Chicken Lessons

Last Wednesday, during the daily summer afternoon thunderstorm, I spent about an hour boiling, cooling, and shucking seven ears of corn. I even added a little milk to the water for sweeter kernels. The corn was given to me by a friend who bought extra at one of New Orleans' weekly farmer's markets. She suggested I stick it in the freezer, though I wasn't sure what to do with it from there. During a tipsy conversation with three friendly, funny women at a bar last week, I was instructed to boil and shuck it all, then refreeze and use in various salads and side dishes throughout the summer. Yes, I've gone from trading restaurant recommendations to sharing cooking tips!

The fresh corn is to the right of the vodka, on the shelf below the container of chicken & rice casserole I made last week.

Currently, as I like to say, I'm on the dole, so I'm quite able and happy to wile away an hour with corn, Wilco, and sometimes a little vodka lemonade. It's new and different, which makes it fun, and I'm finding that cooking is yet another way to express creativity. It's also practical -- saving money by cooking for Jon and me has become a necessity as I weigh career options. Though he'd be happy to share the cooking, I've become quite territorial in my kitchen, at least until it's time to do the dishes.

When I started blogging, I realized that in order to become a better food writer, one who can instantly identify an ingredient or technique, I have to be more comfortable in the kitchen. I just needed a larger space, the right tools, more time, and some good instruction to get started.

When Dana visited from Pittsburgh in May, I asked her to give me a cooking lesson. She's a natural hostess who typically lists 10 dishes when describing her most recent dinner party. In one afternoon, and from memory, she taught me how to prepare baked cod, pan-seared salmon, baked chicken, a five-layer frittata, and a cucumber, yogurt, and cumin salad. I did almost all the work, while she watched and gave easy to understand instructions and encouragement -- as a theater director, she's mastered the art of telling people what to do in a constructive, agreeable manner!

With her guidance I experimented with spices, cut corners on some recipes, and embellished others. I washed and trimmed two chicken breasts, squirming and squealing the whole time.
The meal was a success, and making so many things together helped me better understand timing, flavors and textures. It also got me over the hump of the raw fish and chicken ick-factor.

A week after Dana visited, I made foil-wrapped baked cod.

When I'm again gainfully employed, the kitchen know-how I've learned the last few months, from putting Panko on everything possible to always keeping frozen fruit, vegetables, fish, and a previously cooked chicken dish in the freezer, will make it easier to balance a job with continuing to save money by eating at home more frequently. Quite a statement coming from a girl who two months ago had never touched raw chicken!

Click here for the Apricot Chicken Recipe.

Recipe: Apricot Barbecue Chicken

The baked chicken dish Dana taught me was so good that I made it again a few weeks later for a dinner party. It's tangy yet sweet, with a little crunch from the onion soup mix -- it could also be prepared with mixed vegetables. I like it over brown rice with a side salad and think it's a modern take on a down-home meal.

Dana gave the recipe from memory and I made it on the spot, so proportions were eyeballed and approximate. Taste the sauce as you go! With these easy ingredients, you really can't go wrong.

Apricot Barbecue Chicken

Ingredients (Recipe is approximate and to taste):
-Count on about 1 chicken breast per person (or use whatever pieces you prefer). Double or triple the chicken if you want to make multiple meals to freeze.

-1 medium to large jar apricot jam or spread, preferably low-sugar.

-1 medium jar barbecue sauce

-1-2 packs Lipton's Onion Soup Mix

-1/3 small onion

Instructions:
*Note: A "glug" is along the lines of the 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi counting technique, which is both a useful tool for approximate recipes and some ironic cooking humor since I live very close to the actual Mississippi.

Pre-heat oven to 375.

Trim and slice chicken -- I cut breasts into about four pieces each.

Using a large plastic freezer bag, combine barbecue sauce, jam, and one packet soup mix. For 4-6 chicken breasts (or as many will fit in the plastic bag), use about 4 *glugs sauce, 4 non-leveled tablespoons of jam, and 1 packet of soup mix. Mix well, then add chicken and massage bag until chicken is well coated.

The proportions on this really are to taste, and depend on how much sauce you want, how sweet you want it, and the flavors in the barbecue sauce. Both times, I've used more jam than I would have expected. The second time, I made less sauce.

Pour bag contents into appropriate sized Pyrex or baking dish(es). Top with sliced onion.

You can also mix the ingredients in a bowl or the Pyrex itself before adding the chicken; just make sure the chicken is coated well.

Bake for around 20 minutes or until chicken is cooked.

A Greener, Bulkier Me

After living in a walking culture for so long, I have mixed feelings about being a car owner again. When it's blazing in New Orleans and I feel like my skin is going to fry every time I go from the car to the restaurant/movie theater/store even with my SPF 50, the notion of saving gas by walking is wilted by the reality of the weather and a reminder that skin cancer runs in my family.

My sustainable herb porch project.
The car does allow me to do one my favorite, grandmotherly like activities, which is to buy in bulk. The last time I went to Target I came home with such a large package of paper towels that I had to open both of the front French doors to get it in the house. That got me thinking about the amount of paper napkins and towels, tissues, and toilet paper that Jon and I use, and how to reduce it.

A few weeks later, we bought some inexpensive cloth napkins and started using and sometimes reusing them before washing them with a load of towels. Although it seems we shouldn't have skimped on the napkins and will need to buy some nicer ones in addition (they're very rough and we've both been avoiding wiping our mouths as much as possible ever since), it does feel better not to needlessly throw away paper products after each meal.

I've yet to find a company that sells boxless tissues, but someone must -- I'd love to buy a couple of nice looking boxes to refill, instead of the perky pastel flowered cardboard boxes I usually purchase in four-packs.

While I did cut up some old towels for rags to keep in the kitchen closet, I'm still working on downsizing my paper towel use. The big package that I bought has the kind of paper towel that is perforated in various sizes, so that helps cut down on waste. If I had more counter space, I could see placing the rags in a countertop basket for easy access. For me, accessibility seems to be the key to greener living. Though it takes a little more work up front, it often makes me feel better and is pretty simple once I get in the habit.

Alas, I have no present plans to change my toilet paper habit. For it, I'd drive many miles, under any weather condition, as long as I could buy in bulk.

New Zealand Food Porn

My favorite meal on our honeymoon was a sunset dinner of New Zealand mussels with chili sauce and raw Bluff oysters, from a lakeside seafood shack in Queenstown.

We sat on a bench that faced Lake Wakatipu.

The mussels were so fresh, there was still seaweed clinging to the shells.

The Bluff oysters were chewy, coppery and salty, and pricey due to their short season.

They named a candy bar after me!

Feeding the other animals.

Franny's Redux (or, Goodbye NY)

My first lunch as a bonafide New Yorker, in the summer of 2000, was a chocolate egg cream and the most overpriced egg salad sandwich in the history of New York at Lindy's, a restaurant where no self-respecting Gothamite would ever eat a second lunch. Seven and a half years later, on a bone-chilling early January evening, I took the F train a few stops into Brooklyn, then walked 20 minutes through Park Slope to Franny's. A few months earlier, I had one of my best New York meals ever there, and I wanted to eat another clam pie before I moved to New Orleans.

My beloved Prosecco with Wild Celery wasn't on the menu that night, so I ordered another simple syrup-based cocktail, and took a seat at the window bar facing Flatbush Avenue. It had been a long time since I enacted my ritual of eating out at nice restaurants alone, and I felt a little out of sorts. As I sipped the cocktail, which didn't have quite the same luscious zing, I looked out the window and realized how kind of sweet it was that the last restaurant I was treating myself to in New York was just a few blocks from the apartment where Jon lived when we first met.

I remembered the time early in our relationship when I fell in my tall shoes and skinned my knee while walking from his apartment to the subway stop that's right by Franny's. I can picture my exact red and black outfit from that early summer morning, and how seeing my knee covered in gravel and blood made me feel like a kid after a bike crash instead of a 22-year-old on the way to a Park Avenue office.

I pictured how magical New York was when I first moved there. My first Staten Island Ferry ride, replete with fresh champagne grapes and chocolates from Dean & Deluca. Popping a bottle of champagne, eating chocolate cake and waving sparklers on a friend's fire escape to celebrate her first job. My first NYC birthday dinner at a run-of-the-mill Mexican restaurant in SoHo ("It's all down here from hill," I drunkenly sighed to a friend while waiting for the subway). Feeling justified to take long lunches because it was Restaurant Week. A sad three-course meal for one at Artisanal and a few months later my first lobster roll at Mary's Fish Camp, both to comfort myself when my Dad was fighting cancer. And all the expensive meals I was treated to when I worked in publishing, from Gramercy Tavern to Nobu. While that early magic never quite disappeared, it did begin to fray during my last years there.

Just as the plate from my trio of house-cured soppressata, pancetta and coppa was switched out for my pizza with clams, chilies and parsley, Jon called. "I'm on a date with New York right now, I'll call you later." I tore off a slice and sunk my teeth into that masterful, blistery, creamy, juicy, spicy, salty pizza. It was superb. It was. But it was also heavily weighted, as though the instant I finished the last drop of clam juice that dripped to the plate, every ounce of New Yorker in me would drain away.

Thankfully, though the City can indeed be harsh, it's a little more forgiving than that. A few months after leaving, I'm so happy to have more space, green, time, and less noise. But I'm also starting to miss it like you miss an old friend from whom you've moved away. I'm certain I've only begun to understand that friend's lifelong impact on me. And, I've yet to eat a good slice of pizza.

* * * *
The summer I moved to New York, I was nursing an unrequited crush on the drummer from the band Guster. It came about during a few loud conversations in various music venues, but went no further than an invite to my first New York rooftop party, where I felt awkward and young and realized I had a lot more to learn as a new New Yorker than where to get an egg salad sandwich.

As I walked to the security gate at JFK at the end of January, Guster's song "Satellite" began playing softly overhead. I paused, shrugged my shoulders bemusedly, and got in line.

The minute I got off the plane I began to shed layers. When I exited Louis Armstrong Airport, I spotted Jon leaning against our new, sparkling blue car. My first lunch as a New Orleanian was an Abita rootbeer and a fully dressed oyster poboy at Parkway Bakery. It's the kind of place where no self-respecting New Orleanian would want to admit they hadn't eaten, at least twice.

Photo on the Staten Island Ferry, by Sara Miller, October 2000