Dropped Bowl Chicken and Dumplings

It is a curious thing that some memories have a way of condensing and then standing in for entire spans of one's life. Psychoanalysts might call such memories "screen memories," interpret them as techniques in repression, and ask why one memory might prevent related memories from breaking into consciousness. Why is it, I wonder, that the entirety of my first semester at college has been condensed into a memory of sitting with a circle of friends on my dorm room floor and diving into a hot Papa John's pizza? Perhaps this memory keeps at the periphery of my conscious mind certain more discomforting memories of nights spent on that same floor, flashlight in hand, studying incomprehensible Chemistry notes for a class that would slap me with my first mortifying final grade. Or perhaps we just stuffed our faces with a lot of pizza that semester.

There is a much more distant memory that surfaces every now and then when I try to conjure up the family dinners of a two-year or so period in the mid 80's. In it, I am holding a giant bowl of chicken and dumplings, and heading happily towards the dinner table. Then, I drop the bowl and chicken and dumplings go spilling in every direction. Then, I feel really, really sad. Now I don't have the leisure or the money to explore in full this memory, be it "screen" or not, with a psychoanalyst; but some quick self-analytic exercises turn up the following:

- I probably asked my mom to cook the chicken and dumplings for dinner since it was one of my favorite meals. Then I dropped what she had so nicely made for me. Childhood guilt? I am sure, incidentally, that I was not made to feel guilty about dropping my chicken and dumplings as this was not, and has never been, family practice.

- It probably would have been around this time that my cruel parents started forcing my sister and I to take turns doing the dinner dishes. I hated doing the dinner dishes, and would often, at least until I realized it wasn't doing me any good, cry tears of rage from the moment I began clearing the table to the moment I set the last dish in the dishwasher. Oh yes. We had a dishwasher. I didn't really even have to wash any dishes. But I still found this chore cruel and unusual punishment. Did I drop my chicken and dumplings in protest against the post-dinner slavery I was about to suffer? A proper analyst would probably suggest that this anger was displaced onto dinner dishes from its true object: me new baby brother. But I am certain that I hated doing the dishes way more than I could have ever hated a little pink giggly thing.

- I'm not even sure I'm the one who dropped the chicken and dumplings. Come to think of it, it could have been my sister, or even a neighbor friend. If this is the case, then this false memory, in text-book screen memory fashion, stands for my life-long experience of embarrassment for the mistakes and blunders of others. To this day, I want to hide my own face when I see a lady with her slip showing or toilet paper stuck to her shoe. If a student ever nods off in a class I'm teaching, I cringe -- not out of anger or feelings of inadequacy, but because I'm embarrassed for the student. I blush on behalf of actors in bad commercials. Sometimes I wish I could spread this embarrassment out a bit, especially to those people who chat loudly into cell phones on city buses and subways. I'm the person sitting the next seat over, quietly breaking out into hives.

- Finally, this memory may be about leaving home. As one of my first great loves of the table, chicken and dumplings conjure up images of mom, dad, and the kids, sitting at an oak table in a West Virginia kitchen, and digging into something warm to eat. The oak table has since moved. At first, I went with it, but then it stayed and I kept moving. Finding myself in a new town, farther away from that table than I've ever been before, I've been remembering chicken and dumplings. A dropped bowl of chicken and dumplings seems to say, you can't go back. Not to that bowl, at least. But a recent meal of chicken and dumplings served at my own dinner table reminded me that you can go back for another bowl.

This is where you might expect me to write about how I lovingly followed my mom's recipe which I've cherished for years on a faded and dog-eared index card. Well, the sentimental stuff stops here. I don't have my mom's recipe. I've never even asked for my mom's recipe. I frankly doubt she ever had a recipe. And if she did, she probably wouldn't have it anymore since, at least to my knowledge, she hasn't cooked chicken and dumplings in years.

So, I gathered together several chicken and dumplings recipes to see if anything in them matched the conjured up contents of that dropped bowl of my childhood. It was easy to settle on a shape for my dumplings. Some recipes called for a biscuit-like topping, others for strips of dough that resembled noodles. But my mom's dumplings were like puffy snowballs miraculously suspended in hot broth. I couldn't remember if mom's dumplings contained lard (likely) or butter, but Cook's Illustrated promised that dumping melted butter into flour would somehow make the fluffiest dumpling balls. It seemed risky, but as all Cook's Illustrated promises should be taken seriously, I gave it a try. Fluffy, they were.

Cook's, in their usual fussy way, insisted that I make my own stock. I am generally in the habit of spooning in a few chunks of chicken base when I come across such injunctions, but, seeing as I was pretending to recreate an heirloom recipe, homeade stock seemed sort of necessary.

I'm pretty sure that my mom's chicken and dumplings included carrots and celery, so mine did too. I am certain that it did not include leeks, but mine did. I couldn't help it. Leeks sounded nice and fresh. Although I doubt my mom would have, I liked Cook's suggestion of steaming the vegetables separately and then adding them at the end so that they don't get too mushy.

So, in the end, I basically followed a recipe from a cookbook that routinely tears apart those index cards scribbled with cherished family recipes. Cook's Illustrated just doesn't accept the nostalgic claim that family recipes taste good, and they use the scientific method to prove it. This recipe gives you rich chicken flavor, fluffy snowball dumplings, and a mathematically perfect ratio of vegetables to broth. If memory serves me right, it's just like mom used to make.


Chicken and Dumplings
adapted from Cook's Illustrated The Best Recipe
Serves 6-8.


For stock:
2 pounds skinless chicken thighs
1 large onion, cut in quarters
3 celery stalks, trimmed and cut in half
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon salt

For stew:
4 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 celery stalks, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 leeks, white and light green parts, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
4 tablespoons butter
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
2 tablespoons dry sherry
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley leaves

For dumplings:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup milk

1. For the stock: Fill a dutch oven with 6 cups water, chicken thighs, quartered onion, celery stalk, bay leaves, and salt. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce to simmer and cook partially covered for about 25 minutes until chicken is cooked through. Remove chicken and set aside. Strain broth and discard solids. When chicken is cool enough to handle, shred into medium pieces. Allow broth to cool a bit and skim off excess fat.

2. While you're making the stock, bring 1/2 inch water to boil in saucepan fitted with a steamer basket. Add celery, carrots, and leeks. Cover and steam until just tender, about 10 minutes. Remove veggies and set aside.

3. For the dumplings: Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Heat butter and milk to a simmer and add to dry ingredients. Mix with a fork just until dough comes together.
Form dough into 1 inch thick balls.

4. Heat butter in clean skillet over medium-high heat. Whisk in flour and thyme, and cook, whisking the whole time, until the flour starts to turn golden, about 3 minutes. While whisking, add sherry, then chicken stock. Simmer until gravy thickens, about 3 minutes. Stir in chicken and steamed vegetables.

5. Lay formed dumplings on surface of chicken mixture. Cover and simmer until dumplings are cooked through, about 15 minutes. Stir in parsley. Add salt and paper to taste. Serve in bowls. Carry them carefully to the table.

The Squid Trials

I really want to like squid. I'll order calamari at restaurants where I know it to be an unlikely success. I'm not sure why I do it, considering that I often find myself with a plate of rubber, coated in bread crumbs and deep fried. Perhaps I do it for the adventure. Who knows, I could stumble upon that one sublime squid dish that would fit my ambivalent fascination with these spidery little creatures to my fantasies of slightly challenging culinary treats. An appetizer of grilled squid with spinach I recently enjoyed at a Pittsburgh restuarant came close.

Or perhaps I do it to confront sub-conscious anxieties. I'm a bit squeamish about sea creatures that seem, in any way, like jelly fish. Several years ago, I made an unfortunate dive into a wave harboring a few thin strands from the body of a Portugese Man of War, and, let me tell you, this creature has earned its name. I emerged from the water with a leg that looked like it had been pitted with tiny shrapnel. I would like to say that I proved a strong and stoic warrior against this jelly-bodied enemy, but I wailed and sniveled all the way to the emergency room until a kind nurse injected a stiff cocktail of steroids and pain killers into my veins.

Now, I know, squid are not Men of War. But you've seen 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea. You've read those news stories that crop up every now and then about sightings of giant squid in the far Pacific. The ocean depths are the only unexplored spaces on our planet. Monstrous creatures, mean and tentacle-clad, are likely waiting there for that one final showdown with humankind.

You see, these things are smart. My family knows someone who knows someone who works in an aquarium somewhere who discovered that a savvy octpous was behind a month-long mystery of disappearing fish. When morning staff started noticing that certain exotic fish went missing from their tanks overnight, security guards set up cameras to investigate. What did they catch on film? A hungry octopus, opening up the lid of its own tank, crawling a few feet over the tops of its neighboring tanks, opening up a tank housing tasty fish, grasping one of these fish with its tentacled arm, closing the lid of that tank, making its way back to its own tank, closing its lid, and enjoying an extravagant and well-earned midnight snack.

But is it true?, you might be asking. The thing is, I just don't know. I've looked into the eyes of an aquarium-housed octopus before, and I swear the thing looked back at me with the sort of understanding stare that only intelligent monkeys and gorillas can summon. But, on the other hand, I once saw a man on a deep sea boat struggle to reel up what he was sure was a 20 pound snapper. He got instead a fat octopus that, as soon as it broke the surface of the water, seemed to dissolve into an amorphous blob, a heap of goo once deprived of its deep sea water pressure. How is an octopus, savvy as he may be, supposed to make his way across the tops of aquarium tanks in search of exotic food? Again, I'm not sure. But the story has stuck with me, and I think of it when I put in an order for yet another rubbery plate of restaurant calamari.

So perhaps I'm taking some sort of misplaced revenge for a lost battle with a Man of War when I order calamari. Or maybe I'm working through the troubling thought that intelligent life, and I mean intelligent beyond the level of a cow or a duck, is being served on pre-heated plates throughout the country. Perhaps I'll never know. The thing I eventually hope to discover is a recipe that renders these creatures not only edible (provided one has all one's teeth and a strong jaw), but good.

Last week, I tried my own version of breaded and fried calamari. I marninated the little rings in milk, made a strong anchovy-laced tomato dipping sauce to accompany them, poured a good half gallon of peanut oil into my cast iron skillet, and filled my kitchen with smoke. The result: one of the most rubbery plates of calamari I've ever masticated my way through. Without a proper deepfryer, I think that breaded calamari may best be left to sub-par restaurants.

I've heard it said in a few foodish circles that squid should be cooked for either one minute or one hour. I aimed for the one minute rule for my most recent squid endeavor, and with better results than last week's. This recipe calls for less than 3 minutes cooking time, and, frankly, I think that less could have been more. The flavors of this dish are excellent, in a punch-you-in-the-face sort of way, but the squid still bordered on rubbery. If I make it again, and I just might if I find myself in the company of a hungry group of fish-sauce-friendly individuals, I'll try to whip the whole thing together in a minute flat. This, of course, will require total concentration, complete preparation, and a group of mouths already at the table waiting for hot squid. Should these efforts render a more tender squid, this dish will immediatley become a keeper.

As just about all good Thai dishes do, this one brings together the sweet, salty, and spicy. Oh yes, and the fishy. After two Thai dinners in a row, I had to promise my dining companion a fish sauce respite. After all, there are lots of good Spanish and Indian recipes in Mr. Bittman's book. I recommend this squid dish with white rice. The sauce should not be wasted, and without something to soak it up, that is what will inevitably happen.

Stir-Fried Squid with Basil and Garlic
from Mark Bittman's The Best Recipes in the World
Serves 4. Takes almost no time.

1 1/2 pounds cleaned squid, rinsed well
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
2 small fresh Thai chilis, stemmed and seeded if you wish (I wished not), and chopped
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1 tablespoon sugar
2 tablespoons nam pla (fish sauce)
1/4 cup basil leaves, roughly chopped
1/4 cup mint, roughly chopped

1. Dry the squid with paper towels. Cut the squid bodies into rings about 1 inch wide.
If the squid are large, cut the group of tentacles in half. If not, leave them intact. If the extra long tentacle has not been removed already, do so.

2. Prepare all of the other ingredients and have them ready. This recipe comes together fast, and, as I have already mentioned, you don't want to cook your squid a second too long.

3. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add oil, and when it starts to shimmer, add garlic, chilis, and coriander. Avoid breathing deeply over your skillet at this point to prevent fits of coughing brought on by these pungent flavors. Cook, stirring alomst constantly for 15 seconds. Raise the heat to high, toss in the squid, and cook, stirring, for 1-2 minutes. Lower the heat to medium as soon as your squid loses that raw look.

4. Stir in sugar, nam pla, basil and mint. Stir for just a few seconds to blend the herbs. Take a taste. Add salt, pepper, chilis, or nam pla as you see fit.

'Dem Bones

Though a lover of chicken, a certain college roommate of mine refused to eat it when doing so risked brushing her lips or scraping her teeth against a bone. She was quite aware that the driving force behind her chicken bone aversion was sentimental rather than gastronomic. Living creatures with fluffy feathers have bones, dinner does not. My roommate's feelings about bones seemed a bit extreme to me--how can chicken "fingers" sound appetizing, but not a fried chicken drumstick?

For most of my childhood, my chores included greeting and feeding two pigs who, come fall, would grace my dinner plate. I happily ate meat whose face I once knew, with no preference for whether I enjoyed Porky and Petunia as a boneless pork tenderloin or a rack of ribs. But I cannot attribute my adult feelings about bones to this yearly exposure to the transformation of grunting pigs into bones and meat. It's not that I'm indifferent to bones. I love bones.

Of course, you might think, she loves bones. She cooks. Bones enhance the flavor of the meat that clings to them. They make rich stock out of boiling water, a carrot, and celery stalk. When cooked long enough, they ooze a gelatinous goo without which pate en croute could not exist. But, you see, it's not simply a foodie thing. No, I really can't claim it a foodie thing at all.

From as early as I can remember, dinosaur bones have made me feel all tingly. I once saw an entire whale skeleton with the same effect. I used to have a rabbit's foot keychain which I carried in my pocket. I liked to run my fingers over the fur, but I liked even more to feel the tiny bones hidden beneath it. When I shared this bit of information with my best friend, she promptly wrinkled her nose and requested that I leave my rabbit's foot at home when I came over to play.

But it doesn't stop with animal bones. Human bones are even better. Visiting a museum of saints' relics in St. Mark's cathedral was the highlight of my trip to Venice. I could barely tear myself away from the silver and gold reliquaries, gray bones peeking through their little glass windows. Patrick, who had retreated to the doorway, was practicing his Italian by making small talk with the ticket taker. "I guess she likes them, " he said with an embarrassed shrug. The ticket taker responded with a shudder, "I don't." That display of human bones was only trumped by the crypt of the Capuchin Church of the Immaculate Conception in Rome. Be warned, this link is not for the bone squeamish.

Patrick tolerates my bone fetish. Last Christmas, he indulged me with a three piece serving set, each one shaped in the form of human bones. The spoon is a leg that broadens into a hip bone. A rib cage forms the fork's tines, and a spine it's handle. A double-tined serving fork takes the shape of a flesh-stripped forearm. When I casually dropped a few hints about acquiring a human skeleton to display in our house, he ignored me, which, for him, is equivalent to putting his foot down. I'm not sure I could have found a real skeleton anyway. But I'm holding out for a skull. He just doesn't know it yet. For now, I'll have to stick with the bones of mute animals.

At the dinner table, I do. Recently, rib bones have been my bone of choice. I like rib bones because they insist on being treated as the bones they are. They insist on being gripped, gnawed on, sucked clean, and discarded into a pile on the plate. Ribs remind. It's not easy to picture just where a cooked, bone-in pork chop once resided in a living pig. Despite years spent patting pigs, I cannot recall laying my hands on any part I knew to be the chop. The ribs, though, I could have found. Though buried beneath a thick layer of flesh, I knew where they were because I knew where mine were: that bumpy row of bones that tickled. What's more, the rib bones on which we regularly gnaw are not so different in size from our own. Chicken ribs would not be worth the effort.

Though aware of the culilnary worth of rib bones--they keep the meat moist and rich during long hours of low temperature cooking--I especially like ribs for aesthetic reasons. Rib bones go into the oven veiled in flesh, threads of fat, and stringy sinews. With time, though, they start to peek through, emerging from their meaty surroundings like fossils from the earth.

A week or so ago, I shelacked some baby back ribs with an espresso powder barbecue sauce to great success. More recently, my oven produced some beef short ribs, their flesh falling from the bone. Though such rib dishes are often served with something creamy (mashed potatoes or polenta, for example), this recipe pairs them with chickpeas. The beans provide something firm to bite into along with the melt-in-your-mouth meat. Crusty bread is just about essential.

Beef Short Ribs with Garbanzo Beans
This recipe is from Bon Appetit, September 2003 with just a few changes. Chef Tom Colicchio is credited with the recipe.
Serves 4


Garbanzo beans:
1 1/2 cups dried garbanzo beans

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, quartered
1 celery stalk, halved
1 medium carrot, halved
4 large fresh rosemary sprigs
4 large fresh thyme sprigs
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup raisins

Short ribs:
8 meaty short ribs
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 small carrot, chopped
1 celery stalk, chopped
5 large fresh thyme sprigs
5 whole peeled garlic cloves
3 cups low-salt chicken broth
1/2 cup Sherry wine vinegar

For beans:

1. Place beans in large saucepan. Add cold water to cover by 2 inches and bring to boil. Remove from heat; cover and let stand 1 hour.

2. Drain beans. Heat oil in same pan over medium-high heat. Add onion, celery, and carrot; saute until vegetables begin to brown, about 10 minutes. Add rosemary and thyme. Return beans to pan. Add enough cold water to cover by 2 inches and bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer beans uncovered until almost tender, about 45 minutes. Add 2 teaspoons salt. Continue to simmer until beans are tender, stirring occasionally and adding more water to keep covered if necessary, about 45 minutes longer. Add raisins; season beans with pepper. Cool. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and chill.)

For short ribs:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sprinkle short ribs on all sides with salt and pepper. Heat oil in heavy large wide ovenproof pot over medium-high heat. Add short ribs in single layer and brown on all sides, about 12 minutes. Transfer ribs to plate. Drain all but a few tablespoons fat from pan. Add onion, carrot, celery, 2 thyme sprigs, and garlic to pot. Saute until vegetables brown, about 10 minutes. Return ribs to pot in single layer, meat side down. Add broth, vinegar, and remaining 3 thyme sprigs and bring to simmer (broth will not cover ribs). Bake uncovered until ribs are tender, about 1 hour 45 minutes.

2. Using oven mitts, transfer short ribs to stove top. Tilt pot; spoon off fat from surface. Drain bean-raisin mixture. Remove onion, celery, carrot, and stems of herbs from beans. (You could leave in the veggies, but I suppose you would have to cut them up). Add to short ribs. Simmer until sauce thickens slightly, about 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer to bowl.

Fig Paradise: Lost and Regained

I fancy an after-dinner slice of chocolate torte or macadamia nut tart every now and then, but there is no better end to a summer meal than some slices of fresh cheese and a few ripe figs. A dollop of honey and a dusting of black pepper turn this little treat into something decadent, something, I will even admit, that induces nostalgic fantasies when fresh figs cannot be had. These figgy feelings have almost allowed me to make sense of a certain Bible story that features a full-out temper tantrum, suffered by a fig tree and thrown by the Son of God.

Now, in the morning as he returned into the city, he was hungry. And when he saw a fig tree by the road, he came to it, and found nothing on it, but leaves only, and said to it, "Let no fruit grow on you henceforward forever." And presently the fig tree withered away.
And when the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, "How soon has the fig tree withered away!" (Matthew 21:18-20).

A six year old can comprehend crying and stomping over a Snickers bar or pack of Bubbilicious gum. Longing for these treats had brought on such scenes featuring a certain sweet-toothed girl in the candy aisle of Lloyd's Convenient Store. But never had I made such a fuss over anything belonging to the fruit and vegetable food group. Jesus, I thought, must have been a very healthy eater. Or, figs must be really good. I had never had one.

Along with beef tartare and pastry encrusted lamb shanks, fresh figs were among the novel foodstuffs I discovered several years ago during a week I spent in Paris with my brand new husband. Since then, I've been able to see Christ's reaction from a more informed perspective. He was hungry for figs, after all. Fresh Figs. I couldn't imagine mustering the same amount of understanding if his fruit hankerings had brought him to curse a pear tree or blackberry bush. Nevertheless, I always felt sorry for the poor fig tree, assuming as I did that its failure to bear fruit must, at least in part, have been the fault of climate or soil composition.

If I may quote scripture against scripture, there is good biblical evidence that the fig, this abomination in the eyes of Christ, was not meant to be a thing cursed. Recall that Adam and Eve departed the Garden of Eden with fig leaves covering their newly shameful parts. The fig tree, it follows, belonged in Paradise. But perhaps even fig trees suffered the fall from grace, and that poor tree in Matthew paid the price for Adam and Eve's preference for a certain other fruit. I am inclined to think that figs today preserve the taste and texture of their prelapsarian ancestors. How can perfection have been more perfect? If figs are marked by the Fall, their failure to bear fruit throughout the year and in all climates must be the scars of sin.

A few evenings ago, I had the occasion to offer dessert to two philosophy professors sitting at a table in my backyard. Having just brought home a few containers of figs, I intended to serve my Platonic vision of summer dessert. It was to my surprise that temptation began to worm its way into my menu. I could honor the natural perfection of my figs by plunking them down next to a slice of cheese. But might I choose instead to tamper with perfection? Might I discover something novel, something, perhaps, beyond perfection? Fallen creature that I am, I chose to tamper.

But not too much.

This tart preserves its figs' perfect qualities by keeping them nearly unembellished. The whole thing starts with a sturdy, not-too-sweet pastry crust flecked with thyme. This edible plate holds the filling which, conceived most simply, is cheese and figs: marscapone, perked up with lemon, and rounded off with honey. Sliced figs rest on top. A honey glaze brings out their natural sweetness, protects their flesh, and gives them a pretty sheen.

Is perfection multifarious? Adam and Eve imagined as much. Plato did not. I was tempted and offered my philosopher companions to eat of my fruit. They ate, and proclaimed that it was good.

Lemon Marscapone Fig Tart
This recipe has been cobbled together from several tart recipes, but it most closely resembles one that appeared in the June 2003 issue of Gourmet. Serves 6.


1 tart dough recipe: I used one of Ms. Stewart's. I like this one because it doesn't require cutting in butter. You just cream butter and sugar in a mixer and then add the dry ingredients. Incidentally, I didn't manage to transfer my dough from my counter to the tart tin without it tearing into several pieces. I think that this was more of a kitchen temperature issue than a recipe issue (the dimensions of my kitchen are such that if the oven is preheating, the entire kitchen is preheating). But I just pressed the dough into the tart tin and forced it up the sides with my fingers and it turned out just fine. Her recipe does not include the 2 teaspoons minced fresh thyme which I added to the dough before baking it.

For filling:
1/3 cup light sour cream
1 cup marscapone cheese (8 oz..)
3 tablespoons honey, divided
2 teaspoons finely grated zest of lemon
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons red currant or fig jelly
1 1/2 pounds fresh figs

1. Make and bake the crust. This can be done a day ahead, if you like.
2. Prepare filling: Whisk together sour cream, marscapone, 2 tablespoons honey, lemon zest, and salt in a bowl. This can be done a day ahead and kept tightly covered in the fridge.
3. Heat remaining teaspoon honey and jelly in small saucepan over low heat, whisking until the jelly melts.
4. While the glaze cools a bit, slice the figs lengthwise into 1/4 inch slices and arrange over cream. Brush figs with honey glaze.