comfort food for a rough day

I've been having a hard time lately.

Upper respiratory infection for days, brutally stubbed toes (one of which is a lovely purple), utility problems probably related to hurricane Gustav, etc.

In times like these, comfort food is basically mandatory.

And I wanted the illness-fighting power of chicken soup without consuming yet another soup, which I've been slurping for a few days already.

So into the cast iron skillet went some boned chicken breasts. But so much of the good stuff remains in the skillet once the chicken is removed. That stuff is called "fond" (probably French for "magic sauce-making wonder bits").

I didn't have everything I might normally like to have on-hand for making such a sauce, but a well-stocked pantry and some inventive spirit got the job done.

I'd frozen some home-made chicken stock in ice cube trays a while back, so a fist full of those (I have very large hands.) went into a sauce pan to melt while the chicken cooked.

Then I poured the stock into the skillet and dissolved the cooked bits of chicken into it over low heat. Lacking a heavy cream or other source of fat for the sauce, I decided to work with the little bit of fat left over from the chicken.

Since I wasn't working with a known quantity of fat in the skillet, but knew it would be minimal, I loaded a parmesan shaker with corn starch and shook in a bit of corn starch at a time after half the liquid had cooked off. This was a good bit messier than pre-dissolving the starch, but got the job done. I just kept stirring, stirring, stirring the whole time.

This allowed me to avoid starch clumping without having to pre-dissolve the starch and measure it in until it "looked right" in a general sense.

The starch bonds the water in the stock to the chicken fat to form a nice gravy. It tastes and feels so rich without bringing a lot of calories to the plate!

Once I liked the way it looked and smelled, I drizzled it over mashed potatoes and the chicken with a yeast roll for sopping up of left-over gravy.



The final dish had the sinus-opening power of chicken soup and comfort power of good ol' Mississippi chow.

Never allow yourself to be stopped cold by missing a few ingredients or being light on planning. Just keep the basics in the pantry and cook, cook, cook so you have a library of ideas and techniques at your disposal.

98% perfect is far from inadequate!