Chicken Fricasee

  There have been a couple of nudges in the past year that caused me to think about chicken fricasee. Most recently, I've mentioned the reference to it in the Nero Wolfe book, Some Buried Caesar. That's the book where I got the bean recipe. In that book, the Methodist ladies made fricasee that rose to Wolfe perfectionist standards for food.

But it had been on my mind before that. I ordered it in a restaurant once while on the hike. I'd never before seen it offered in a restaurant. It turned out to be not very good. I mean, it was chicken on something- I forget if they served it on biscuits or noodles or what. But my memory of fricasee was chicken so tender it falls off the bone in a sauce with lots of onions. That's what my recipe produced, and that is what I was expecting, so in that sense I was disappointed.

I looked at pictures on the web and learned that my idea of the dish was pretty much like the pictures and not what I'd had at the restaurant.

I rooted around in the kitchen and found the old recipe. Chicken was on sale. There are no fancy ingredients. The only reason I haven't made this in forever (like probably since the 1980s) is that it dirties a lot of dishes.

And how was it? Om and I agree, this is still an amazingly yummy dish. I served mine on rice, but biscuits or dumplings would be even better.

If I was going to make that much mess, I was going to make enough to last a few days. Mission accomplished. That's the BIG serving dish.

And there was still carrot cake for dessert.

In other news: I did more paperwork and read another book. This one was also not really pertinent to the subject I was looking for, but it was a good mystery.

See Carrot Cake