- Chicken Soup

Meliss and Jake flew in from St. Louis this past weekend; their first time seeing our new digs in Wimberley. Undeterred by the rainy grey weather, we took everyone on a sightseeing drive through the Texas Hill Country. Perhaps we should have realized that the backseat request for more air conditioning was a cry for help, but no … we drove on, and on, and on through Mountain Crest, Big Sky Ranch, Skyline Ridge, and Flite Acres.

It was only when we returned home that the truth came out: we had turned everyone a not-so-lovely shade of green. Don’s “Who wants a margarita?” was met with groans and Meliss quipped that some chicken soup would be more appropriate.

Not a problem! I pulled a container of Rotisserie Chicken Stock out of the freezer, whisked up a roux, and asked if anyone was interested in having a cup of chicken soup. Everyone was interested indeed. And all recovered sufficiently to head out to Trattoria Lisina a few hours later, where we feasted on fedelini al pachino (no relation to the actor), cannelloni, spaghetti carbonara, seafood linguine, and spicy sausage pizza. The evening ended better than fine as we shared chocolate mousse cake with Nutella and hazelnuts.   

So all's well that ends well.  I'll just be sure to have plenty of stock on hand for their next visit, when we plan to drive up Devil's Backbone and then head down to Gruene on Purgatory Road.

Chicken Soup

3-4 cups Rotisserie Chicken Stock (see recipe index to the right)
2-3 Tbs. butter
2-3 Tbs. flour

Melt butter over medium heat, whisk in flour and cook gently for a few minutes. Whisk in warm stock. Heat until thickened to a creamy consistency. Season to taste.

- The Dancing Bear: A Love Song in Two Parts

When I was growing up, family drives were pretty much limited to the 80 mile stretch from East Williston to Shelter Island, with the exception of one vacation to Mystic and Sturbridge which covered 350 miles. So it was significant that my folks drove 400 miles to deposit me at the College of William and Mary in 1974, and then returned six weeks later with my brother Art in tow for Parents’ Day.

October 5, 1974 was a classic Williamsburg fall day. The sun was strong, as it had been the year before when I first visited the campus with my dad, but even so the first leaves were starting to drift onto the brick walks around the Sunken Gardens. We went to watch the Indians beat the Citadel in football (no, I don’t actually remember that … I just looked it up in the Flat Hat). Then we headed out to dinner at the King’s Arms, notable only for my first, and last, bowl of peanut soup.

Heading back to my room in DuPont, I passed by the hall telephone (yes, back in the day there was only one phone for a hall of 30 women). Robin was on the phone and called out as I walked by, “What are you doing tonight? Theta Delt is having a band and Andy’s friend needs a date.”

Being a young woman who truly valued the essential goodness in people, I asked, “What does he look like?”  And finally agreed to go only after determining that “Don” was “tall and not bad looking.” An hour later, Andy, Don, and a bottle of Gallo Hearty Burgundy showed up and we were off to Theta Delta Chi to dance the night away. Don, wearing a stylish wide-wale couduroy jacket, had a signature dance move he called the “Dancing Bear." That was all it took; we continued to see each other for weeks, then months, then years ... thirty-five years as of today.

* * * *

When Don suggested we go back to Gruene to listen to music this past weekend, I said yes, since I had an ulterior motive: I wanted to get a picture of the Dancing Bear sign I had spotted a couple of weeks before. We went to the Gristmill for lunch, entering just as Brown Eyed Girl began to play. I asked if Don could remember when Brown Eyed Girl was first recorded, and he replied that it must have been in the early 70s since it was a standard at fraternity parties.  Of course.

Turning to the menus, I settled on tortilla soup (much better than peanut soup at the Kings Arms) and Don opted for grilled trout, washed down with Shiner Bock and Dos Equis respectively. The rains came as we ate, and continued as we walked over to Gruene Hall to hear the McKay Brothers. The rain picked up, drumming a tattoo on the roof of Gruene Hall as it ran down the corrugated tin and and splashed to the ground in beaded-curtain streams. The McKays played on while I danced in my seat to the Beatitudes of Heat, Disappearing Texas and The Pawnee Waltz.

Every so often the weather would let up and we’d debate whether or not to leave. Then the thunder would rumble and we’d reconsider. When the show ended, we were finally forced to brave the rain and found ourselves shin-deep in running water as we crossed the street to the car. After twenty months of drought, it wouldn’t do for the Texas Hill Country to ease into the rainy season I guess.

As we pulled onto Hunter Road I reminded Don that I needed a picture of the Dancing Bears. “Not really,” he said. Yes, really. I rolled down the window as he angled for a shot, then we continued on to I-35, figuring that the low-water crossings on Purgatory Road would surely be flooded, blocking the shorter way home. As we turned onto the interstate, the sun broke through behind us, painting a rainbow onto the clouds and then, with the water flying off the cars ahead of us, the end of the rainbow bent down right in front of us, until we were the end of the rainbow.

Magic happens … (head over the 3/17/2018 post to see how it still does)

Tortilla Soup (revised 1/2015)

Soup:

2-4 cups rotisserie chicken stock

1 sweet yellow onion, diced
2-3 ears of fresh corn sliced off the cob (or a cup of frozen white corn)

1 poblano pepper, seeded and diced
1 cup or more of fresh tomatoes, diced

2 cups leftover chicken meat, cut into bite-sized pieces

Salt, black pepper, and Chipotle chile powder to taste

Toppings:

Corn tortilla chips (I’m partial to On the Border)

Grated cheese (Monterey Jack and a bit of Cotilla)

Fresh cilantro leaves

Avocado slices

Lime wedges

Heat the chicken stock over medium heat, add the diced onion and corn, simmer for 10 minutes or so while you chop the peppers and dice the chicken. Add the peppers, chicken and roux (optional, add if you want the soup to be more stew-like), then cook gently while you chop and then add the tomatoes. Adjust seasoning to taste and serve once everything is well heated through, being careful not to overcook.

Prep bowls with cheese and crushed corn chips, ladle on the soup, then top with cilantro leaves and avocado slices. Serve with wedges of lime and extra toppings, which can be added to taste.  Ice cold beer is also highly recommended ... Negra Modelo or Shiner Bock come to mind.

- On Pictures

For those of you who are less familiar with blogs, please note that you can enlarge pictures to see more detail by clicking on them (one click will do, but two won't hurt).

Also, belated credit to Don, who has been taking a lot of the photos for I'm Going to Texas.  You can see more of his work at http://www.wimberleyphoto.blogspot.com/. 

- The Mother of Invention: Making paper

I know, I know … it’s been ten days, but I’ve been busy working on a recipe. And just to put the delay into perspective, when Cory and Paul recently wagered a $100 bottle of wine, they gave Meghan, Danielle and Kristen six weeks to come up with four bagel recipes. That’s a week-and-a-half per recipe by my reckoning. So ten days for one recipe sounds about right.

Although the truth is the recipe that I’ve been working on has actually been in the making a lot longer than that. Back when I graduated from Catholic University with my Masters in Library Science I put a papermaking book on my Christmas wish list. I’m sure I thought I’d have lots of free time having completed four years of graduate study. Always faithful wish-granters, my folks inscribed “Christmas 1992 … Looks like fun!” into a copy of Making your own Paper. But 1992 was also the year I got promoted, and found I had to do the work of two people when my former position went unfilled. Work took more and more creative effort as planning to build a new library at Colonial Williamsburg was added to my job description. The book was relegated to a shelf, left to gather dust with my needlework books.

Time remained elusive, even after I left Colonial Williamsburg. Becoming a school librarian in 1997 promised to open up some free time in the summer, but between moving to Windsor Forest, chauffeuring teenage daughters, and hosting Friday night suppers, creative time got short shrift. Likewise, the summer of 2003 looked like it had potential, with both girls finally graduated from high school and relatively independent, but the Eastern Virginia Writing Project got the nod and the time. And the independence proved illusory, as Meghan ended up spending the summer recovering from two broken wrists.

Fast forward to 2009 and early retirement from teaching in Virginia … 17 years after first getting the notion, I finally found the time to try out papermaking. Not content to follow one recipe (why start now?), I checked out every book I could find in the Wimberley Village Library and the San Marcos Public Library, then gave myself the challenge of making paper using only those materials I had on hand … no purchases allowed.

Rummaging through boxes in the garage, I eventually found the food processor that my cousin Glad had given me at Robin Acre last year. A repurposed hamper stuffed with needlework supplies for the move to Texas yielded screens from a children’s papermaking set (probably of 1992 vintage), thick cotton yarns, and old threadbare table linens. The office produced an array of paper, including linen envelopes purchased for mailing resumes some time back. Containers and placemats from the pantry filled out the list, and I was ready to go.

My first attempt at making paper resulted in a fuzzy white cloud of linen, more notable for its holes than any resemblance to paper. I did a little better with combining blue cotton yarn and torn up envelopes, but the resulting paper was paler and thinner than I had hoped. I went back to the drawing board.

The second attempt was a distinct improvement. Using a combination of torn fabric, cotton yarn and water-soaked cover-stock, I managed to produce sheets of paper embossed with a quilted pattern from the placemats I used as “felts.” And a planned progression of colors, from white to yellow, then beige, red, blue, and finally green, was more successful than I had dared hope. But this time the paper was too thick. So, like Goldilocks, I gave it one more try.

Dedicating a full day to making red paper, I hunted through the house for supplies. An old red flannel shirt was reduced to shredded rags, red cotton yarn was cut into quarter inch lengths, and red cover stock was sliced and diced on the paper cutter. After soaking in distilled water, they were pureed in the food processor, one pinch at a time, then swirled into a tub of water.

Time and time again, I slid the five-by-five screens beneath the surface of the fiber-clotted water, then lifted them straight up, trapping a mass of red fibers. Having no deckle, I improvised by pouring fiber-rich water over the thin spots ...

... then turned each new sheet of paper onto placemats, carefully peeling back the screens and leaving the paper in the sun to dry. Six hours later, I had two dozen sheets of paper, and this time they were just right.

I’ve got a plan now: a white paper day, followed by blue, purple, yellow, and green days. And then what? A great reveal … on Christmas Day.

- Some Gruene/Green Things

We went to the Gruene (pronounced “green”) Market Days for the first time last Sunday, drawn by the promise one hundred vendors selling their creative wares. Then wandered through the downtown area, the shops welcome oases in the hot Texas sun.

As we got closer to the water tower, Don spotted Gruene Hall.  It was packed with people and obviously not air conditioned, which made it somewhat less than attractive with the late-afternoon temperature stuck in the 90s. Fortunately, Don prevailed and we entered to find a bluegrass band playing to beat all, led by a young fiddler named Ruby Jane.

After settling onto a bench in the back, we took in the screened open-air hall, which was lined with tables liberally carved with names and dates like old-time school desks. The band played under a bank of neon beer signs, seemingly unaffected by the heat, which was only partly relieved by the overhead fans hanging from unadorned rafters. Folks were mostly drinking beer, but as we tapped our toes some braved the dance floor, unable to resist the music’s call.

Over to one side, kids barely taller than the sides of the pool tables played an impromptu game, trying to roll cue balls into corner pockets past the outstretched hands of their watchful opponents. Parents looked on from nearby benches, happy to have found a momentary diversion. In the shade of the hall, the heat finally lifted … or maybe it was the music that carried it away.

All too soon The Ruby Jane Show wrapped up with a final number, the applause faded, and the crowd trailed slowly out into the street. Later we learned that Gruene Hall is the oldest dance hall in Texas. And that Ruby Jane is only fifteen years old. Fitting factual bookends to nestle around a great Texas memory.

* * * *

As I write this three days later, the heat has broken and the temperature is an unseasonably low 60-something degrees. The promise of fall has arrived, if only briefly, and I’m thinking onion soup would be just about right for lunch. But not the standard-issue, chewy-cheese, watery-thin-beef-bullion-based onion soup of restaurant visits past. Rather, a velvety rich concoction, with gruyere softly strung on tender shreds of sweet onion in a golden rich broth. I told you the chicken stock would come in handy some day.


Onion Soup (for two)

3 cups rotisserie chicken stock (give or take)
1 or 2 Vidalia onions, coarse grated (or whatever sweet yellow onion you might have)
2 Tbs butter (1 Tbs for sauteeing, 1 Tbs for roux)
1 Tbs flour
¼ cup Marsala (You have no Marsala? Well then, a light red wine if you must ... or Vin Santo)
½ to 1 cup coarse grated gruyere cheese (I tend to go heavy on the cheese)
Toasted bread or croutons

Sauté the onions in butter until tender in a medium-sized saucepan.

In a separate saucepan, melt the butter and make a light roux with the flour.

Whisk 1 cup of chicken stock into the roux and cook until thickened.
Pour the remaining chicken stock into the onions; add the roux and a healthy splash of Marsala.

Season with salt to taste and bring to a rolling boil.

Put toasted bread or croutons in the bottom of two soup bowls and top with grated Gruyere.

Pour boiling soup over bread and cheese ... stir gently to melt the cheese and serve immediately.

Best with cold ale and a nap afterward.

- Salad Days

The phrase “salad days” has been rattling around in my head all week and during lunch today I wondered out loud if I was right in recalling that it meant good times. Afterwards, I went to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary website at www.m-w.com to check my assumption, finding:

     Main Entry: salad days
     Function: noun plural
     Date: 1606
     : time of youthful inexperience or indiscretion
     “my salad days when I was green in judgment” — Shakespeare
     also : an early flourishing period : heyday

So, not exactly “good times,” although I certainly have fond memories from way back when. I guess what I need is an ancillary definition to cover our recent lunch-time fare, which is replete with salads, no two exactly alike and all good.

We've avoided the “lettuce, tomato and cucumber” rut by taking a cue from the old Chinese menus of the past, which prompted choosing “one from column a, one from column b” etc.  In composing your own salads, try to use as many categories as possible without using too many ingredients from any one category. And if you read this and wonder, “How could she have forgotten (fill in the blank)?” please send a comment ... I'll happily add to the lists.

Greens
Lettuces - Romaine, spinach, arugula, leaf lettuce (either “baby” or mature, blends or single variety)
Cabbage and other cruciferous vegetables
Herbs - chives, basil, cilantro
Vegetables – Avocado, cucumber, celery, carrots, beets (I know, they're not all green)

Fruits
Tomatoes – grape, Roma, cherry, beefsteak

Tag sale find from Shelter Island, gifted by my Mom

Strawberries, grapes (red seedless)

Oranges, apples, pears, peaches

Nuts and seeds
Tree nuts - walnuts, pecans, pine nuts, almonds
Legumes - peanuts, peas, beans
Seeds – pumpkin, sunflower, sesame

Cheeses
Soft cheese – fresh mozzarella, feta, blue
Grated cheese – parmesan, asiago, cotija

Proteins (leftovers are often an inspiration here)
Meat – chicken, pork, beef
Seafood – shrimp, crab, lobster
Eggs – hardboiled, fried

Starches
Potatoes – boiled, fried
Rice – wild, white, blend
Pasta – orzo, shells, linguine
Added crunch – croutons, wontons, corn chips

Garnishes (for want of a better term)
Onions – scallion, red onion, shallot, chives
Olives – Kalamata, green (please, not canned black olives)
Peppers – bell, hot, pickled
Cured meat – bacon, prosciutto, sausage, ham

Dressings
Oils – safflower, olive, peanut, sesame
Citrus juices (fresh squeezed) – lemon, lime, orange
Vinegars – cider, red wine, rice wine, balsamic
Seasonings – salt, pepper, mustard, soy sauce, garlic, anchovy paste

Nota Bene: please avoid bottled dressings … it's so easy to whisk up your own! As a rule of thumb, for two people combine approximately 2-3 Tbs. of citrus juice and/or vinegar with 2-3 Tbs. oil and season to taste. After a while, you’ll find that you can just eye-ball the quantities. Additions such as mustard, garlic and anchovy paste will tend to help the emulsification process along, but just whisking and immediately dressing the salad should suffice.

Here are some tried and true salad combinations, but don’t feel bound by them. Experiment and make note of those that please you.

Greek
Baby spinach and romaine, cucumber, tomato, feta, Kalamata olives, red onions, with a wine vinegar and olive oil dressing.

Italian
Romaine, tomato, pine nuts, prosciutto, olives, shredded asiago, dressed with balsamic and olive oil

Caesar-style
Romaine hearts, croutons, parmesan, seafood (crab, shrimp), dressed with wine vinegar, olive oil, lemon juice, anchovy paste and garlic … please, no tomatoes!

Asian Inspired
Baby greens, bok choy or cabbage, carrot shreds, orange, almonds, shredded pork, scallion, sesame seeds, fried wontons, dressed with peanut and sesame oils, rice wine vinegar, soy and brown sugar

Williamsburg Trellis Style
Baby greens, toasted pecans, scallions, strawberries, boiled potatoes, grilled chicken, bacon, dressed with safflower oil, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, and Dijon mustard

BLT
Baby greens, tomato, bacon, walnuts, fresh mozzarella, croutons, dressed with safflower oil, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, and Dijon mustard

Arugula
Arugula, tomato, blue cheese, walnuts, avocado, dressed with lemon juice and olive oil

Mexican
Grilled skirt steak or chicken, cotija cheese, blue corn chips or fresh flour tortillas, salsa of red onion, avocado, tomato, jalapeno, and cilantro dressed with lime juice and salt

Breakfast Salad

Baby greens, bacon or ham, fried potatoes, fried eggs, dressed with a touch of balsamic vinegar

Refrigerator Salad
Baby greens, leftover meat, leftover veggies, leftover pasta or rice, nuts and/or cheese, vinaigrette (like this one with baby spinach, leftover chicken, oven-roasted beets, fresh mozzarella and balsamic vinaigrette ... which would have been even better with some pine nuts)

- Home Sweet Home: Wimberley

We can’t mow our backyard. There is so much loose limestone that the only way to trim the grass is with a weed whacker. Indeed, for the first month and a half, we didn’t even need to do that, given that we arrived at the tail end of a twenty-month drought. But now that it has rained –three days worth of road-closing, flash-flood-warning heavy rain– the temperatures have dropped into the eighties and the grass is growing.

Which is to say, we’ve been outside all week. The house we are renting has sod out front, but no other landscaping to speak of. There is a pile of limestone leftover from the house construction and a lot of bare dirt. So we had a load of mulch delivered and are in the process of moving chunks of limestone from the pile in the backyard to the edge of the cement walkway, which is being trenched and leveled.

We’re doing all of this very carefully, having heard that Texas critters like to hang out in rock piles. So far so good. And we’ve got to make hay while the sun shines, because El Nino is coming. Yes, more rain … in abundance. At least that’s what I’m expecting, having experienced the El Nino of 1998 that dropped so much rain on Virginia that it delayed our move into Hempstead Road. It's true that weather predictions are notoriously unreliable, but we’re taking everyone at their word and getting the soil protected while we can.

Of course, all this yard work requires a tremendous amount of energy (mildly sardonic tone here), giving me just the excuse I needed to dredge up an old favorite from the recipe book. Only what I found was I actually had three versions of Crème Brûlée French Toast, which have been conflated into this fourth and, for now, final version. Crusty on the top and dripping with caramel on the bottom, you won’t need any maple syrup … just a good hot cup of coffee and a way to burn off the calories.

Crème Brûlée French Toast (for two, with leftovers if you’re good)

3-4 cups bread cubes (please use a good crusty loaf, preferably stale)

1 egg and 1 yolk

1/3 cup heavy cream*
2/3 cup milk*
½ tsp vanilla
3 Tbs. butter
1/3 cup brown sugar

Melt the butter and brown sugar.
Pour the caramel-to-be into the bottom of a buttered 1 ½ or 2 quart baking dish.
Whisk together the eggs, milk, cream and vanilla.
Put the bread in the casserole and top with the egg mixture.
Bake in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for half an hour. Take out when golden brown and set.

Decision point: do you want a chewy caramel base or a soft caramel base (as seen here)?
For chewy, just pop the casserole straight into the oven.
For soft, put the casserole in a pie plate in the oven and then add 2 cups of water to the pie plate.
This is a custard, after all, and a water bath will give a gentler set to the end product.

* Note: I have used 1 cup half-and-half (either regular or fat-free) in place of milk and cream. It’s not quite as good, but it gets the job done.

- Everything but the Cluck: Rotisserie chicken

There’s an old expression that you can cook every part of a pig, except the oink. Well, one of the reasons I don’t begrudge the food store six dollars for a good rotisserie chicken is that I use everything but the cluck. After Friday Night Supper comes Saturday lunch, and while I have been known to warm up the bread and chicken as a perfectly respectable lunch, I tend to get more positive feedback when I make chicken salad. Fresh herbs are key, so Don and I headed out the other day to pick up chives, parsley, basil, and rosemary at the local feed and seed.

Once stripped of the usable meat, the remaining chicken bones, skin, and whatever drippings lurk in the bottom of the plastic shell are dispatched to a stock pot. A minimalist, I do not add anything but water to cover the remains of the chicken, bring the pot to a boil, and then reduce it to a simmer for a couple of hours. The result is liquid gold, aka Rotisserie Chicken Stock. But a caution is in order: if you want a good basic stock, it is best to avoid rotisserie chickens flavored with lemon pepper, barbecue sauce, etc. Strained and frozen, the stock can be kept for another day, another recipe.

Saturday Chicken Salad

Chunks of leftover rotisserie chicken

Finely diced celery

Finely diced cucumber … I’m partial to the seedless English variety

Toasted almonds or pine nuts
Chopped herbs … parsley, chives, and/or rosemary work well
Chopped olives … kalamata or green olives in brine
Finely diced shallots or thinly sliced scallions
Mayonnaise
Dash of Montreal Steak seasoning

Yes, yes … I know there are no amounts, but I don’t know how much chicken you have leftover. This is where you have to channel your inner chef … cut some stuff up, throw it together, taste it and adjust. It's also what I call the cook’s privilege: getting a taste beforehand, not to mention the applause afterward.

Serve on bread if you must, but I prefer good multi-grain crackers such as Fresh Market Lavasch or Kashi TLC Stoneground 7-Grain.

- Let’s do Brunch: Cinnamon knots

Cinnamon Knots (makes 32 small rolls)

1 Tbs. yeast
1 tsp. sugar
1 cup lukewarm water (total)
2 cups bread flour
2 Tbs. wheat gluten
½ tsp kosher salt
Optional: Grated nutmeg to taste
1 Tbs. melted butter (for dough)
6 Tbs. melted butter (for coating)
1 cup cinnamon sugar

Put ¼ cup lukewarm water in a cup; add yeast and 1 tsp. sugar. Let it sit for 5-10 minutes.
Meanwhile, put flour, gluten, salt, nutmeg (optional) and melted butter in a food processor bowl.
When the yeast starts bubbling, add it to the dry ingredients along with the rest of the water.
The dough should be fairly wet as you process it … add more flour until the dough gathers and no longer sticks to the sides of the food processor.
Remove the dough, add enough flour to keep it from sticking to your hands.
Knead into a flattened disk, cover the bowl with a wet towel and let it rise for one hour.
Put the melted butter and cinnamon sugar into two shallow rimmed bowls.
Divide the dough into two halves and set one half aside.
Divide the remaining dough into 16 pieces (cut in half, in half again, etc.)
Hang the resulting fingers of dough on the edge of the bowl.
 

Dip each piece of dough in butter, then in cinnamon sugar, and twist in a knot.
Put the first 16 knots on an ungreased cookie sheet. Repeat with the other half of the dough.
 

Let the rolls rise for another hour.
Bake at 375 for 15 minutes, or until dark golden brown and firm to the touch.
Place on cooling racks for ten minutes, dip in glaze (below), and cool another half hour.

Glaze
3 Tbs. melted butter
1 cup confectioners sugar
½ tsp. vanilla
2-3 Tbs. milk

Whisk into a glaze … add milk or sugar as needed to get a “dip-able” consistency

- In my Mother’s Kitchen: A recipe is just a suggestion

My Mom was generous with her kitchen ... she actually let my brother and me learn to cook by getting our hands dirty. We learned the basics early on by making chocolate chip cookies, but the pièce de résistance was my first solo effort at making dinner for the whole family when I was 11 (in 1967). Boeuf Bourguignon a la Julia Child, culled from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, was the chosen dish. No wonder … we loved watching the French Chef together on Channel 13 (which never needed a laugh track to get us going).

If you have Julia Child’s epic tome, please turn to page 315. If not, you can link to a reasonable facsimile of the recipe. Knowing my Mom, this is probably close to what she said as I learned how (not) to follow a recipe:

• 6 ounces of bacon sounds like a lot … we’ll use 4 slices and that will be plenty
• Never mind that part about simmering the bacon rind, we’ll skip that
• We’ll use chuck rather than lean beef … it’s got much more flavor
• Rather than dry the beef, we’ll just salt it and coat it with flour, that will save a step later
• You won’t need a whole onion, and why don’t you cut the carrots into sticks
• 3 cups of wine?! We’ll cut that in half … burgundy will do
• And here are the Herb Ox bullion cubes, dissolve them in 2 cups of boiling water
• Tomato paste yes, garlic no … you know how I feel about garlic and we’ll never miss it
• Thyme, check … bay leaf, check … aren’t you glad we skipped the bacon rind step?
• 18-24 small white onions? Not necessary, we already have enough onion in there
• Let’s put the mushrooms in at the end, so they won’t get soggy
• Parsley? I just don’t think that’s necessary if it’s just for decoration

Followed as directed, what we ended up with was my Mom’s excellent beef stew with a red wine kicker. I learned my lesson well, and have rarely followed a recipe to the letter ever since.

For the next 41 years my Mom and I shared our love of cooking and our recipes. As a young newlywed I would call her at dinnertime for directions. When we went up to Shelter Island, I watched her cook, although there were certain recipes I never mastered, chief among them her oatmeal cookies and her strawberry jam, both of which relied on her intuition for their realization. As the Internet developed, we moved from phone calls to emails, the better to record our efforts.

Yesterday I went back to an old stand-by for leftover rotisserie chicken, a recipe Mom sent back in 2001. In her email, she started with “Hope Melissa is fine – let us know when she has completely recovered (Meliss had pneumonia that summer) … I tried a new recipe tonight and thought you might like it.” After detailing the recipe ingredients she continued, “Actually, I forgot to buy a red pepper so I did without … maybe you could add good olives [instead]. And I served it on arugula. Of course, I never follow recipes exactly, but you get the idea.”

Of course I did.

Chicken Orzo Salad

Leftover rotisserie chicken, cut into bite-sized chunks
Juice of one lemon
Olive oil in equal measure
1 tsp. dried thyme (I’ve never used fresh, but it would be great)
1 garlic clove, minced (or pressed, which is what I usually do)
½ tsp. kosher salt
2 cups of cooked orzo
4 oz. feta cheese (please don’t get pre-crumbled, it’s so dry)
8 oz. fresh mushrooms, sautéed in 1 Tbs. butter
Fresh dill (my contribution, strictly optional)

While the pasta and mushrooms are cooking, dice the chicken and place in a serving bowl. Whisk the lemon, olive oil, thyme, garlic, and salt for dressing the salad. When the mushrooms have sweated out, add them to the chicken. Drain the pasta, and add to the serving bowl. Stir in half the dressing, and taste before adding more (or not). Crumble feta over the top and serve.

This can be served plain or on greens … my favorite accompaniment is fresh arugula.