Chicken Week, Days 3-5: I blew it.

I tried to make the chicken last a week, I really tried, but two things came around and bit me in the ass: chicken bones and a bored palate.

The bones were totally my fault - it turns out, if you boil a chicken down to a shreddable consistency, you're going to end up with teeny, tiny little bones in every bite that, because they've been floating around in hot water for hours and hours, don't crunch so much as get gooey and melt. It isn't appetizing; after day 3 (I made fried rice, sorta, pictured above, which looked much, MUCH better than it tasted), and prodded by Angela with the suggestion of dinner and a movie (a suggestion I latched onto with an inappropriate degree of force) I decided to let the experiment die.

The bored palette, well. I should've known it was going to be an issue. Angela was fine with it, but I got fed up halfway through dinner on Wednesday and made myself a sandwich. Game over, man.

I did learn a couple of things, though:

1. A whole chicken is fine to eat but a mess to boil. Next time, I'm getting a breast instead - its edibile bits-to-structuring ratio is much more acceptable, the cost isn't too much different if the breast is on sale and you make a portion of that back by not having to deal with the bones and whatnot.
   
2. Likewise, boiled chicken breast makes for amazing sandwiches, and a bunch of them - that chicken breast made 6 lunches which is better than I usually get with a pound of meat from the deli - its texture helps fill out a roll better, or something.
   
3. Shredded dark meat, if you're not going to eat it right away, gets a paste-like consistency in the fridge if you let it sit for a day or two. It's still perfectly safe to eat but the individual strands of meat start congealing. I'm big on pleasant textures and that wasn't one.

So that's it for that experiment. The next time we decide to play it cheap, I'll do some planning. Maybe.

Broth Matters

At some point when I wasn't looking, broth became a steak delivery system.

Don't get me wrong; I positively adore steak delivery systems; most of the time, I am one. But broth should be hearty more-or-less on its own - you don't need to put an entire chicken in it to make it taste like something.

Part of it is an expectations game - pre-made soup companies nowadays focus on the stuff floating in the broth instead of the broth itself. This is fine, I guess, but it's gotten to the point where the broth in a can of hearty soup isn't anything more than salt water with beef concentrate in it. It's a shame, and it's a bit of a nomenclature problem - maybe it's just me, but soup that's more ingredients than stock isn't soup; it's stew.

Broth matters. And I, for one, think it's about time that some attention was paid to it.

This:
...is about as much attention as broth can possibly get while still being graced with some bulk. The potatoes work in conjunction with the gelatin from the bones as a thickener without having to use flour (which can get messy) and the mushrooms mostly act as a broth concentrator.

A nice side effect of this recipe is, like most soups, it's made up of things you probably would have thrown away if you weren't thinking ahead. Remember when I said it's smart to buy whole chicken wings for frying and save the tips? This is where the tips go. I can feed 3-4 people with this recipe and all it will cost me is a handful of vegetables, some scraps from the freezer and some spices.

Ingredients:

Stock:

• 2-4 pork chop bones, depending on size
• 12 chicken wing tips
• 2 whole cloves garlic
• 1 onion, peeled and quartered
• 2 celery stalks, roughly cut up
• Enough water to fill a medium pot
  
• 1/2 tsp paprika
• 1/4 tsp cumin
• salt and pepper

Bulk:

• 2 potatoes, cubed
• 6-8 mushrooms, roughly chopped
• green onion as garnish
  

The Gist:

Combine the stock ingredients in a big pot. Bring to a boil before reducing the heat to provide an energetic simmer. Simmer covered for an hour or so, then remove the lid and continue simmering.

When the liquid volume has halved itself (30 minutes to an hour, depending), top it off with water. When it's halved itself again, run the liquid through a strainer, discard the solid ingredients and put the stock in the fridge overnight.

Come the next day, you'll find that the stock's fat has risen to the top of the pot and solidified. Skim it off with a ladle.

An hour or so before serving, add the potatoes and mushrooms to the pot and return to a simmer. Heat until the potatoes are soft, ladle into bowls, garnish with green onion and serve with buttered bread.

Considerations:

• Don't let the stock boil for too long before letting it simmer - boiling the bones too roughly will lead to a bitter stock. Be gentle with it and your stock will remain hearty and mildly sweet.
• We (at least, I) have become used to salty soups, but the purpose of this one is to showcase the broth; go easy on the salt and let the stock speak for itself for a change.
• I haven't tried it yet, but I think this soup would be amazing with tofu substituted for half or all of the potatoes.
  

Souper!

You start with a chicken. You bake it, put it on a big plate and strip off what you want to eat. Half of the breast gets sliced for sandwiches; the remaining leg and thigh get saved for chicken salad; the pickings from the bones go great over mac n' cheese; the bones themselves, if you've got some time and some water, get boiled down for soup stock. A chicken, if you do it right, can last a while - at 79 cents a pound for the bird plus some veggies and a few pounds of potatoes, you could conceivably feed two people five wholesome dinners for 15 bucks. That's 1.50 per person, per day.

Out of all the iterations that chicken will go through over five days, it's the soup that doesn't get any credit. Soup feels like the last wheezing gasp before resigning yourself to hitting up the grocery store again.

(Chowder, before y'all New Englanders start getting antsy, is a completely different animal that, at least right now, I'm not qualified to speak to. Check back in five years.)

From a culinary level, though, soup is dead-simple - boil a picked-clean chicken, add vegetables and simmer until it's reduced by half; top off the water and do it again. Complexity is not a trait usually associated with soup. It doesn't really get much more difficult than that.

Pshaw.
This is a recipe for a split-soup - two simple soups, cooked separately, combined at the table, garnished and served. It's sweet and devilishly spicy, creamy and hearty, and with an undeniable stomach-filling bulk.

Ingredients:

Soup 1: Black Bean
(This soup is a version of David Ansel's from his book, The Soup Peddler's Slow & Difficult Soups, modified to make it fight better with the pumpkin soup. Check him out.)

• 1 tbsp. vegetable oil
• 1 large can (15oz) diced tomatoes
• 2 large cans (15oz) black beans, drained
• 1/2 yellow onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, diced
• 2 1/2 tbsp. ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
• 1/4 tsp. paprika
• salt and pepper
  

Soup 2: Pumpkin
(This is a variation of a recipe found on Mom!Mom!.com, similarly modified.)

• 2 tbsp. butter
• 1 can cooked pumpkin (NOT pie filling)
• 1/2 yellow onion, chopped
• 2 tbsp brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp. nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 1/2 cup half-and-half
• salt and pepper
  

Garnishes (in whatever combination you like)

• green onion
• Grated cheddar cheese
• plain yogurt / sour cream
• fresh cilantro
• fresh parsley
  

The Gist:

Black Bean:
Saute the onions and garlic in oil in a pot until the onions are translucent and the garlic smells like garlic. Add the spices and commingle for a few minutes. Add the drained beans and the undrained tomatoes, cover, and simmer of low heat. The longer you cook it, the better it will taste. It's supposed to be spicy; you can adjust its heat to your whims, but keep in mind that it's only half a soup and that it will be tempered by its compatriot.

Pumpkin:
Saute the onions in the butter in a pot until translucent. Add the rest of the ingredients less the half-and-half, stir to combine, and heat to a simmer. This soup should be thick; if it's watery, simmer off its excess liquids. Take off the heat, add half-and-half and stir to combine. This one is supposed to be sweet, though just short of cloying - add more brown sugar if it's too salty.

Gently combine the two soups at the table, ladling one over or around the other. Garnish and eat.

Be sure you let me know how it goes if you try it.

So. Let's talk about food.

Let's talk about food (bay-bee).

Too often people eat without thinking about it. I don't mean in as much as they aren't concerned with what's sandwiched between the top and bottom bun of whatever they picked up at their fast-food joint of choice, moreso that they eat because it's necessary without actually thinking about what they like about their food.

Take the prototypical fast-food cheeseburger. Its ubiquity belies its construction - such a burger is a work of genius.

In its most fundamental form, you've got a bun, some beef, a slice of cheese, onions, ketchup, mustard and pickles. Not exactly rocket science - I could make some variation of that burger at home in 10 minutes flat that would have the added advantage of not having lived under a heat lamp for any length of time. For reference (and to give me the chance to show off a little) it'd look like this:
The purpose of the fast-food burger is to provide a buck's worth of caloric intake in its simplest form. Of the seven ingredients, the omission of any of them leaves you with something less than ideal: Forget the pickles and you lose the crunch; lose the ketchup and you lose the sweetness necessary to support the tartness of the onions and the bulk of the beef. Not a penny is wasted in its delivery. It's an intricately thought-out, edible wonder which, in my head, deserves the same level of thought on its eater's end as was expended in its construction.

I like to talk about food, and food prep, and food theory. I like thinking about why I like what I eat, why I cook how I do and how I can make my cooking better. I'm not about to tell you that you shouldn't go to Wendy's. I love Wendy's. But it's probably worth stopping every once in awhile and thinking about why you occasionally wake up a 3am in the throes of a vanilla frosty craving.

Or is that just me?