Chick­en Soup for the Feb­ru­ary Soul

I’m sor­ry I’ve been so uncommunicative!

Frankly, my life, usu­al­ly so pleas­ant, has been fraught with unpleas­ant dra­mas of late and I could find absolute­ly no moti­va­tion to relive any of it by writ­ing it down.  For exam­ple, have you ever lived in a house that was on the mar­ket, and so your life was invad­ed at reg­u­lar inter­vals by real­tors and the peo­ple that they thought might like to replace you?  And the tidy­ing up of every con­ceiv­able cor­ner that this entails, not to men­tion not wait­ing to take a show­er till you feel like it because some­one will walk in on you, clean­ing the lit­ter­box­es TWICE a day and then watch­ing your cats be tor­ment­ed by vis­i­tors and their bad­ly behaved chil­dren?  Not to men­tion… where will we live if the house is sold?

Unpleas­ant­ness.  The fact that we absolute­ly adore our land­lords only makes it more unpleasant.

The only pleas­ant things, real­ly, have been com­ing up with sev­er­al new ways to play with a chick­en, and a grand, sim­ply spec­tac­u­lar play.

So let’s con­cen­trate on those.

Chick­en.  It’s far too easy to buy it as it so often appears, all cut up in con­ve­nient shapes and unrec­og­niz­able from its orig­i­nal self.  Or even more removed from nature, those bone­less, skin­less chick­en breasts that leave me 1) won­der­ing where the bones and skins are, and 2) feel­ing sad that almost cer­tain­ly no one made soup out of them.  Or if some­one did, it was in a lone­ly, ster­ile chick­en fac­to­ry where noth­ing is “carved,” it’s “mechan­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed.” Yuck.

Why not, instead, buy a whole chick­en and appre­ci­ate every sin­gle bit of it?

Buy the best chick­en you can afford so as to encour­age prop­er treat­ment of the birds and dis­cour­age bat­tery chick­ens.  Bring the chick­en home and slice off the breasts and chop off the whole legs.  Put what’s left of the chick­en in a big pot, add some car­rots, onions, cel­ery and what­ev­er herbs you have around — espe­cial­ly if they’re fresh but not at their best — and quite a bit of good salt.  If you don’t want the skin on the breasts, pull that off and put it in the pot too.  Sim­mer as long as you like, but at least three hours, squash­ing the chick­en car­cass with a heavy spoon when­ev­er you get the chance, break­ing it up and releas­ing all its goodness.

Noth­ing spells com­fort like the aro­ma of sim­mer­ing chick­en soup.  Nothing.

Quite a lot of gold­en fat will rise to the top as the soup cooks.  Don’t wor­ry.  You can use that too.

When you think the chick­en soup has cooked enough, strain it through a sieve into anoth­er pot and throw away what’s left behind.  Refrig­er­ate — or put it on your win­try win­dowsill — overnight.  When you see it next day, the fat will have hard­ened and you can scrape it away with a spoon, reveal­ing the rich chick­e­ny jel­ly under­neath.  Mmm, I’m get­ting hun­gry just think­ing about it.

Save the chick­en fat to saute pota­toes in.  I also won­der if it would be nice spread on a piece of toast, as British peo­ple do with beef fat, which they call “drip­ping.”  I know some of you dear read­ers will absolute­ly go apoplec­tic over the idea that I would encour­age you to eat fat, but I agree whole­heart­ed­ly with the great Nigel Slater who says, “Fat I can see is won­der­ful.  It’s the fat I can’t see that makes me ner­vous.”  I feel the same about sug­ar.  Hid­den any­thing is bad.

Now for the breasts and legs.  Cut them up into bite-size chunks and make:

Sauteed Chick­en Car­bonara with Aspara­gus and Broccoli

(serves four)

1 cup/240 ml light/single cream

1/2 cup/120 ml half-fat creme fraiche

1 egg yolk

lots of fresh black pepper

enough spaghet­ti for 4 — per­haps 1/2 lb

1 head broc­coli, cut into florets

dozen or so spears asparagus

1 tbsp olive oil

the meat of a chicken

sprin­kling of Fox Point Sea­son­ing or oth­er savoury blend

1 cup grat­ed Pecori­no or Parme­san cheese

Mix the creams, egg and pep­per.  Steam the broc­coli and aspara­gus and place in a large serv­ing bowl, big enough for the whole dish.  Boil the spaghet­ti and add about 1/4 of the pas­ta cook­ing liq­uid to the cream sauce.  Mix thoroughly.

Sea­son the chick­en and saute it in the olive oil until thor­ough­ly but not over­cooked.  Add the cooked, drained pas­ta, the steamed veg­eta­bles and the sauce and toss thor­ough­ly, over a TINY heat if you think it needs it.  Do not real­ly cook the sauce or the egg will scramble.

Serve with plen­ty of cheese to sprin­kle on top.  The cheese is real­ly nec­es­sary for that salty, savoury kick, as the dish itself is very sim­ple.  Gorgeous.

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This dish has it all: plen­ty of pro­tein, plen­ty of win­ter-defy­ing greens, the com­fort of pas­ta and a light, creamy sauce to bind it all together.

And it’s pret­ty to look at.  Good enough for com­pa­ny, I would say.

Espe­cial­ly if your com­pa­ny is as enter­tain­ing as my friends the Carterets who came with their three lit­tle girls last week.  My favorite bit of con­ver­sa­tion?  The moth­er, Sara, said, “Here’s a con­ver­sa­tion starter for you.  Where, 20 years ago, did you think you would be today, and what would you be doing?”  We dis­cussed all this for awhile — I nev­er thought I’d be a moth­er, and I was sure I’d still be a pro­fes­sor — and final­ly Sara said, “Well, I’m exact­ly where I thought I’d be, and doing exact­ly what I thought I’d be doing.  I just nev­er dreamed it would be this BORING!”

Anoth­er bright spot in my gloom was a series of texts I received one morn­ing last week­end.  The first one: “So why have you gone so qui­et on me today?”  From a total­ly unknown num­ber.  The sec­ond one: “I’m begin­ning to think you don’t care.”  Just as I was about to reply in igno­rance, a third text arrived.  “Nick will be out all day, so please call and text as much as you can.”  Whoa!  I texted back, “Who is this?”  Preg­nant silence.  Then a lit­tle beep.  “Wrong number.”

The dra­ma!  Who is the hap­less Nick, and who the phi­lan­der­ing texter?

Since my life con­tains such excite­ment only by mis­take, let’s get back to that chick­en I want you to buy.  If you are lucky enough to have a butch­er you can rely on — and lord knows, in Amer­i­ca that is a rar­i­ty out­side the real­ly big cities — waltz in there and say air­i­ly, “I’d like you to bone a chick­en for me.”  Then watch and be amazed.

My butch­er took a large whole chick­en, whipped out a very slen­der, sharply tapered knife, and in lit­tle more than two min­utes, removed every smitch of bone from it, turn­ing it this way and that and toss­ing the bones into a pile, then shaped and cajoled the ugly flat thing back into the shape of a chick­en, ask­ing, “Do you want the bones?”  I felt I would be sound­ly slapped if I said no, and in any case I did.  So I got the bones, and a limp chick­en-shaped squishy thing to bring home.

And on the advice of my deli­cious friend Elis­a­beth, I came home and pro­duced, in no more than 40 minutes;

Bone­less Roast Chicken

(serves 4 with plen­ty of leftovers)

whole boned chicken

1/4 cup/2 ounces butter

hand­ful flat-leaf pars­ley, chopped

hand­ful fresh thyme, chopped

2 cloves gar­lic, minced

splash of white wine

sea salt and pep­per to taste

Lay the chick­en flat, skin-side up, in a large bak­ing dish.  Sim­ply melt the but­ter and mix it with every­thing else, then pour over the chick­en.  Roast at 425F/220C for 40 minutes.

A whole roast­ed chick­en in a quar­ter, LESS, of the time it takes to roast a chick­en with bones.  Bril­liant.  And you get the bones for SOUP.

Final­ly, when you’ve eat­en lots of com­fort­ing Eng­lish and Amer­i­can fla­vors in the gray win­ter time and you need a bit of spic­ing up, why not com­bine the meat of the two chick­en breasts with any oth­er meat you have in your freez­er — a steak, a pork chop, veal or lamb or duck — slice it all thin­ly and make:

Chick­en and Beef Stir-Fry With Roast­ed Peanuts, Mixed Veg­eta­bles and Ginger

(serves 4)

2 chick­en breasts, skin removed, sliced thin

1 sir­loin steak, sliced thin

1/3 cup/80 ml good dark soy sauce

good glug toast­ed sesame oil

good glug Mirin (Japan­ese rice wine)

6 cloves gar­lic, minced

1 red pep­per, cut into chunks

1 small head broc­coli, cut into florets

2 hand­fuls sug­ar snap peas, cut in half

2 car­rots, sliced as you like

bas­mati rice, steamed

3 tbsps peanut/groundnut oil

large knob gin­ger, peeled and sliced thickly

1 cup raw peanuts

chili flakes to gar­nish, if desired

Place the chick­en and beef in a medi­um bowl and add the soy, oil and Mirin, sprin­kle with gar­lic and stir well.  Set aside to mar­i­nate while you pre­pare the veg­eta­bles and steam the rice.

Now, with 1 tbsp of the peanut oil in a large fry­ing pan, fry the gin­ger slices until light­ly browned.  Remove to a large bowl.  Add the peanuts to the hot fry­ing pan and roast until slight­ly browned but not burned.  Remove with a slot­ted spoon and place in the large bowl.

Add the fur­ther 2 tbsps peanut oil to the fry­ing pan and cook the veg­eta­bles gen­tly, cov­er­ing with a large lid to steam them a bit.  When they are ten­der, remove them to the large bowl.

Pour the mar­i­nat­ed chick­en and beef into the fry­ing pan and cook until JUST cooked, not tough.  Add all the oth­er ingre­di­ents and toss over a high heat till hot through.

Serve with the bas­mati rice and sprin­kle with chili flakes if you like a bit of heat.

DEL­ISH.  And so pret­ty, and so good for you.

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In the brief moments at my dis­pos­al when I was not bon­ing a chick­en, I went to a delight­ful play, “An Ide­al Hus­band” by the inim­itable Oscar Wilde.  Go before it clos­es on the 26th!  It was one of those after­noons when we all would rather have stayed home, and why it is good to buy tick­ets in advance so we’re shamed into going out of the house.  It’s beau­ti­ful­ly cast, hilar­i­ous­ly writ­ten, very well-act­ed.  All the clas­sic Wilde bits: the man with a past, the let­ter to a mis­tak­en recip­i­ent, the req­ui­site annoy­ing French­man with an unbe­liev­ably fruity accent.  And the cos­tumes!  Oh my.

Well, you’ve suc­ceed­ed in cheer­ing me up.  Just reach­ing out and being bossy about chick­ens has helped.  And the copi­ous amounts of chick­en soup did­n’t hurt.