 red bell pepper, diced

½ cup white wine

2 cans (1 lb. each) whole tomatoes

1 teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon black pepper

½ teaspoon paprika

1 bay leaf

½ teaspoon dried thyme or 1 teaspoon fresh chopped thyme

½ teaspoon hot sauce (optional, season to taste)

¼ teaspoon Creole seasoning (Tony Chachere)

2 pounds of a combination of mild fish such as flounder; peeled, deveined shrimp; and bay scallops

Hot, steamed rice for serving

1. In a large pot or Dutch oven, melt butter until foaming. Stir in flour and cook over medium heat until dark brown, about 20 minutes. The smell will be like nearly burnt buttered popcorn and the color will be like Hershey’s milk chocolate.

A dark chocolate roux. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

2. Remove pot from heat and add onion, garlic, celery, bell pepper, wine, tomatoes with liquid, salt, black pepper, paprika, bay leaf and thyme. Stir well. Cover and simmer for at least 10 minutes. Remove cover and continue simmering until vegetables have reached the desired degree of tenderness. You may add the seafood now and serve, or keep cooking the base, either on the stovetop, or covered in the oven at 300. (Check frequently to make sure the liquid level doesn’t get too low.)

The holy trinity of creole cooking: pepper, celery, onion. Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books.

3. Season to taste with creole seasoning and hot sauce as desired. Remove bay leaf. Add seafood last and simmer three to five minutes or until seafood just appears done. Remember that the seafood will continue to cook from the residual heat of the stew. Serve over a bed of hot steamed rice.

Text and images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer.



A little black book of recipes: Chili with beer, guacamole with bacon

The Mad Men-esque idea of a little black book in these days of smart phones and IPads is quaint and charming, but seemingly out of touch. Not so with “Recipes Every Man Should Know,” by Susan Russo and Brett Cohen, (Quirk Books, 2010) part of Cohen’s “Things Every Man Should Know” series. Men no longer need little books full of phone numbers, but they can certainly use a little book to guide them through the kitchen and basics of cooking meals for themselves and others.


This book is slightly larger than a Blackberry, smaller than an IPad and it fits in a coat pocket or backpack. Its compact design is ideal for flipping through for quick mealtime ideas, discreetly pulling out while grocery shopping, and propping on the counter while preparing the dishes.

Author Susan Russo says the idea of a cookbook for men came to her when she lived in a condo in downtown San Diego, where there are lots of single, professional men. “I got tired of seeing them carrying take-out on the elevator, so I started asking them why they didn't cook. Almost invariably, they responded, "I don't know how to cook." I thought, "Well, I can help teach them. It's easy." Teaching comes naturally to Russo; she is a recipe developer and writer who blogs at FoodBlogga (Rhode Island-ese for "blogger.")

For research, Russo “Talked with a lot of guys everywhere -- at the supermarket, the airport, bookstores, restaurants and bars, Twitter and Facebook, you name it. Guys of all ages were more than happy to share their thoughts with me and offer their favorite dishes. Plus, having grown up in a male-dominant household, I was pretty confident that I knew what guys would like.”

Guy-friendly recipes include Foolproof French Toast, Baja-Style Fish Tacos, and entire chapters devoted to Meat & Potato Dinners, and Beer, Bacon & Bar Food. And for that extra something that shows a guy really knows how to cook, the book concludes with cookies, cheesecake, strawberry zabaglione, milkshakes and cocktails.

Here are two excellent recipes that go well together or separately. The recipes are guy-friendly, to cook and to eat. The chili will become your go-to recipe - it's beefed up with beer and beans. The guacamole gets a shot of bacon to lift it into the "ultimate guacamole" territory.

Beef and Beer Chili

1 tablespoon canola or olive oil

1 large yellow onion, diced

1 large green or red bell pepper, chopped

1 to 1 ¼ pound ground beef

1 ½ to 2 tablespoons chili powder

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 teaspoon ground cumin

Several shakes of salt

2 tablespoons light brown sugar

2 (14.5 ounce) cans pinto or red kidney beans, drained

1 (14.5 ounce) can diced tomatoes, with juices

1 (12 ounce) bottle dark beer, such as stout

1 tablespoon cornmeal, optional

1. Warm oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add onions and peppers and sauté 5 minutes. Add meat. Cook until browned, about 10 minutes. Stir in spices, salt and brown sugar. Add beans, tomatoes, and beer. Stir and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer 20 to 25 minutes, or until thick and soupy. Stir in cornmeal in you want a thicker chili.

2. Serve chili hot, topped with any of the following: shredded Cheddar cheese, sour cream, diced avocado, sliced scallions, or fresh cilantro.

(Takes 30 to 45 minutes start to finish, 6 to 8 servings)

Bacon Guacamole

6 slices bacon

Flesh of two ripe avocados

1 medium tomato, chopped

4 scallions (white parts only) finely chopped

Juice of one lime

A couple pinches salt

A couple dashes hot sauce

Small handful fresh cilantro leaves, finely chopped

1. Place bacon in a skillet over medium-high heat and cook until crisp. Drain on a paper-towel-lined plate. Let cool and chop into small pieces.

2. Combine remaining ingredients in a blender or food processor and pulse until chunky. I used a fork with excellent results and one less dish to clean. (Takes 15 minutes to prep, yields 6-8 servings).

The wonderful folks at Quirk Books have offered a copy of "Recipes Every Man Should Know" to a reader of A Cook and Her Books. This book is $9.95 in stores and is absolutely charming and useful. It makes a great gift for a young man just starting out on his own - college students, new graduates, bachelors, really anyone who needs a road map to the kitchen. Please leave a comment below before midnight on February 28 and I will draw one name at random to receive the book. Please be sure to leave an email address or a way for me to find you (i.e., are you the Melissa I know from church or the Kim I know from high school?). Thanks for reading!

UPDATE

Michelle, the 4th commenter, is the winner of this cookbook. Michelle, please contact me by Thursday, March 3, at acookandherbooks@gmail.com so that I can get the cookbook to you. There's still a copy of the cookbook to be given away - leave a comment on the Bacon Wrapped Meatloaf story by March 8 for a chance to win.

Text & images copyright 2011, Lucy Mercer,

with the exception of the book cover image and the recipe.

Recipes excerpted from "Recipes Every Man Should Know" by Susan Russo and Brett Cohen

 (Quirk Books, 2010)

Summer's Best Stew: Ratatouille



Ratatouille and creamy grits by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books



I've returned to the kitchen, my source for solace in the late summer. The light through the window is changing, it's amber coming through at a different angle, backlighting the spider web on the porch.

Spider web by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books

My soul seeks comfort food, but my warm house isn't quite ready for day-long braises and Dutch ovens bubbling over with stewed chicken and bready dumplings. Ratatouille, thick with chunks of eggplant swimming in fresh tomato, I've found, speaks to my soul and lets me walk away from the table without needing a starch-induced nap.




Eggplants by Lucy Mercer/A Cook and Her Books


There are at least two approaches to preparing ratatouille: the one-pot method, where each item is chopped and added to the pan gradually. This yields a tasty, but homogeneous stew. My preferred method requires roasting some of the vegetables, namely the eggplant, to give some textural variety to the final product. My recipe is evolving, first with the boilerplate recipe in the "Gourmet Cookbook," now tweaked by Francis Lam’s primer on Salon.com (previously published at Gourmet.com.) It is, to use Lam’s phrase, so good you’ll want to punch a hole in the wall (but please, don’t, somebody‘s mother will have to fix that.)

Redneck Ratatouille

I tend use whatever quantities of these vegetables I have on hand, given the general guidelines in the recipe. I’ve used roasted Poblano peppers and assorted banana and chili peppers instead of or in addition to the bell peppers. Just be mindful of the heat factor when cooking with the spicy peppers.

2 medium eggplant, peeled and diced into 1-inch pieces

Salt

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

4 large garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

3 large onions, peeled, halved, each half cut into 4 wedges

2 medium zucchini, peeled and diced into 1-inch pieces

2 medium yellow crookneck squash, peeled and diced into 1-inch pieces

4 large tomatoes, cored and chopped

2 tablespoons tomato paste (optional)

2 bell peppers, cored, seeded and cut into 1-inch pieces

A handful of fresh basil

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste.

1. Eggplant prep: follow this step only if you have the large globe eggplants which tend to be bitter. If cooking with the smaller Asian eggplants, proceed to the next step. Set up a colander over a larger bowl and place eggplant in colander. Pour out about a tablespoon of salt onto the eggplant and toss. Let eggplant drain for about 30 minutes.

2. In a large oven-proof pot, preferably one with a lid, pour in all but about 3 tablespoons of oil and turn heat to medium. Add garlic and onion and bring to a bubbling boil. Let cook for about 30 minutes while you prep the remaining ingredients. Don‘t walk away, because, you know, it‘s a pot of boiling oil.

3. Heat oven to 450 and get out a half-sheet pan or a large cast-iron skillet. Pour eggplant and squash and zucchini out onto the pan (you may need to do this in batches), pour remaining three tablespoons oil and some salt and pepper on the vegetables and set in oven to roast for about 30 minutes. You’re looking for a touch of caramelly brown on the edges of the veg, not blackened.

4. Ok, now we have a pot of boiling oil and alliums on the stove and a pan of roasting squash and aubergine in the oven. It’s time to turn your attention to the tomatoes. In a food processor, puree the tomatoes and peppers. Add to the onion and garlic oil and continue to cook for another 30 minutes. Optional: if using tomato paste, you can add it to the pot with the tomatoes and peppers.

5. When tomato/onion/garlic/oil mixture is a rich red color, add in roasted squash/zuke/eggplant. Taste mixture for seasoning, then add salt, pepper and basil.

6. Turn oven to 300 and set Dutch oven with stew inside. Let ratatouille cook for at least one hour, and several more if you can. Remove pot from oven and let cool.

I serve ratatouille at room temperature over a bowl of creamy grits. Other choices are pasta such as rigatoni, or couscous, or polenta.

Text and images copyright 2010, Lucy Mercer.

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.

Mayonnaise: the Stuff of Life

I recently read that Harp seal mommies nurse their pups for just 12 days before leaving them in the cold North Atlantic waters to search for food. The seal mother’s milk is thick enough to sustain the pup, in fact the book described it as “creamy and thick like mayonnaise.” Another reminder, this time from the animal kingdom, that mayonnaise is the stuff of life.

I come from mayonnaise people. I was raised on mayonnaise. We weren’t loyalists in my parents' house, all brands had a tryout - Kraft, Blue Plate, Hellmann’s and the staple of the South, Duke’s. There was an unfortunate, dark time of a healthy eating kick that meant strange mayo pretend-to-be’s were stocked. A lesson learned the hard way: mayonnaise needs real fat to taste good.

Mayonnaise is a constant thread through the kitchens I have known - my grandmother put mayonnaise in a celadon ceramic crock beside a plate of sliced garden tomatoes. My husband is from Macon, Georgia, and he remembers his grandma serving pound cake slices slathered in mayonnaise and fried. Mayonnaise is culinary glue - it holds together any number of salads - egg, pimento cheese, chicken, tuna, cole slaw, potato. As the basis of a sauce, it can dress up everything from fish to pasta.

Here is a menu celebrating the accessorizing power of mayonnaise and the Dorado that my husband caught last week. It’s a little South of France meets Heart of Dixie, and a tribute to the universality of mayonnaise, a sauce which, if Wikipedia is to be believed, came to France by way of Spain. I used the mayonnaise from a jar, but the recipes are easily adapted to homemade mayo. Follow Francis Lam’s detailed instructions or my streamlined cheat sheet:

Pan-Fried Dorado Sliders with Spicy Tartar Sauce

Fish Stew with Red Pepper Aioli

Fried Pound Cake

Pan Fried Dorado Sliders with Spicy Tartar Sauce

For the sliders, I dredged chunks of Dorado in seasoned flour and cornmeal and fried them until done. I served them on mini buns with shredded cabbage and this spicy tartar sauce.

1 cup mayonnaise
2 tablespoons minced fresh cilantro
10 pickled jalapeño rounds, minced
Three teaspoons dill pickle relish
Juice of 1/2 lime
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a bowl, mix all ingredients together. Make ahead for better flavor. Store in refrigerator.

Fish Stew with Red Pepper Aioli

Fish stew
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 carrot, peeled and finely chopped
2 leeks, chopped, use the whites and part of the greens
1 cup white wine
2 cups shrimp stock or clam juice or water
4 cloves garlic
Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

1/2 pound fish fillets, chopped into bite-size pieces

1. In a stockpot, saute carrot and leeks in olive oil until soft. Add white wine and cook until reduced by half. Add stock or clam juice or water, and garlic and cook for 10 minutes.

2. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add fish and cook for about 5 minutes, or until cooked through. Serve with red pepper aioli.

Red pepper aioli
1 cup mayonnaise
1 roasted, peeled and seeded red bell pepper
5 garlic cloves
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Salt and pepper to taste

1. In a food processor, with blade running, drop in garlic cloves. Add bell pepper and process until pasty. Add remaining ingredients and process. Make a day ahead for better flavor. Store in refrigerator.

Fried Pound Cake

This is my husband's childhood treat, a slice of pound cake, buttered on both sides with mayonnaise and cooked on a griddle. It's sweet and salty at the same time. I would say add sweetened berries and whipped cream, but it's pretty indulgent on its own.

© 2010, Lucy Mercer.

Fish Stew and Red Pepper Aioli adapted from the New California Cook by Diane Rossen Worthington.

Spicy Tartar Sauce adapted from Fine Cooking Magazine.
Fried Pound Cake adapted from a fine country cook.

Cold Hands, Warm Hearth

We've been cooped up in the house too long, due to what passes for a snowstorm in Georgia. A couple inches of white stuff on the ground, some ice on the roads and school officials decree a long homebound weekend with the kids. I keep a fire roaring in the fireplace and plan a filling meal to warm us up from the inside. Beef stew fills the bill.

Beef stew is a case study in how my cooking has changed over time. As a newlywed, I used the recipe in the Pillsbury cookbook that was given to me as a shower gift. One hundred or more cookbooks later, I learn about the kind of meat I should be using (chuck blade steak) and then to layering flavors by adding bacon and red wine. And I started to realize that beef stew’s appeal, aside from the bowl-of-comfort-and-warmth factor, is enhanced by these umami elements - bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, red wine. It’s an umami tsunami, if you will, that will make your hypothalamus and your belly happy.

Despite my love for the structure of recipes, I’ve endeavored to let go in the kitchen and make my own path. My recipes used to be very specific, now they tend to sound like Dizzy Gillespie in the kitchen, so my apologies in advance.

So, here’s how I make beef stew, most nights. Feel free to improvise. After all, did Dizz play it the same every time?

Beef Stew, a Primer

1/2 pound sliced bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces

¼ cup flour

1 (1 lb. or so) beef chuck blade steak, trimmed of excess fat and sliced into 1½ inch pieces

2 medium onions, peeled and cut into wedges

4 carrots, peeled, trimmed, split lengthwise and then into 2-inch sections

2 stalks celery, trimmed and sliced into 2-inch pieces

4 medium red potatoes, peeled and sliced into 2-inch chunks

1, possibly 2, small containers of mushrooms, rinsed, dried, trimmed and sliced (for shiitakes) or halved (for buttons)

2 bay leaves

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1/2 cup red wine or water, to deglaze the pan

1 can low-sodium beef broth

1 (28 oz.) can whole organic tomatoes

salt and pepper to taste

1. First of all, I use two Dutch ovens. One for browning the meat and creating the sauce, the second to hold the meat, vegetables and sauce that will go in the oven. I know that’s weird and you may not want to do it this way, but this is my method, so there.

2. Fry the bacon in a Dutch oven over medium heat. When bacon is crispy, remove and place on paper towels to drain. Pour off all but two tablespoons of grease in the pan.

3. In a paper bag, if you have it, or Ziploc bag , place a ¼ cup of flour and season generously with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Place beef pieces in bag, seal and shake, shake, shake. (This is an ideal job for any children lurking, waiting for their sister to finish her turn on the Wii.)

4. Place seasoned, floured beef pieces in pot with sizzling bacon grease and brown, turning to make sure the pieces are evenly cooked. This requires about three batches, maybe four. As the meat releases from the second side, place it in the Dutch oven that will go in the oven and cover with lid. Place drained bacon pieces with meat.

5. After you remove the meat, place a tablespoonful of tomato paste in the pan and stir for a couple of minutes, until it’s good and brown. Add the onions and continue to cook until softened. Pour a ½ cup of red wine into the pan and deglaze. This means to scrape all the brown stuff off the bottom of the pan. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft. Add the beef broth or water, canned tomatoes, one or two bay leaves, and the potatoes.

6. Now that you have a pot full of stew, get a sheet of parchment paper, crumple it in your hand and place it on the surface of the stew. Place the lid on the Dutch oven and slide the entire pot into a preheated oven. I use convection and cook the stew for a minimum of three hours at 300, checking on the liquid level every 45 minutes or so. If the liquid is too low, just add water to barely cover the meat and vegetables.

7. Serve the beef stew with buttered noodles or maybe a pan of baked polenta or, if you're in the mood (and in the South), creamy grits. And don't forget the pan of home baked fudgy brownies for dessert.


Sidebar:

Lindsey, who is four, hears activity in the kitchen. “Mommy, can I help?“

“I thought you wanted to play with the Wii.“

“No, I want to cook. Mommy, I want do it. Let me!”

“But it’s raw meat, sweetie, it’s messy.“

“I want to put the raw meat in!”

“Not in the pot, honey, you’re not allowed around the hot pans.”

“But I want to put the meat in the bag.”

“You’ll have to wash your hands again.”

“That’s ok, I want to do it. Mommy, does the raw meat feel cold?”

And as she helps dust the meat with flour and place it in the pan, “Mommy, look at the little nest of meat. Nest of meat. Nest of meat. But mommy, let’s take it out. Let’s take it out now. Can I take it out now?”

“No, darling.”

“Why? Why?”

I distract her with a new task. “Sweetie, find me an onion.”

“Where do you keep them? Oh, that’s right, I remember.” She digs in the onion drawer, with a giggle. “Found it.”

Just in case you ever need to occupy a four-year old for 15 minutes or more, pull out an onion and watch as she peels the outer layers bit by papery bit. However, onions are not always enough to occupy a four year old, so you look around for another project and see that the trash can needs emptying. While I tie up the bag and prepare to take it outside, I teach Lindsey how to open a new bag and place it in the can.

She’s so proud of herself, she commands, “Take my picture!”

So that’s why Lindsey’s giving me the sweet face beside the trash can and I hear, “But mommy, I thought you were going to give me a hug.”

“I can give you a hug. How about a hug right now? I’m going to squeeze tighter.”

“No I’m going to squeeze tighter.”

“And I’m going to squeeze even more tighter.” And just as I thought she was on to a new project, she says,

“Let’s cook some more!”

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.