Squashed

Although our unseasonable fall-like weather has been replaced by the higher temperatures and higher humidity we're more accustomed to in October, I've found myself enchanted by the fruits of the fall harvest. Seeing all those apples on display at HEB and Sprouts is such a delight, and the price for eggplants has come down. Autumn's so much more colorful and so much more appetizing.

Out of sheer curiosity, fond remembrances of a soup I had while at a yoga teacher training retreat 7 years ago (yegods, has it really been 7 years?) and a growing desire to try using my tagine on the stove top along with the diffuser plate I'd bought for that express purpose, I bought a butternut squash. Not only are butternut squash chocked full of all kinds of healthful benefits, but their unique shape just begs for all sorts of off-color jokes about phalli. Would this innocent-looking squash be my undoing? I honestly didn't know.

With the butternut squash purchased, I obviously had to figure out how to prepare it for use in the chicken-butternut tagine recipe I planned to use it in. I'd seen an acorn squash prepared--with the use of a cleaver and hammer--on America's Test Kitchen some time before, but my little squash only weighed about a pound and a half. It was no behemoth and certainly, I hoped, wouldn't not require me to use implements we keep in the garage in the toolbox.

Instead of turning to one of my Cook's Illustrated references, I turned instead to Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian. Ms. Jaffrey straightforward guidance filled me with confidence that I wouldn't be reaching for a sledgehammer or be putting my much-hated country blue kitchen countertops at risk in the preparation of the squash. Armed with just my beloved Victorinox chef's knife and a cutting board, I got down to business.

Although pumpkins and butternut squash are in the same family, so to speak, carving up my butternut was a whole lot easier than carving up a pumpkin for a jack-o-lantern. Or at least the specimen I had to work with was, for it hardly had many seeds and not a lot of that stringy, sticky, fibrous "guts" to scoop out. Peeling it was a breeze too: I used a combination of a basic veggie peeler and my chef's knife.

Given that this task was brand new to me, I was quite proud to have the squash halved vertically, cleaned, cut into portions, peeled and then cubed and parceled out into an appropriate amount for the tagine and into two freezer bags of similar portions for later use all within 30 minutes or so. Well, at least I don't think that's too bad for a first-timer.

With the big prep task out of the way, I moved on to the actual making 'o the tagine.

Chicken-butternut Tagine1 T olive oil
2 C chopped onion
2 t ground cumin
1 t paprika
1 t ground turmeric
1/4 t salt
1/4 t ground cinnamon
1/4 t ground ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 lb. skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces
2 C fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
8 oz. peeled, cubed butternut squash
1/3 C halved pitted picholine olives (about 3 oz.)
8 pitted dried plums, chopped
Fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves (optional)

1. Heat oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat.
   
2. Add the onion and cook 8 min. or until golden, stirring occasionally.
   
3. Stir in cumin, paprika, turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, salt, garlic and chicken, and then cook 1 min., stirring constantly.
   
4. Stir in broth, squash, olives and dried plums.
   
5. Bring the mixture to a boil, cover, reduce heat to medium-low and then simmer 10 min. or until squash is tender.
   
6. Garnish with parsley, if desired.

Yield: 4 servings of 1 1/4 C each

Nutritional Info
Calories: 309
Fat: 8.8 g
Sat fat: 0.9 g
Protein: 29.8 g
Carbs: 29.7 g
Fiber: 5.2 g
Cholesterol: 66 mg
Sodium: 782 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
I'll say this right off, Gentle Reader: I got way too wrapped up in preparing the squash right. How ridiculous is it that I was so worried about that? Well, I did. So much so that I made some goofs with the recipe. Oh well.

• I failed to remember the salt until well after I'd added the broth and squash. D'oh!
  
• I failed to remember the turmeric until today when I was transcribing the recipe. Sheesh, that's really pathetic.
  
• I didn't use that tablespoon of olive oil called for by the recipe. Maybe a teaspoon and a half did the trick.
  
• I don't do olives. Even the smell of them turns my stomach, thus I have to give a wide berth to the olive bars at various grocery stores around Austin lest I ralph right then and there.
  
• While I do have prunes, I didn't feel this recipe would be served well by them. I've made a Moroccan dish or two with them, and they impart an interesting taste that...well, it's not terribly satisfying for me. I instead used dried cranberries, tossing an amount that I thought was equivalent to the prunes and the olives.
  
• Because I didn't have enough squash to for three 8-ounce freezer bags, I tossed in an extra 3 ounces or so. Did that lead to overcrowding? I don't think so.
  
• I used my tagine to prepare the dish rather than Chive the Dutchie because the recipe's called a tagine.
  
• I doubled the simmering time on the advice of some of the recipe reviews so that the squash would indeed be tender.

My nerves were a bit overwrought not just from working with the squash but also from using the tagine on the stovetop for the first time. It performs beautifully in the oven, but I had my doubts about the diffuser's ability to evenly and adequately heat the bottom bowl of the tagine. I'm not sure if those doubts were well-founded or not because it seemed to take forever for the olive oil to heat up. In fact, it wasn't anywhere near warm enough when I tossed in the onions to brown. I had to keep the burner heat turned up fairly high for most of the cooking time, which I really didn't like. That strikes me as inefficient. That said, though, I did have to turn down the heat substantially about 10 minutes into the simmering time because liquid was starting to bubble out from beneath the chimney lid, which isn't as tight-fitting as a traditional pot lid.

The finished tagine dish was quite tasty, although I wonder now what it would be like if I'd remembered the turmeric.
The squash did come out quite tender, and I tried to induce the boy into eating it by letting him know it tasted very close to potatoes. (He had maybe two or three cubes and that was it.) I served the finished yumminess atop pistachio couscous, but I think it would have been better served with plain couscous or with a side of pita with which to sop up the liquid. That's not a knock against either the pistachio couscous or the finished tagine; The wonderful flavor and aroma of the couscous was lost, buried under the flavors of the tagine.

Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler!

Admittedly, Mardi Gras 2010 has come and gone. Tits were flashed, beads were tossed (along with many stomachs' contents, I'm sure), king cakes were eaten.

Did we here at Chez Boeckman-Walker do any of these things? Well, as Meatloaf sang, "Two out of three ain't bad."

(We ate king cake, and the boy was tossed some beads at school. Get your mind out of the gutter, Gentle Reader!)

Since Tuesdays are incredibly crazy days for us, we enjoyed a Creole dish in honor of Mardi Gras the Saturday before. Instead of revisiting last year's Creole chicken dish, I instead hunted down a jambalayah recipe I thought we might enjoy. None of us had ever eaten it, and the boy was curious about it after watching the second-season DS9 episode "The Jem'Hadar." Which has nothing to do with Mardi Gras, but there is a scene in which jambalayah is consumed amongst the foilage of the "alien" world of the Stage 7 at Paramount.

Yeah, we're a bunch of nerds. Wanna make something of it, Gentle Reader?

Turkey Jambalaya1 T olive oil
1 1/2 C chopped onion
1 t bottled minced garlic
1 C chopped green bell pepper
1 C chopped red bell pepper
2 1/2 t paprika
1/2 t salt
1/2 t dried oregano
1/2 t ground red pepper
1/2 t black pepper
1 C uncooked long-grain rice
2 C fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth
14.5 ounces canned diced tomatoes, undrained
2 C shredded cooked turkey
6 ounces andouille sausage, chopped
2 T sliced green onions

1. Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat.
   
2. Add the onion and garlic and sauté 6 min. or until lightly browned.
   
3. Stir in the bell peppers, paprika, salt, oregano, red pepper and black pepper, and sauté 1 min.
   
4. Add the rice and sauté 1 min.
   
5. Stir in the broth and tomatoes, and then bring the mixture to a boil.
   
6. Cover, reduce heat and simmer 15 min.
   
7. Add the turkey and sausage, cover and cook 5 min.
   
8. Sprinkle with green onions.

Yield: 8 one-cup servings

Nutritional Info
Calories: 249
Fat: 7.6 g
Sat fat: 2.4 g
Protein: 17.3 g
Carbs: 27.4 g
Fiber: 2.7 g
Cholesterol: 42 mg
Sodium: 523 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Once I had the inspiration to make jambalaya, I had to find a recipe--and not just any 'ol recipe. I wanted to find something that was fairly authentic, so I got myself a brief education on the differences between Creole and Cajun foods, on the possible origins of jambalaya and on what can and should and shouldn't go into it, be it Creole-style or Cajun-style.

And then I wound up choosing a recipe from Cooking Light. Mind you, Gentle Reader, it didn't strike me as some bastardized abomination masquerading as jambalaya, for its ingredients by and large jived with the ingredients of other recipes I encountered, save the turkey. I suppose I went with it because I have a reasonable level of trust in recipes from Cooking Light. I can't say the same with recipes from, say, AllRecipes.com.

Given what I'd learned about jambalaya and my desire to create a fairly true-to-form dish and coupling them with my desire to make the dish...somewhat healthful, I futzed a wee bit:

• I substituted shredded chicken breast meat for the turkey. I read that Creole jambalaya has chicken, whereas the Cajun version has crawfish, shrimp and such. Plus I just didn't have any turkey on hand. (It's all in other dishes frozen and waiting for emergency thawing in the deep freezer.)
  
• I had to cook the breast in order to shred it, and I reserved the water in which I boiled the sucker to use as part of the broth. Thrifty, non?
  
• Because I used a whole chicken breast that probably weighed at least half a pound, I probably had more than 2 cups of shredded meat. Having too much chicken is never a problem in our household.
  
• I think I used more than 6 ounces of andouille sausage. When I bought it at Sprouts, I initially asked the deli worker for one link. Its weight, at the time, didn't calculate in my head to be 6 ounces, so I asked for two and went on my merry way. Later, as I realized my possible mistake with the weight, I came to suspect one link would have done the job. But, of course, I had two--and what the hell am I going to do with a second link of andouille sausage when I'm not even sure I'm using the first one right and try my damnedest to keep organ meats out of my kitchen?!? Obviously, Gentle Reader, I chopped 'em both up and threw 'em in the pot.
  
• To get the cup and a half of chopped onion, I used a full yellow onion then chopped up half of a red onion I had in the refrigerator that needed to be used. I was concerned the two onions might affect the flavor, and I'm not sure it did. They did, though, make the dish even more colorful.

Colorful, non?

I wish I'd taken a bit more time to learn about the sausage because as I was chopping it up, I stopped and pondered, Am I supposed to remove the casing, or is it supposed to stay on? I mean, with some sausages and extruded meat products with casings, you leave the casings on. Others, you should remove them--like with bologna. Or at least such was my dread at the time. Hell, how was I to know? The sausage I grew up with came in a plastic tube, and you obviously had to remove that casing.

To resole my dilemma, I took one of the chopped pieces, slit the casing and attempted to remove it. The meat inside promptly started to disintegrate. Well, the casing stays on, if only to keep the sausage together! I decided.

Naturally, when it came time for us to eat the jambalaya, the husband almost immediately noted the presence of the casing and its unchewable qualities. I myself didn't have any problems with it--but I'm not sure that's a good thing. And, of course, since Daddy was having problems with something in the dish, the boy had to have the exact same problem. So, out came a small Corelle bowl for the boys to share in which to deposit their sausage casings. Whatever. Crisis solved.

If you've never had andouille sausage before, Gentle Reader, trust me when I say it's got a nice bite to it. I think it imparts a good part of the dish's heat to it, along with the red pepper. If you wanted your jambalaya even hotter, you could probably substitute the full amount of the red pepper with cayenne or another hot chile's ground flesh. You could probably toss in some chopped hot peppers as well, but you'd then have to ask yourself, Am I staying somewhat true to the dish, or am I just trying to prove how macho I am?

No, Gentle Reader, I'm not judging you. I'm just making an observation.

We three human residents of Chez Boeckman-Walker found the dish as I'd prepared it, with only the meat substitution and perhaps a bit more sausage than necessary, to really hit the spot. The husband even ran out to HEB to procure a warm loaf of crusty "French" to accompany our steaming bowls of Creole goodness. Sure, it wasn't Mardi Gras and we were nowhere near New Orleans and our jambalaya was probably a pale imitation of the real thing, but we were happy, had our bellies filled with warm goodness and not a one of us had to lift our shirts for a string of cheap beads.
Okay, the boy got beads, but they came with the king cake I'd bought at HEB. He also got the Christ child figure, so he's on the hook for the king cake next year. Sucker. Laissez les bons temps rouler, indeed.

Chicken Soup for the Postadenoidectomy Soul

The boy had his adenoids removed today. We left the house at 5:10 a.m. this morning and arrived back home almost exactly four hours later. Yeah, four hours later. I think we spent more time waiting at the patient check-in and then in the pre-op area than we spent waiting for the surgery to be completed and for the boy to come out of the anesthesia and be released. I wasn't there when the boy returned from surgery--I'd had to make a Target run to acquire for him new undies and pants, for he'd had a small accident once under the influence of the anesthesia, and I hadn't brought along a change of clothes, thinking he'd have to change into full surgical regalia for the procedure--but the husband told me within minutes of his return to our assigned pre-op/post-op closet, he was up and chipper and munching on a popsicle and slurping down some juice.

Having seen the husband through his uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (which can include the removal of the adenoids and the tonsils in addition to the tightening of the soft palate, as it did for the husband) and septoplasty, I had some idea of how to prepare to meet the boy's potential post-op nutrition needs. Popsicles? Check. Yogurt? Check. Kefir? Check.

About a gallon of chicken noodle soup? Check.

Luckily, I knew this chicken noodle soup more than pleased the boy, having made it on a whim a few weeks before so I could use up some celery. At that time, he'd chowed down three-fourths of the batch. This time, I aimed to make a double batch.

Quick Chicken Noodle Soup2 C water
32 oz. carton fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth
1 T olive oil
1/2 C prechopped onion
1/2 C prechopped celery
1/2 t salt
1/2 t freshly ground black pepper
1 medium carrot, chopped
6 oz. fusilli pasta
2 1/2 C shredded skinless, boneless rotisserie chicken breast
2 T chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

1. Combine the water and the chicken broth in a microwave-safe dish, and then microwave on high for 5 min.
   
2. While the broth mixture heats, heat a large saucepan over medium-high heat.
   
3. Add the oil to pan and swirl to coat.
   
4. Add the onion, celery, salt, pepper and carrot to the saucepan, and then sauté 3 min. or until they're almost tender, stirring frequently.
   
5. Add the hot broth mixture and pasta to the saucepan, and then bring it to a boil.
6. Cook the soup 7 min. or until the pasta is almost al dente.
   
7. Stir in the chicken and then cook 1 min. or until thoroughly heated.
   
8. Stir in the parsley.

Yield: 6 1-cup servings

Nutritional Info
Calories: 237
Fat: 4.8 g
Sat fat: 1 g
Protein: 22.9 g
Carbs: 23.9 g
Fiber: 1.7 g
Cholesterol: 50 mg
Sodium: 589 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
This recipe I found in the freebie Cooking Light January issue, and I initially passed over it. But as I noted a few paragraphs back, I had some celery I needed to use, and since the boy had been gobbling down some canned chicken noodle soup from Canada like it was water and he'd just returned from a 10-year sojourn in the Gobi desert, I thought I'd give this one a shot.

Before I get to my futzings, I just have to say one thing about this "quick" recipe: Is it really so damn hard to chop up a celery stalk or two, a carrot and maybe half of an onion? Is that really so damn time-consuming a task?

All right, Gentle Reader, here's a rough idea of how I played with this recipe:

• Screw the rotisserie chicken. What's so hard about boiling a boneless, skinless or even a bone-in, skinless chicken breast in just enough water and then shredding it? That's what I did (the bone-in breast I used in addition to a small boneless boob for the second batch), so not only did I get some nice chicken, I wound up with some (admittedly weak) chicken broth to use in place of the two cups of water.
  
• Screw the microwave. What's with nuking the water and broth? Is it really so hard to wait for this liquid to boil? Have we really come to this, Gentle Reader? If you have no patience, then you have really no business being in the kitchen.
  
• I never have parsley. I have cilantro, but I think I've noted several times how much the boy loathes cilantro.

I had to look up exactly what fusilli pasta is, although I had a rough idea based on the illustration in the magazine. If you're too lazy to pop fusilli into Google and hit Enter, Gentle Reader, let me clue you in: It's corkscrew pasta, or as I knew it until that day, it's rotini. That's it. When I first prepared to make this recipe, before I visited Google, I worried that perhaps this was some special pasta, but no. It's just rotini.

Fortunately, thanks to some reshelving, restocking and deep discounting of the pasta shelves at HEB, I have pasta out the wazoo. I've got yer penne, I've got yer angelhair, I've got yer rotini. The fancy stuff too--the omega-enriched and/or whole-grain stuff. I personally can't stand pasta (it reminds me too much of when I was fat and was an all too frequent visitor to The Olive Garden and made too many batches of cavatini or spaghetti slathered with Five Brothers four-cheese sauce), but the boy and the husband--but especially the boy--like the stuff. Pasta makes for an easy meal on nights when I'm uninspired.

Where was I? Sheesh, writing up a post after being up for some 15 hours is not the most brilliant thing to do.

Okay, yeah, rotini. The first time I made the soup, I polished off an already-open box of rotini, which was just about the 6 ounces called for. Combined with the shredded chicken breast meat, the end result looked pretty much like the picture in the magazine and surprisingly pretty flavorful, considering how sparse the seasoning is. (I think I might have sprinkled a bit of kosher salt and pepper into the water I boiled the breast in the first time. I know I definitely did the second time.)

The second time, I used all 16 ounces in the bag of discounted Hodgson Mills whole wheat spiral pasta I had on hand. I was a little leery of using the whole wheat pasta in this batching, knowing that the finished product would be stored for later reheating and that whole wheat pasta can disintegrate or at least get really mushy and unappetizing when reheated in a lot of liquid. But the boy loves his pasta, and I figured even mushy spirals would work well if he were nursing a sore postadenoidectomy gullet.

Of course, adding all 16 ounces of the pasta to the pot along with the six cups or so of shredded chicken meat made for a big-ass pot of soup. I thought I'd put in enough liquid--I eyeballed it as I went along, using the broth created when I boiled the chicken along with about half or more of a 32-ounce container of Pacific Natural Foods chicken broth I'd opened a few days before when making our favorite tagine recipe. Despite the skewed liquid-to-solid ratio, the pasta was cooked to just the right tenderness, plus the lack of an abundance of liquid allowed me to stow the finished soup in a way that would allow me to reheat it on the stove, adding fresh broth, without those noddles turning to mush.

And my theory proved true. Not long after arriving home, the boy was lamenting how hungry he was, echoing his one of his first post-op statements to his father: "When can I go home? I'm ready to eat some chicken noodle soup." (Isn't he just precious sometimes, Gentle Reader?) I plopped the smallest of the three storage bowls of soup into a two-quart saucepan, started it warming over gentle heat and added enough freshly opened Central Markup-brand broth until most of the solid ingredients could roughly float. As soon as it was warm, I headed off to the gym.

When I returned just over 90 minutes later, the soup was gone. I don't think the husband partook of it either.

The boy had half of the medium-size container of soup for supper. I still have a quart-size (maybe a two-quart size) container in the 'fridge.

Eat your heart out, Cambell's. I'll tell you what's "M'm! M'm! Good!" and it ain't you and your obese, pasty kids!

Make This Feast!

Hold on to your hat/horses/ass, Gentle Reader, because I'm about to rave madly about a pair of recipes that don't have obvious Asian, North African or Latin origins.

Have you braced yourself? Good, because here we go.

Roast Chicken With Balsamic Bell Peppers3/4 t salt, divided
3/4 t fennel seeds, crushed
1/2 t black pepper, divided
1/4 t garlic powder
1/4 t dried oregano
4 6-oz. skinless, boneless chicken breasts
2 T olive oil, divided
2 C thinly sliced red bell pepper
1 C thinly sliced yellow bell pepper
1/2 C thinly sliced shallots (about 1 large)
1 1/2 t chopped fresh rosemary
1 C fat-free, reduced-sodium chicken broth
1 T balsamic vinegar

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
   
2. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat.
   
3. Combine half a teaspoon of salt with the crushed fennel, a quarter-teaspoon of black pepper, garlic powder and oregano.
   
4. Brush the chicken with 1 1/2 teaspoons of oil; , then sprinkle the spice rub over it.
   
5. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons of oil to pan, then add the chicken and cook 3 min. or until browned.
   
6. Turn the chicken over and cook 1 min.
   
7. Arrange the chicken in an 11 x 7–inch baking dish coated with cooking spray.
   
8. Bake the chicken for 10 min. or until done.
   
9. Heat the remaining olive oil over medium-high heat.
   
10. Add the bell peppers, shallots and rosemary and sauté 3 min.
    
11. Stir in the broth, scraping the pan with a wooden spoon to loosen any browned bits.
    
12. Reduce the heat and let the mixture simmer 5 min.
    
13. Increase the heat back to medium-high.
    
14. Stir in the vinegar along with a quarter-teaspoon each of salt and pepper.
    
15. Cook the mixture 3 min., stirring frequently.
    
16. Serve the bell pepper mixture over the chicken.

Yield: 4 servings of a breast half and 1/2 C of bell pepper mixture

Nutritional Info
Calories: 282
Fat: 11 g
Sat fat: 2.1 g
Protein: 35.9 g
Carbs: 8.8g
Fiber: 1.9 g
Cholesterol: 94 mg
Sodium: 644 mg

Normally I'd put my futzings here, but once again I ask you to hold on to your hat/horses/ass, Gentle Reader, because I'm not finished yet with the recipe fun and believe my futzings will be better presented all together.

Roasted Red Potatoes With Rosemary6-8 small red potatoes, quartered into 1/2" pieces
1 T olive oil or garlic-flavored olive oil
1 T minced fresh rosemary leaves
1/2 t salt
1/4 t ground black pepper

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
   
2. Combine all the ingredients in a large bowl, then toss to coat the potatoes.
3. Transfer the potatoes to a large baking sheet or shallow roasting pan.
   
4. Roast the potatoes 25-30 min. or until they're tender and golden.

Nutritional Info
Unfortunately, the fine folks at FoodNetwork.com--or at least the ones posting celebrity "chef" Robin Miller's recipes--don't see fit to include nutritional info with the recipes. That's probably a good thing for the site, for if visitors got a gander at the nutritional info for Paula "Queen of Butter" Deen's recipes, they'd flee and set Google to block search results from showing her stuff.

All Hail the Queen of Butter!

The Faudie's Futzings
I'm getting spoiled by having a Sprouts closer to home. This week, the store had red and yellow bell peppers for 69 cents each, as well as fresh, hormone-free, boneless, skinless chicken breasts for $1.77 a pound. Those prices may not strike you as great deals, Gentle Reader, but they are to me--and I recommend you get out to shop more often so you know what grocery prices are these days. Even at low-price HEB, the asking price for hormone-free chicken is upwards of $3 a pound.

Anywho, I'd spied the roast chicken recipe in my freebie January issue of Cooking Light and aimed to make it if I ever got my mitts on some cheap red bell peppers. Imagine how grateful I was when Sprouts obliged not just with the bell peppers but with the chicken as well.

While I had the ingredients at the ready by and large, I had to futz. I'm The Faudie, after all, and futzing is what I do.

• While Sprouts had yellow bell peppers on sale, I didn't waste my money on them. Yellow bells have no flavor, in the opinions of both me and the husband.
  
• I didn't use more than half a teaspoon of salt total. Yes, Gentle Reader, I know its importance as a flavor differentiator, I just don't like using that much of it. My taste buds, long "deprived" of excess sodium since I don't ingest a lot of processed foods, can detect salt quite well, and I just don't enjoy that sensation.
  
• While I did purchase fennel seeds at a post-yoga trip to Central Markup (the seeds I thought we had for the husband's six-seed bread were all gone), I also purchased a small quantity of ground fennel just in case, y'know, I didn't feel like getting out my mortar and pestle and doin' a little crushin'. Which I didn't when I finally moved on in the day's culinary misadventures to start this recipe.
  
• I didn't coat the raw chicken in olive oil before applying the spice rub. I figured between the nonstick skillet and the teaspoon or so of olive oil I put in it before adding the chicken, I had enough fat and slick for decent browning. Furthermore, the spice rub had no trouble sticking to the raw chicken without the help of the oil.
  
• I used about two teaspoons of freshly chopped rosemary, purloined from the neighbor's rosemary shrub (bush? plant?). I'd told the husband to acquire a good-sized branch since I needed for both the chicken and the potatoes, and he delivered--and then some. I didn't like the prospect of the rosemary going to waste, so I used a wee bit more. It's a crime to waste something you've stolen.
  
• I didn't add any more olive oil to the skillet before preparing the bell peppers and shallots. The oils from the chicken preparation were infused with the flavors of fennel, pepper, garlic and oregano, and I wanted to try to transfer that flavor to the peppers and shallots.

By the by, Gentle Reader, I'll have you know I bought a shallot for the recipe on my weekly HEB trip. I'd only purchased shallots once, years ago, for a Korean recipe. Those shallots, packaged in a cellophane bag, were tiny, withered things that I recall not even using. This shallot, on the other hand, seemed large in comparison. Imagine my surprise when I started slicing into the thing and discovered it's like a pale red onion.

It's a real shallot!

In the magazine, the recipe is paired with one for mascarpone mashed potatoes, and after preparing the bell pepper topping, I understand why: The bell pepper mixture doesn't really thicken. It's a bunch of softened bell pepper strips and shallots swimming in a thin but tasty liquid composed of chicken broth and balsamic vinegar. I had thought the sauce would thicken slight, as it does in our favorite chicken with balsamic bell peppers and red onions dish. Nope, not here, thus the mashed 'taters are there to sop up the juice.

But I didn't know that until after the fact. That's why I thought my idea to pair the chicken with the red potatoes lightly flavored with rosemary that we'd get every now and then at the Central Markup Cafe would be a fantastic pairing. Yes, it's not the most imaginative pairing--two rosemary dishes--but for me to even consider preparing some kind of potato side dish is a huge stretch, Gentle Reader. I stay far away from potatoes.

Yet when I was at Central Markup after my yoga class, I found myself buying four palm-sized red potatoes at 99 cents a pound. I knew as I selected them that I could get then for 89 cents a pound or less at my local HEB, but I really didn't want to make another post-yoga stop. Then to top it all off, the checker tried to charge me the price for the "C" red potatoes, those iddy-biddy ones sometimes dubbed baby red potatoes, that go for $1.19 a pound. Sorry, lady, there's a noticeable difference between the C reds and the A reds, which I bought. Grrr.

If you're going to point out, Gentle Reader, that I could have bought some roasted red potatoes with rosemary from the cafe while I was shopping at Central Markup, you needn't. Those potatoes are kind of pricey, and I was looking forward to trying my hand at roasting my own potatoes, oddly enough. Since I'd be baking cookies out the wazoo for the boy to give to his classmates on his birthday (not homemade cookies, but instead six packages of Nestle mint chocolate chip cookies, with two portions mushed together to form bigger cookies, which I scored for a buck a piece at HEB some weeks back), I knew I'd have the oven hot and ready to go. Plus the recipe's just so damn simple, how could I resist an opportunity to see how badly I could muck it up?

When I made the potatoes, I used the lemon-flavored olive oil I use far too infrequently (largely because I'm so unsure how to use it to make the most of its lemon flavor). Rosemary and lemon seemed an appropriate combination to me. Fortunately, I was right. After 30 minutes of roasting atop a piece of parchment paper I put over one of the baking sheets I'd used while baking cookies, the potato wedges came out warm, fragrant and flavorful.

And a bit too early. I'd underestimated the skillet-cooking time for the chicken breasts, so they went into the oven about 10 minutes after the potatoes had come out. So much for time management! But it's not really my fault entirely. You can't buy 6-ounce chicken breasts around here. They're all friggin' huge. In fact, for this recipe, I used two breasts and halved them lengthwise; cutting them in half widthwise would have resulted in to super thick halves that would take at least twice the time to cook as their two thin companions.

Of course, the chicken needed additional time in the oven to cook through completely, which meant my tasty potatoes were cooling atop the oven far longer than I'd hoped. Fortunately, though, they were still pretty warm when at last the chicken was finished and ready to be served.

While we lacked mashed potatoes to sop up the juice from the mixture, we did have some foccacia, topped with sliced veggies and a load of Parmesan cheese, that we'd scored on the discount rack at Sprouts a few weeks back. The baked Parmesan tasted more like cream cheese it was so sweet, so I found it to be a nice pairing with the faint citrus of the potatoes and the savoriness of the fennel-laced chicken, shallots and bell peppers.

I suppose the culinary powers of the universe found favor with me on this day, for my pairing of rosemary recipes didn't just work well--they rocked our taste buds. The three human residents of Chez Boeckman-Walker were quite enthralled by the feast, and even the feline residents seemed jealous of our fine dining.

Based on these results, Gentle Reader, I highly recommend these recipes to you. They're not difficult and make for a flavorful meal you could even prepare without shame for guests. Happy feasting!

Such Promise...and Such Disappointment

After day after day of turkey-based meals, the boys were overjoyed when I decided to prepare a different source for protein last night. Granted, said protein source was still in the fowl family--chicken--but I've yet to have either human male here at Chez Boeckman-Walker turn down chicken.

To mark the return of everyone's favorite barnyard poultry to our table, I decided to prepare a new recipe, which I'd received just that morning in my daily dispatch from AllRecipes.com. It seemed like a promise flavor combination, and none of the ingredients seemed like they'd offend the boy's gustatory sensibilities (the husband, upon my showing him the recipe, was behind it wholeheartedly).

Such promise....

Cinnamon and Lime Chicken Fajitas4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
1 T ground cinnamon
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
2 large baking potatoes, peeled and cubed
1/4 C canola oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 large garlic clove, peeled and minced
1 T chopped jalapeño peppers
1 lime, juiced
12 6" corn tortillas, warmed

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
   
2. Place the potatoes in a shallow baking dish, drizzle about half of the oil over them, and then season them with salt.
   
3. Bake the potatoes until tender (30 to 40 min.).
   
4. Season the chicken with the cinnamon, salt and pepper, and then arrange it in a separate baking dish.
   
5. Bake the chicken until it's no longer pink and its juices run clear (30 min.).
   
6. Let the chicken cool and then shred it.
   
7. Heat the remaining oil in a skillet over medium heat.
   
8. Saute the onion and garlic until tender.
   
9. Mix in the shredded chicken, chopped jalapeños and lime juice, and then cook until heated through.
   
10. Serve the chicken and potatoes on warmed tortillas.

Yield: 6 servings

Nutritional Info
I'm not sure this information is terribly accurate. Check out that sodium total! Did I miss the part about serving a cow's salt block on a tortilla?

Calories: 395
Fat: 12.9 g
Protein: 22.3 g
Carbs: 49.5 g
Fiber: 7.4 g
Na: 1,234 mg
Cholesterol: 45 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
Having lived in Texas now some 13 years, I must confess that I'm accustomed to seeing strips of meat that are maybe half an inch thick and one to two inches long used for fajitas. Shredded meat--or so I've observed--is used more commonly in enchiladas and maybe some burritos of lesser quality, but not for fajitas. Part of the joy of fajitas, it strikes me, is the meat that's still sizzling and smoking from its time on the grill when it's brought to you for assembly.

But, hey, not everyone lives in Texas nor has everyone lived in Texas at some point, so not everyone has the relatively same experience I have with fajitas. Or maybe I'm the one with the skewed sense of how meat's used in Tex-Mex dishes. Eh.

Would it surprise you then, Gentle Reader, that I didn't make fajitas from this recipe? That I didn't shred the chicken? That I really didn't do anything as indicated in the recipe?

I didn't think so. Here's what I did:

• Forget the potatoes. These aren't breakfast tacos!
  
• Forget seasoning the chicken with oil. After I cubed the two chicken breasts, I tossed them into a Ziplock, dumped in the tablespoon of cinnamon, sealed the bag, did my best impression of a Shake 'n Bake commercial and then tossed that puppy in the refrigerator for an hour-long chill.
  
• Forget baking anything. I cooked the chicken in the same skillet with the sauted onions and garlic.
  
• Forget cooking the onions and garlic at the same time. I tossed the onions in the skillet once the wee bit of canola oil was warm enough, sprinkled them with a little cumin and let them saute for a while before I added the garlic. Once it was fragrant, then I added the chicken. Once the chicken was cooked through, I add the peppers and lime juice, holding off on the juice until the last minute.
  
• Forget the jalapeños. While I do have a can of diced ones in my pantry, I already had an opened can of diced green chiles. Not wanting to potentially offend the boy's palate with a pepper with a little heat, I used the green chiles.
  
• Forget the tortillas. I served this concoction on a bed of jasmine rice.

A mouthwatering aroma filled the kitchen while I was preparing this dish, but the fragrance and flavor didn't really zing in the finished product. I could detect the cinnamon for sure, and there was a hint of lime, but neither one really popped. As for the peppers, I really sort of wasted them in this dish because they completely disappeared. For all the flavorful ingredients that go into its preparation, I found the dish sort of bland.

The husband, on the other hand, thought the meal was rather tasty. I think the boy liked it well enough. At least we didn't have to tussle over whether or not he was going to finish his serving, which is usually a sign that he finds a recipe enough to his liking.

I'm not sure how to "fix" this dish. More lime juice, perhaps adding it to the cinnamon in the bag for the marinade? I'd considered that but was afraid that the citrus would then overpower the cinnamon. More heat, such as from jalapeños? Maybe. Maybe not. I really don't have enough interest in this recipe to explore it further.

Lipstick on a Pig

No, Gentle Reader, this isn't a rant about a certain imbecilic former governor of Alaska. It's about leftovers. Lots of leftovers. No matter how you dress 'em up, they're still leftovers--just like putting lipstick on a pig doesn't disguise the fact that it's a pig.

When the husband brought home his poultry prize, I warned that he and the boy would be eating lots of turkey sandwiches after December 25. Lots of turkey sandwiches. Not surprisingly, that seemed to suit him and the boy just fine at the time.

To help the eating 'o the leftover turkey sandwiches, I even bought (for the first time in many, many months) two loaves of bread and some Lawry's season salt. I'm not sure, Gentle Reader, if you have the tradition of leftover turkey on sandwich bread slathered with Miracle Whip and sprinkled with Lawry's, but that's the tradition in my family, and it's one the husband was introduced to years ago and latched on to quite fervently. The turkey drought at Chez Boeckman-Walker had him quite anxious for some Lawry's-sprinkled turkey sandwiches.

Naturally, after the first one, the lipstick was off the pig. The boy barely made it through his first sandwich and refused to eat more.

Which left me still with some 16 pounds of leftover turkey meat. Joy.

Of the two big tubs of meat, one was filled with the two large breast portions, which I figured I could make up nicely with turkey highlighted. The other tub was filled with dark meat and other white meat morsels, and that stuff I knew I'd have to disguise in some manner. So to the Internet I went! But after finding only a few appealing possibilities on MyRecipes.com and AllRecipes.com (turkey and pasta seems to be a popular combination, but the thought of which causes my stomach to churn). I turned then to my shelf of cookbooks in the kitchen, pulling first, surprise surprise, The New Best Recipe from good 'ol Christopher Kimball.

I Heart Christopher Kimball

This giant tome has not been as useful as I thought it would be when I got it for a song nearly two years ago, and in the turkey department, it was a letdown. Want several variations on a turkey brine? The New Best Recipe can provide! Want an interesting use for leftover turkey? Eh, look elsewhere.

"Elsewhere" happened to be the chicken section of the book. Since the recipe I'd followed for the bird the first time was a modified chicken recipe, why not see what Kimball & Co. could offer for chicken?

Sure enough, I found a poorly formatted India-inspired variation on the main recipe for one-dish chicken and rice that I thought would suit the palates of us human residents of Chez Boeckman-Walker. In fact, I figured those breast portions would be highlighted nicely by this dish.

Chicken and Rice, Indian Style1 whole chicken (3-4 lb.)
Salt
Ground black pepper
2 T olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped fine
3 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through a garlic press
2 medium green bell peppers, cored, seeded and cut into medium dice
3" cinnamon stick
1 t ground turmeric
1 t ground coriander
1 t ground cumin
1 1/2 C long-grain white rice
14.5 oz. diced tomatoes
1/2 C tomato juice drained from diced tomatoes
1/2 C dry white wine
2 C water

1. Rinse and pat dry the chicken, then remove the giblets and wings and cut the chicken into 8 pieces.
   
2. Sprinkle the chicken pieces liberally on both sides with salt and pepper.
   
3. Heat the oil until it shimmers in a large, nonreactive Dutch oven over high heat.
   
4. Add the chicken to the pot, skin-side down, and cook without moving the pieces until well browned (about 6 min.), then turn over and let the other side cook without moving until it too is well browned (about 6 more min.).
   
5. Remove the browned chicken to a plate and keep warm.
   
6. Pour all but 2 tablespoons of the fat from the pan, then return it to the burner and reduce the heat to medium.
   
7. Add the cinnamon stick and saute, stirring with a wooden spoon, until it unfurls (about 15 sec.).
   
8. Add the onion and bell peppers and saute, stirring frequently, until softened (5-6 min.).
   
9. Add the garlic and then the turmeric, coriander and cumin and saute until fragrant (about 1 min.).
   
10. Stir in the rice and cook, stirring frequently, until the grains are coated and glistening (about 1 min.).
    
11. Stir in the tomatoes, reserved tomato juice, water and one teaspoon of salt, then scrape the frond off the bottom of the pot with the wooden spoon.
    
12. Return the chicken thighs and legs to the pot, bring it to a boil reduce the heat to low, cover and let simmer gently for 15 min.
    
13. Add the chicken breast pieces to the pot, then gently stir the ingredients until the rice is thoroughly mixed.
    
14. Return the lid to the pot and allow the contents to simmer until the rice and chicke are tender (10-15 min.).

Yield: 4 servings of unknown size

Nutritional Info
Here's one of my bigger disappointments about The New Best Recipe, other than the dearth of recipes I really want to make: It contains no nutritional information. If we want to get people back into their kitchens and cooking for themselves as a means of helping them eat better, then this information is really important. Oh well.

The Faudie's Futzings
Right off the bat, Gentle Reader, the big 'ol futzing that's most obvious is that I used roasted turkey breast in lieu of raw chicken meat. Did that majorly change up the recipe?

If you were expecting a "You betcha!" here, Gentle Reader, go hurt yourself. Painfully.

Actually, the use of the cooked meat didn't really change how I prepared the recipe. I did dramatically reduce the amount of olive oil: Maybe a teaspoon I used, I think. The first time I made this recipe (I had enough breast meat to make it twice), I used a nonstick Dutchie, so there was no frond to scrape. The second time, though, I got out Chive, and a bit of a frond formed.

I do believe the estimated times for some cooking milestones in this recipe are off. For example, I needed a few minutes for my cinnamon stick to unfurl both times, not a mere 15 seconds. Perhaps I didn't have my pot hot enough. Instead of a minute for the spices to become fragrant, I only needed about 15 seconds. Perhaps Christopher uses cheap spices.

One word of warning if you choose to make this recipe: Don't strictly follow the recipe for adding liquid to cook the rice in. The first time around, I didn't use the full two cups of water because my can of diced tomatoes was juicier than anticipated, even after I'd drained it and had the half-cup reserve liquid. That additional "hidden" liquid combined with the half-cup of wine and maybe a cup of water was enough to relatively cover the rice and cooked turkey hunks I threw in. The second time, though, my tomatoes weren't as juicy, and I needed probably a smidge more than two cups of water. Of course, the second time I think I added a whole lot more turkey meat, so if you use cooked meat that might be a little dry and might not release much moisture as it cooks, consider adding a smidge more water. In other words, Gentle Reader, eyeball it!

The result is a very hearty, mildly sweet and spicy dish that seems more like a distant American cousin of a traditional Mogul pulao or biryani than an Indian-inspired take on that mushy abomination formed when cream of mushroom soup meets 3-minute rice and chunk chicken. You could probably kick up the heat of the dish by swapping out one of the bells for a spicier pepper, or maybe you could throw in a bit of cayenne or hot paprika. I think this dish definitely has lots of futzing potential.

Turkey in the Straw! Ha ha ha! Turkey in Disguise! Hi hi hi!
The pulao-esque turkey and rice dish, twice made, by and large took care of one big tub of leftover turkey. What's a faudie to do with a second big tub of dark meat and assorted bits of white meat that will not be going towards sandwiches, even under threat of death?

Drown it in liquid, throw in a good amount of tomato goo and pray, Gentle Reader.

Southwestern Turkey Soup1 1/2 C shredded cooked turkey
4 C vegetable broth
28 oz. whole peeled tomatoes
4 oz. chopped green chiles
2 roma tomatoes, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 T lime juice
1/2 t cayenne pepper
1/2 t ground cumin
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
1 avocado, peeled, pitted and diced
1/2 t dried cilantro
1 C shredded Monterey Jack cheese

1. In a large pot over medium heat, combine the turkey, broth, canned tomatoes, green chiles, fresh tomatoes, onion, garlic and lime juice.
   
2. Add the cayenne, cumin, salt and pepper.
   
3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat and let simmer 15 to 20 min.
   
4. Stir in the avocado and cilantro, then let simmer until slightly thickened (15 to 20 more min.).
   
5. Spoon the soup into serving bowls, and top with shredded cheese.

Yield: 8 servings of an unknown size

Nutritional Info
As this recipe comes from a user of AllRecipes.com, I'm not terribly confident in this information. Plus it reflects the use of full-fat, full-sodium and other less health-conscious products, so it's not terribly accurate for how I prepared it.

Calories: 184
Fat: 9.8 g
Protein: 13.5 g
Carbs: 11.9 g
Fiber: 3.8 g
Na: 632 mg

The Faudie's Futzings
The directions for preparing the soup are, in a word, simplistic. Granted, there's nothing necessarily wrong with them, as I've learned from listening to The Splendid Table (the episode from November 7, to be precise). The recipe follows one of three basic foundations for creating a soup: Simmer everything in liquid without sautéing to yield clear, true flavors. The other two methods are (a) slowly stewing onions and key ingredients, such as herbs, in a little fat in a covered pot over low heat to yield mellow flavors and (b) quickly browning onions and some of the vegetables in good-tasting oil or butter over medium-high heat to yield bold and sturdy flavors.

Since I'm creating a spicy soup, I want flavors bold and brassy so they can disguise the less desirable turkey meat bits floating in the juice. If you want the same, Gentle Reader, here's what to do:

1. Heat a wee bit of olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.
   
2. Toss in the onions, sprinkle with half a teaspoon or so of cumin (the amount will depend on how much diced onion you have to brown and how much you like the flavor of cumin) and then sauté.
   
3. As the onions begin to soften, toss in the garlic and sauté until lightly fragrant (probably no more than 30 sec., but the quality of your garlic could impact this time).
   
4. Add the broth, tomatoes, turkey, chiles and spices, stirring well to blend, and then bring the ingredients to a gentle simmer.
   
5. Once the ingredients are heated through, add the lime juice and stir.

As you may have noticed, I make no mention of avocado or cheese or cilantro or salt and pepper. I didn't use them in either batch of soup I made, although I would have used some freshly chopped cilantro atop my own bowl if I'd remembered to mince it before the soup was ready. In addition to these omissions, here are some other futzings I made:

• I reduced the amount of cayenne to 1/4 teaspoon because I know that amount is enough heat for the boy...and probably for me as well. Half a teaspoon of the stuff seems excessive--heat for heat's sake. Like those asinine chili cook-offs at which macho types see who can prepare and ingest the most hellishly hot chili, not to determine which chili tastes the best but to see which person's taste buds and GI tract can withstand that much capsaicin and other flavor building blocks. Spare me, please.
  
• I added a bag (20 ounces, I think) of HEB frozen super sweet corn. I kid you not about the product name, Gentle Reader: This corn was teeth-achingly sweet, just a notch or two below candy corn in terms of sugary sweetness. That said, it served as a nice counterpoint to the heat.
  
• I used chicken broth instead of veggie broth, and I can't say how much of it I used either time because I was eyeballing the ratio of liquids and liquid-yielding solids to overall solids (more on this in a moment). I do recall using a bit of water when I prepared the first batch because I'd polished off what was left of the already-open chicken broth container and needed a wee bit more moisture, so I poured a bit of water into the empty broth container to collect any residue seasoning remaining and then dumped that into the pot.
  
• The first time I used three or four canned roma tomatoes and their juices left from the can I'd opened when I made the spicy rice on December 25. I had to break them up as I cooked them, which was a total pain in the rump to do with a 25-cent wooden spoon. The second time around, I used a can or two of no-salt-added diced tomatoes. They worked much better than the whole tomatoes.

I used well more than a cup and a half of shredded leftover turkey in both batches of soup, and the 20 ounces of corn certainly added a lot more to the pot, so just as I did with the Indian-inspired turkey and rice dish, I eyeballed the amount of liquid in the pot as the soup cooked. The second batch turned out to be a little less soupy for two reasons: (1) I probably used four cups of turkey meat just so it'd be gone but not wasted, and (2) I planned to freeze the majority of the soup, and I've found previously frozen soup reheats much better if I add newly opened broth to it as it warms up on the stove.

That said, if you aim to freeze the soup for a few months but will micronuke it before eating it, consider adding all the liquid you need initially. I don't reheat much in my microwave anyway, but I find trying to add ingredients to stuff being micronuked to be a pain in the arse. If you're a more experienced microwave chef, maybe you can accomplish this feat without muss and fuss, so perhaps withholding some liquid from the initial preparation will still work for you.

And while you're making this very easy, very satisfying turkey take on tortilla soup, please experiment with it, Gentle Reader! If I ever have the misfortune of having several pounds of leftover turkey meat on hand, I'll probably whip up another batch of this soup and add some black beans and diced bell peppers (red if I can afford them, green if not). You could also substitute jalapeño or another spicier pepper for the green chiles, maybe even sauté a cinnamon stick with the onions or add a dash of ground cinnamon with the other spices for a touch of sweet.

Damn. Now I kind of wish I still had some turkey so I could go play some more!

Eh, who am I kidding?

Let's Talk Turkey

Eighteen pounds and 11 ounces of it, in fact.

Yep, that's how much the freebie turkey the husband got from his company weighed. To go from a multi-year turkey boycott to having nearly 20 pounds of the stuff to prepare, I was a wee bit apprehensive about the big meal of December 25.

So as not to roll over and surrender to any sort of conventional tradition, I vowed I would not simply roast the carcass in the oven with a bit of salt and pepper, a light rubbing of butter and with an onion shoved down its throat or up its ass, which was how Mum typically prepared turkey for the turkey-eating holidays, along with some Stove Top and brown-and-serve rolls. Ugh, how...all-'merican. And you know well, Gentle Reader, all-'merican is not how we do things here at Chez Boeckman-Walker.

Instead, I turned to an old friend for some inspiration. Okay, never in a million years would this person be my friend, but she's helped me out in a pinch more than once. I'm referring, of course, to Madhur Jaffrey. In late November, I was lucky enough to find a 1973 hardcover, beat-to-hell copy of her first cookbook, An Invitation to Indian Cooking. It's her first book and represents how she learned to cook via correspondence with her mother while she was living in London and is also her way of sharing to a much larger audience her native cuisine, although with some alterations made for the Western lifestyle (waaay back in the early 70s). The introduction itself is fascinating reading because it unintentionally speaks a lot about how globalization has changed how we eat and shop for food.

Anywho, there's not a single turkey recipe in the "Chicken, other birds, and eggs" chapter (because there are so many turkeys in India), but there is one for a roasted chicken with a spicy rice stuffing that sounded delicious enough for me to ponder the possibility of substituting a big-ass turkey for the chicken.

Roast Chicken Stuffed With Spiced Rice1 4-pound roasting chicken, thawed
2 T olive oil or vegetable oil
1 T lemon juice
1/4 t salt
1/8 t freshly ground pepper
1/2 t ground cumin
1/4 t ground garam masala
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
1" cube of fresh ginger, coarsely chopped
1 C canned whole tomatoes, drained OR 3 fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1 t ground coriander
1 t ground cumin
4 T vegetable oil
1/4 t whole black mustard seeds
1/4 t whole cumin seeds
2 C (well-packed) cooked rice
1/2 t salt (or as needed)

1. Combine the olive oil, lemon juice, salt, ground pepper, half teaspoon of ground cumin and garam masala in a small bowl.
   
2. Wipe the chicken well with a cloth or paper towel so it is as dry as possible.
   
3. Brush three-fourths of the marinade all over the chicken, inside and out, and then let it sit, unrefrigerated, for about 2 hours. Reserve the remaining marinade.
   
4. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
   
5. Place the onions, garlic, ginger, tomatoes, coriander and full teaspoon of cumin into a blender and blend on high speed until you have a smooth paste.
   
6. Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat and, when very hot, drop in the mustard and cumin seeds.
   
7. When the mustard seeds begin to pop (15 to 30 seconds), add the paste from the blender, keeping your face averted to avoid hot, splattering tomato-based paste.
   
8. Fry the paste on medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until browned and the oil has separated from the paste (about 10 min.), stirring more frequently as the moisture evaporates.
   
9. Add the cooked rice, as well as the salt if you need it, to the skillet, reduce the heat to low and mix the paste with the rice.
   
10. Loosely stuff the chicken with the rice, truss it, place it in an ovenproof baking dish, breast up, and then put it in the oven.
    
11. Let the chicken brown for about 20 min., basting it with the remaining marinade every 5 min.
    
12. Reduce the oven to 350 degrees, then allow the chicken to cook another hour or until you can easily move a leg when pushing it up and down in its socket, all the while basting every 10 min. with the juices that come out of the chicken.
    
13. After roasting, remove the bird to a warm platter and let sit 15 min. so the juices do not flow out when carved.

Yield: 4 servings

Nutritional Info
As with her other book, Ms. Jaffrey provides no nutritional information. Do you really think such things were obsessed over as they are now in 1973? Maybe. Maybe not.

The Faudie's Futzings
I'm sure you can gather, Gentle Reader, from the directions that this roasted bird is quite involved--and that's just with a 4-pound chicken. As much as I was looking forward to the flavor of my finished bird, I wasn't going to go to all the effort. Thanks the FSM for Reynolds self-basting turkey bags! Even ones that are more than 10 years old work.

Yes, that's right, Gentle Reader. I still had an almost-full box of Reynolds oven bags from 1997 in my pantry. We weren't even living in Chez Boeckman-Walker in 1997. That box moved twice--from our first apartment to our second and then to Chez Boeckman-Walker. Yes, I can't throw anything away.

After cleaning (and plucking from pin feathers from) my big-ass bird, I dumped it into an oven bag and did my best to glaze its cold, dead skin and hollow visceral cavity with the marinade. Let me tell you, it was quite a workout. Mind you, I regularly do bicep curls with a 50-pound bar, but a dead turkey is incredibly difficult to handle with care. That's some awkward weight to manage with one hand, let me assure you, Gentle Reader. But I coat it coated, used a twistie to close up the bag and stuck it in the refrigerator to marinate while the boys and I cleaned up from the big gift-unwrapping extravaganza and made the requisite phone calls to family, none of whom had opened their gifts yet, but it was only 9:30 or so in the morning. Since the bird would need four and a half to five hours of roasting time and supper was to be on the table no later than 6 o'clock, I wasn't exactly lamenting our early start.

Here are a few other ways I "lazified" the recipes:

I used jarred minced garlic instead of chopping up my own.

I used one canned Roma tomato from Muir Glenn--those tomatoes were big and one looked to be about the equivalent of a measuring cup.

For roasting my seeds, I used maybe a teaspoon of canola oil. I would have used less, but I knew I'd be adding more to it than just seeds.

Lest you think I'm some uneducated, illiterate fool, please know, Gentle Reader, that I did not stuff the bird with the rice. There were enough warning labels on the sucker cautioning consumers about the health hazards of putting consumables in the raw carcass that even if I didn't already know said hazards, I would have learned them over and over again by the time I'd removed the bird from its packaging. Furthermore, can you imagine how dry and disgusting that rice might have been after four and a half to five hours in a hot oven?

Anywho, since the bird didn't get stuffed with rice before roasting, that meant three things: (1) I got to shove half of a big yellow onion down its neck, (2) I could be a bit more leisurely with putting together the masala for the rice and (3) I had time to play with the turkey's carefully bagged innards and neck. "Oh goody! Guts!" I can hear you crying out for joy now, Gentle Reader. You're not alone.

While I've read a few articles on how to prepare broth from leftover bird bits, I had no intention of doing so. But why let edibles go to waste when I've got four hungry cats outside? So I simmered whatever organs were in the bag (do turkeys have multiple livers, because I swear ours came with three of 'em) along with the neck in some water, and the kids outside got a tasty treat--or so I presume. Hell, I wouldn't touch that stuff. But more on the kids later.

The turkey spent just a smidge over four and a half hours in the oven. Its little timer had popped and nothing seemed amiss with the bird when I took it out of the oven, except that somehow the Reynolds-provided zip-tie had come off the bag and melted in the bottom of the oven I'd just recently cleaned. Le sigh.... Instead of removing the bird to a platter--I don't have one large enough and had to use an oversized round, oven-safe casserole pan I got for Mother's Day in 2008 to roast the thing in because I didn't have a baking pan large enough--I just cut away enough of the bag to get at the bird and start tearing away hunks of breast meat with a fork.

That breast meat was moist, but I didn't get much of the flavor of the marinade. That probably was lost since turkey seems to have a more pronounced flavor than chicken--or at least it seems that way to my taste buds. Turkey, to me, is sort of like salmon: You can do a few things to dress it up, but you really can't escape the basic flavor of the meat. And it's probably a good thing since I still had probably 18 pounds of bird to deal with after supper, and being stuck with the same flavor would have severely limited my ability to shovel that leftover meat down the boys' throats.

The rice, unlike the turkey, was wonderfully flavorful. I'll admit I was a bit skeptical about the mouth feel of the final product; after all, you'd kind of expect, well, mush after blending a tomato-based paste with cooked rice, right? Well, perhaps you'd get mush if you used a blander rice (I saved up Basmati from prior meals) or badly overcooked it, reducing the grains to mush before you even added the paste. I also think reducing the amount of canola oil helped too.

After supper came the task of stripping the bird of as much meat as I could and then figuring out what to do with the rest. Simply tossing the bones and the juices in the trash seemed wasteful--and would stink up the garage since trash day was many days off. So after spending a good 90 minutes tearing away chunks of meat, enough to fill to large Snap Lock bowls, I was dog tired and just put the casserole pan--oven bag, juices, onion, bones, particulates and all--out on the deck storage chest on the patio, right beside the bowl with the untouched turkey organs and neck I'd set out earlier in the day that no cat had touched. For the next two days, the outdoor kids had quite a feast.

Stay tuned, Gentle Reader, to read all about my turkey leftover culinary misadventures. Getting rid of more than a dozen pounds of turkey meat ain't easy!