a lazy din­ner, and a cozy dinner

Well, I signed up for “Blog­ger Beta,” and we shall see if every­one thinks it’s a huge improve­ment, or an unno­tice­able yawn. I’ll have to pub­lish this first before I can tell.

What do you do for din­ner when you have spent all day hard at work at your screen­writ­ing class, and then all the ear­ly evening shiv­er­ing at the Christ­mas lights cer­e­mo­ny in the high street (and see­ing your child’s prize-win­ning draw­ing dis­played at Thomp­sons Gallery!), and your entire fam­i­ly is com­plete­ly starv­ing? You go to Marks & Spencer, look furtive­ly around to see if any­one who knows you is stand­ing near­by, and you pick up a pack­age of Crispy Aro­mat­ic Duck. It is one of my absolute favorite meals in Chi­nese restau­rants and while I have been known to saute a duck breast, I have not in many, many years been brave enough to deal with an entire duck. They pro­duce so much fat that they have to be drained, and then drained and drained again, and I live in fear that in tak­ing the roast­ing pan out of the oven I will tip all the remain­ing fat onto the door and it will go up in flames. Doubt­less this is an over­re­ac­tion, and I always feel such a pang at the guilty plea­sure of pre­pared food that quite soon I will feel com­pelled to make Crispy Duck at home. This has hap­pened with such basic items as but­ter, may­on­naise and sal­ad dress­ing. Once I make them for myself, it’s a great guilt-pro­duc­er when I buy them ready-made. How­ev­er, last night was just not going to be a cook­ing night, so the din­ner hour found us hun­gri­ly crouch­ing over a plate of the shred­ded, spice-laden duck, pil­ing it into the pan­cakes and top­ping it with sliv­ered green onions, sliced cucum­ber and a good dol­lop of hoisin sauce, and tuck­ing in. It all comes in the box! Com­plete­ly fresh and per­fect. Try it, do. You can salve your con­science by mak­ing some­thing real­ly time-con­sum­ing like home­made fried rice, tomor­row night.

Enough about that. I have been real­ly good this week about not only cook­ing din­ner, but using the left­overs. Tonight will be sauteed pork chops with rose­mary and lemon juice, broc­col­i­ni stems with olive oil, and left­over mashed pota­toes. With the gravy from my roast chick­en ear­li­er in the week. With Thanks­giv­ing com­ing up, I feel it is my sworn duty to remove the mys­tique, not to say the aura of mys­tery, that sur­rounds this home­ly condi­ment. Even my own sis­ter, no mean cook, was scared enough of mak­ing her own gravy next week to ask me for my “recipe.” I think because I learned to make it lit­er­al­ly stand­ing at my grand­moth­er’s knee. I can say this about pre­cious few things because she, along with my moth­er, found cook­ing a hearti­ly bor­ing chore and cer­tain­ly did­n’t pass along recipes. But Mamoo (yep, that’s what we call her back in Indi­ana) made spec­tac­u­lar gravy, prob­a­bly because it was a Depres­sion era spe­cial­i­ty, a way to use up what oth­er­wise would just go down the drain. And the per­fect thing is, you have to roast a fowl to get it, so there’s your main course auto­mat­i­cal­ly done. What makes it so won­der­ful is the blend of herbs and spices that you sprin­kle on your chick­en before roast­ing. My dar­ling broth­er in law Joel gave me for Christ­mas the most won­der­ful gift: a col­lec­tion of spices from Pen­zeys, the peer­less spice com­pa­ny. I have fall­en in love with two blends: one called “Sand­wich Sprin­kle” and anoth­er called “French Vinai­grette Base.” And they’re announc­ing a new one called “Mur­al of Fla­vor,” which is salt-free (I would then be com­pelled to add a ton of salt, as I’m addict­ed). Any­way, for your gravy here’s what you do:

Every­day Gravy (it’s not just for Thanks­giv­ing anymore)
serves six (ish)

1 large roast­ing chicken

2 slices bacon (in Eng­land you must buy “smoked streaky rashers”)
1/2 tea­spoon each of: dried basil, oregano, thyme, gar­lic salt, papri­ka (or any sea­soned salt you like)
2 table­spoons butter
1 cup chick­en stock
1/2 cup white wine
1 large onion, quartered
6 cloves gar­lic, whole
2 tbsps flour
good dol­lop of cream (if you insist)

Spray a large roast­ing pan with non­stick spray and place chick­en breast-side up. Pour chick­en stock and wine over the chick­en, then sprin­kle on herbs and put the but­ter in two pats at the top of the breast. Throw the onion chunks and gar­lic cloves in around the chick­en, then drape the bacon slices over the legs. Roast at 400 degrees for a min­i­mum of two hours, turn­ing the heat down toward the end if the chick­en gets too brown.

About forty min­utes before you want to eat, put peeled and quar­tered pota­toes (my alle­giance is with Lady Bal­four pota­toes these days) in a pan and cov­er with water, then bring to the boil. Then, ten min­utes before you want to eat, take the roast­ing pan out and place a gravy sep­a­ra­tor in the sink. This is one of the very few spe­cial­ist kitchen items I believe in, nor­mal­ly adher­ing to Lau­rie Col­win’s dis­dain for kitchen objects that serve only one pur­pose. Lift the chick­en out onto a large plate, and then very care­ful­ly pour the liq­uid into the gravy sep­a­ra­tor, leav­ing the onions and gar­lic in the pan if pos­si­ble. Put the chick­en back in the pan and return to the over, tak­ing care to wipe any liq­uid from the bot­tom of the pan first. Now, you will notice that the gravy has sep­a­rat­ed into a good stock base, and a lay­er of fat on the top. Very slow­ly, pour the gravy out the spout into a skil­let. Amaz­ing­ly, I have no idea how this works, the stuff at the top comes out last! How do they do that? I real­ly should have tak­en high-school physics as my father often laments. Any­way, watch and stop pour­ing when you run out of good stock and the fat begins to drain out. Throw away the fat.

Now put the skil­let over medi­um heat and whisk in the flour. Bring to a low boil and whisk until the flour is com­plete­ly absorbed. Let it cook a bit, and if you find you want your gravy thick­er, sim­ply add more flour. Add the cream if desired (of course in my house it is always desired).

Now you can let it sim­mer, and turn your atten­tion to the rest of the meal. Drain and mash your pota­toes with a nice hot mix­ture of but­ter and milk. Take the chick­en out of the oven and let it sit a bit, while you saute your broc­coli or pep­pers, or peel your beet­root, or make your salad.

A gravy boat is a nice thing to have, as it has a lit­tle spout. But you can use a cof­fee cup with a big soup spoon, as well. I will nev­er for­get that as a young engaged per­son, I reg­is­tered for some real­ly expen­sive chi­na. I don’t even remem­ber the pat­tern. Any­way, the ONLY piece I got was the gravy boat! I think it cost $450! Need­less to say I exchanged it for, basi­cal­ly, every­thing else I need­ed to start a home, and got a cheap sweet lit­tle white gravy boat that I still use, now 16 years later.

Now carve the chick­en, which unless you are an expert, sim­ply involves cut­ting the breasts off and slic­ing them, and remov­ing the legs if any­one likes dark meat. As for me, I eat what I call the “swings,” because when I lived in Moscow and was invit­ed to the home of a Russ­ian diplo­mat for din­ner (this was in 1992 when no nice peo­ple in Moscow had any mon­ey, and con­se­quent­ly very lit­tle food), the host’s wife said to me very ele­gant­ly, “We are hav­ing chick­en tonight. I hope you can eat the swings.” I always intend­ed to write a mem­oir of our time in Moscow and call it “Gold­en Domes and Chick­en Swings.”

But I digress. Now you have pro­duced the per­fect com­fort meal, all the food groups account­ed for, and… you can throw the chick­en car­cass in a stock­pot and make soup. Mmmm.

Oh, anoth­er food blog you might like: Smit­ten Kitchen. Right now the author has a bro­ken wrist and so is focus­ing on food she can pro­duce with only one hand. Some­thing for every­one! Her style is very humor­ous and the food sounds won­der­ful, like a sausage risot­to. Thanks to my moth­er in law for steer­ing me to these won­der­ful blogs, which unfor­tu­nate­ly make me feel I should lay down my vir­tu­al pen, I get so intim­i­dat­ed by their wit.

So what else has been going on? Becky and I went to a jew­ellery show with work by our friend Ali­son Bradley. Oh my. I want­ed one of every­thing. She is bril­liant, and made us feel ter­ri­bly wel­come. At one point in our brows­ing she came over with a large plat­ter of… stuff. “Eat some! It’s dried fruit, but every­one thinks it’s pot­pour­ri.” Not exact­ly a stuffy per­son! She is Avery’s school chum Coco’s moth­er, Coco of the first day of school fame. Becky and I were sore­ly tempt­ed, but may I say that I came away with only a gift. For some­one. Some­one who reads this blog, so I can­not say more. Then this morn­ing was the Form Five Mono­logue Pre­sen­ta­tion, with each girl recit­ing a bit of dra­ma for us. Need­less to say, Avery could teach the dra­ma course, so her pre­sen­ta­tion was very full of vig­or and enthu­si­asm. And, hey! On the way to school John and I saw Lady Sarah Chat­to, which was cool. Or rather I saw her and had to explain to John who she is. I say, what’s the point of liv­ing in Lon­don if you’re not going to get excit­ed when you see minor mem­bers of the British roy­al family?

Off now to take Avery ice skat­ing. She’s up to Lev­el Sev­en on her badges, now, I mean on her skills. It’s not all about the badges, of course. But they do liv­en up her gym kit. Have a great week­end, everybody.