the easiest chicken pot pie

my friend jason gave me his mother-in-law's quickie chicken pot pie recipe. i couldn't believe how easy it was. the best part was that i got to use the remaining vegetables from my CSA and then some. i believe you can put in just about any vegetable that can be "casseroled" into this recipe. my additions (or edits) to the recipe are in parentheses, otherwise the recipe is as it was given to me by jason. i swear, this was easy breezy.

1 fryer, cooked, boned, and cut into small pieces OR 3-4 chicken breasts. (i used 2 large pieces of TJs frozen chicken thighs, defrosted and then cooked in a little bit of chicken broth)

Put meat in bottom of shallow casserole dish.

You may want to add vegetables to the chicken, such as peas, carrots, celery or small potatoes.
(i added a quickly sauteed carrots, celery, onion, green beans, and garlic. this was sauteed with a little oil in the same le creuset that i cooked the chicken. i added already cooked and chopped potatoes, which were not sauteed)

1 stick butter, melted and poured over chicken
(i melted 4 Tbs of butter)

3-4 hard boiled eggs, sliced and placed over chicken and butter and vegetables, if you added them.
(i added slices from two eggs)

Mix: 1 cup plain flour, 3 tsp baking powder, 1 cup milk. Pour over the casserole.
(i halved this part)

Mix: 1- 10 3/4 oz. can of condensed cream of celery soup, 1 1/2 cups chicken broth. Bring to boil and pour over all.
(i halved this part too. part of the chicken broth was from the broth that i cooked the chicken in earlier, just strained to separate the liquid)

Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or till crust comes to the top and turns brown.
(i baked in my toaster convection oven for an hour at 350F)

the key to this crustless pot pie is that the flour batter bakes up to the top and browns. oh and i seasoned liberally with salt and pepper. when serving, i topped it with tessa's delicious sauteed cabbage with parmesan sprinkles. this was part of our madmen season 4 episode 4 dinner.

CSA 2010

FINALLY, a food post, by yours truly. i am have been so busy and stressed (bathroom renovation) and lazy to write anything of worth. (i'm not claiming this will be much, but...) so i'm finally putting up my first CSA 2010 post.

the woodside CSA started wednesday, june 9 this year. we have fewer members because the farmspot csa in JH expanded and some of last year's members moved on. i recruited the riffaterres to join and i (or tessa) bring them their vegetables the following day. tessa and i have continued to have our CSA dinners on wednesday, using as many of the csa vegetables as we can.

this year, we've been getting some of the same items as last year, but also some new ones. the tomato blight is now over and we've been graced with the abundance of plum tomatoes from sergio. we've also been introduced two new greens: purslane and papalo. purslane is a weed that is mild in flavor and works well with chicken and pork. papalo is considered the mexican cilantro and has a bite in its flavor. we used it in both salsa and pesto. kohlrabi has made another appearance this year. this softly-sweet root can be grated and added to slaw or relish or salsa. it can also be roasted for a deeper flavor.

the vegetables we have gotten so far includes: tomatoes, celery, potatoes, onions, cucumbers, green peppers, poblanos, escarole, cabbage, beets, kohlrabi, swiss chard, kale, collard greens, papalo, purslane, squash blossoms, basil, cilantro, fennel, corn, garlic, jalapenos.

some dishes on the CSA dinner menu include: chicken tacos with papalo salsa, lamb burgers with beets and cabbage slaw, escarole with cannellini beans and garlic, panzanella, tilapia with tomato/basil reduction and roasted stuffed pepper.

R.I.P Crack Whorehouse Bathroom

Work has begun to rip out the infamous Jackson Heights Crack Whorehouse Bathroom and replace it with a beautiful new non-crack non-whorehouse replacement. More of a sort of high class callgirl salle de bain? Anyway. Here's a few "before" pics. "After" pics coming soon.

The Other Ethnic Yogurt

i know.. it has been two months since the last posting. i apologize for the lapse. there are no excuses other than some busy-ness, some lazy-ness, so i hope you are amused by this post.

on may 30, 2010, ben and i made a trip to fairway uptown and bought a shit-load of groceries, including some millionaire's yogurt, siggi's. it's icelandic yogurt that costs about $2.50 for a small container of one serving.



on june 3, 2010, i take this pot of yogurt, the blueberry flavor, to work as a snack. at about 4pm, i get the yogurt out of the refrigerator and when i opened the package, this is what i found (see image on left) -- a slightly foul-smelling yogurt with a cream-colored fuzzy mold floating on top. ick.
so after spending two hundred, fifty cents of my own well-earned money on this ridiculously over-priced product, i was left with no snack and one pot of molded moldy milk.

i immediately shared this experience with my colleagues and decided to act. i went to the siggi's yogurt web site and found a customer service email address and sent the following email with the photo attached:

Hi,

I just wanted to let you know that I purchased a yogurt pot from Fairway for about $2.50 (which I find extraordinarily expensive for yogurt) and when I went to eat it two days after purchase, I found mold on top as soon as I opened the seal. The best by date was 6/19/2010 and there was a cream-colored, fuzzy mold which completely put off my appetite. I've attached a photo I took with my phone.

Christina Kim

a week goes by with no response. 10 days later, i receive this email from siggi hilmarsson:

Dear Christina,

First of all I apologize for the dreadfully slow reply. Second I apologize for this lapse in quality. This should clearly not happen.

Kindly send me an address at your earliest conveniences and I will send you back a full refund as well as some gift certificates to make up for this disappointing experience.

I forwarded your e-mail to our quality manager when I got it and they have been tracing it to see what might have happened. We do try our best to keep an outstanding quality record but sadly occasionally a slip happens.

Don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any questions.

my very best, siggi

of course i responded,

Dear Siggi,

Thank you for your kind response. Seeing that I have actually not tried the yogurt, I will try it with your gift certificate. I am a fan of greek yogurt and was very curious to try Icelandic yogurt.

Christina

so lesson learned. do make your complaints known and attach photos whenever possible.

My Garlic Journey

World politics and cuisine are rarely bedfellows, but a forgotten memory of pleasant discovery was re-ignited for me this week by the shocking story of the brutal murder of several boys on a garlic picking expedition on the border between Ingushetia and Chechnya in Russia. The Guardian covers this astonishing and heartbreaking tale here.

I have never picked Garlic but I have seen (and smelled) feral or seed garlic growing in the wild. The first time I was presented with a fresh bulb of my own was in 1992 (when I was the same age as several of the murdered Russian boys). Having never seen garlic in any other form than dessicated, dried bulbs I was fascinated by the texture of the stalk and the pungent, bitter taste of the fruit. This is turn led me to consider my relationship with garlic and the way I have adapted its use in my cooking.

Rather than doing more to the bulb, I have found myself doing less.
1. Crushing


For a good five years I must confess this was the only way I contemplated using garlic in any dish at all - armed with my trust crusher I would pulverize probably a single clove into even the largest of dishes. If I felt daring a second might be added for good luck - but never more than two.

A key moment in my love affair with garlic was my 1996 visit to New York when garlic was present in just about everything I ate - powdered garlic (of which I was previously unaware) was scattered liberally on the delicious Ray's Pizza, the steak from Osso Bucco was suffused in the pungent aromas of onions and garlic and the Italian American family I stayed with used it liberally in their cooking.

In late 1997 I began to make my own pizza from scratch - and wanting an interesting visual accompaniment to the rest of the vegetables I began to slice garlic thinly and add it to dishes, where previously I had only crushed. Now, sliced garlic doesnt meld quite so easily into the dish as crushed garlic and so announces itself as much more strident flavour. This in turn led me to understand the benefits (and dangers) of caramelised garlic and the bitter flavours that can ruin a dish if the cook is not careful to manage the heat applied.





The logical conclusion of this journey is of course doing almost nothing to the clove at all. Principal in all of this has been Hyoji with her strong influences in Korean cooking (and insatiable love for garlic) "Babe" she would opine "Needs more garlic". "One clove per person per dish" I would retort. She would roll her eyes, take the knife from me, and attack the bulb with gusto - throwing in twice or three times the amount I had accounted for - always with great success.

Doing very little with your garlic is a very good solution for stews, roasts, stuffing fish, fowl or inserting in between the sinews and tendons of lamb and beef. The key is providing for sufficient time for the harshness of the garlic to dissipate and meld into the overall flavour profile.

Oh Korea!

When spring refuses to spring
When cold fingers need warming
When the stomach desires warmth
I give you... Kimchee Boekumpap

Steak

Here are two photographs of delicious, cast-iron griddled steak and onions. That is all. You may drool at will.