Everything Girl

I came home from work and looked listlessly into the fridge. We’d planned to make a salad with poached chicken that night, and as I pulled out the ingredients I’d chosen – chicken breasts, carrots, celery, onion, parsley – I knew that a virtuous, healthful, chilled dinner was the last thing we needed. Even though the night was warm, we wanted something to warm our hearts too: something that would soothe and reassure, be familiar and comforting.

So instead, I sautéed the vegetables in a bit of butter and oil, poured over chicken broth scented with thyme and bay and thickened with flour, and poached the cubed chicken breasts in it. I tucked crisp minced parsley into uneven knobs of doughy dumplings, dropped them into the stew, and let them steam until they became puffed and bready. In our bowls, we cut the dumplings to pieces and used them to sop up every drop of the rich, herbal broth, enhanced with celery and onion. We ate all the thin, sweet carrot slices and tender bites of poached chicken. It was a small comfort on a devastating night.

Even though the night was warm, we wanted something to warm our hearts too: something that would soothe and reassure, be familiar and comforting.

The next day, Julie and I flew to Texas for the funeral. During our layover in Charlotte, her sister called her to ask what I was planning to cook that night. We looked at each other blankly – I had absolutely no idea what to say – and Julie decided for me: “Spaghetti and meatballs. Meg will tell you what to buy.” As she handed me the phone I thought she’d made a perfect choice: again, something familiar, warm, and comforting, easy enough to double or triple for the army of relatives that was converging on Dallas that night, and I’ve made it enough times that I could dictate a pretty good shopping list right off the top of my head.

When we got to Julie’s friends’ house I jumped right into their kitchen, rooting through their fridge, sharpening their knives, sautéing onions and garlic, adding carrots and celery, and finally bay leaves and tomatoes. The sauce simmered and thickened while I made the meatballs: beef for flavor, pork for texture, bread crumbs and eggs for binding, parsley and cheese for seasoning. Kneading the ingredients together, feeling the cold squish of the meat and eggs, melding them with the crumbles of cheese and bread and rolling them all into perfect meatballs flecked green with herbs was satisfying. It eased my sadness, even temporarily, to know I was creating something that would feed the people I love, and maybe help comfort them a little.

Julie’s four year old niece stood on a chair near the stove to help me sear the meatballs and deglaze the pan with red wine. We simmered the meat in the sauce, boiled the noodles, and dinner was served. It was late, but that didn’t matter. There were thirteen of us and we ate outside on the porch under a string of Chinese lanterns while the kids and the dog ran across the twilight lawn and we smoked and drank our red wine and Shiner Bock. It was 90 degrees, but nobody minded the heat as we slurped our spaghetti down and told stories about Brian that are already becoming family legends. Who wants salad at a time like this? What did it matter how warm the weather was, compared to the reassurance that the food could bring? I spent the evening reminding myself that food sustains life, and that living is important.

I had a hard time coming back to Boston and focusing on work. After such a sad week, it was an irrational shock to see that the world kept on turning while I was away, and I had to jump right back in. That first night in my apartment, I soothed myself with something my mom always made when I was little: macaroni and cheese and kielbasa. She sears the outside of the sausage until it’s nearly black, so that’s how I like it best. I melted sharp cheddar cheese into a creamy base of condensed milk, and added warming spices like mustard, garlic powder, and cayenne. Then I folded in corkscrews of pasta and my blistered kielbasa. I ate with my eyes closed, consoled.

It eased my sadness, even temporarily, to know I was creating something that would feed the people I love, and maybe help comfort them a little.

As Nigella Lawson writes in Feast, not all feasts are happy. But funeral meals are a mark of respect to the deceased, and a way of honoring his life.

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Chicken and Dumplings
About a thousand years ago, this started out as a Rachael Ray recipe. I’ve changed it in so many ways that I even hesitate to call it an adaptation, but it’s fair to say hers was my inspiration. Compare them side-by-side if you’d like to see where the similarities are.

I’ve streamlined this recipe so much I could make it in my sleep. It serves four generously and is finished in under an hour.

• Four carrots, peeled and sliced
• Four ribs of celery, sliced
• An onion, cut into large dice
• A large russet potato, peeled and diced
• 1 bay leaf
• Olive oil
• 1.5 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into 1” cubes
• A nicely-sized handful of parsley, chopped
• 1 quart chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons plus 2 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon chopped herbs –  (Use whatever you want. I like thyme, personally, but rosemary or sage would be good too. If you don’t have fresh herbs on hand you can use dried, but remember that dried herbs have a stronger flavor so you won’t need as much. Rachael Ray suggests using a tablespoon of poultry seasoning, since so many people buy it for Thanksgiving and never use it again. If you’d like to try that, knock yourself out. It’s pretty tasty. But poultry seasoning has some sodium in it already so consider slightly undersalting the rest of the dish. As always, taste as you cook and make up your own mind. Whatever I say is irrelevant compared to your tastebuds.)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 tablespoons melted butter + 2 tablespoons unmelted butter (Unsalted is always best.)
• ¾ cup milk (Skim, 2%, whole, it doesn’t matter. Whatever’s in your fridge.)
• Salt and pepper

Peel the carrots and potato and chop all the vegetables. Put them in a bowl with the bay leaf.
Chop the parsley and put it in another largish bowl. This is what you’ll use to make the dumplings. Don’t bother washing the cutting board or knife yet – you’ll need them again.

In a dutch oven or large pot with a lid, melt 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat with a couple splashes of olive oil. Once it’s all melted, add the vegetables and bay leaf and stir to coat the vegetables with the fat. Let it go for about five minutes, stirring once in a while.

Add the thyme (or whatever herb or seasoning you’re using) and 2 tablespoons of flour to the pan, along with salt and pepper. Stir constantly for 2 minutes to cook the flour a little and coat the vegetables. It’ll form a film on the bottom of the pan. That’s no big deal, and don’t worry if it gets dark brown, but don’t let it burn. Pour in the chicken broth, scrape up that floury coating on the pan’s bottom since it’s what will thicken the sauce, crank up the heat to medium-high, and bring the pot to a boil.

While you wait, cube the chicken breasts. Once the broth is boiling, add them and give the stew a stir to make sure the meat doesn’t stick together. Let that cook away while you work on the dumplings.

Add 2 cups of flour, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, and ¾ teaspoon of salt to the bowl with your chopped parsley, and stir it all up with a fork. That’s to break up any lumps. Pour in 2 tablespoons of melted butter and ¾ cup milk and use your fork to combine the dough. It should be thick and sticky. Use a teaspoon – not the measuring kind, but the kind you eat with at the table – to dop generous spoonfuls of herbed dumpling dough over the surface of the stew. Turn the heat down to medium-low, put the lid on, and let the dumplings steam and the stew simmer for about ten minutes. You’ll know it’s done when a toothpick stuck in a dumpling comes out clean.
Take the pot off the heat, remove the lid, and let it stand for a couple minutes to thicken up. Eat from shallow bowls.

Spaghetti and Meatballs
This recipe is cobbled together from various places: the sauce is adapted from Giada De Laurentiis, the meatballs are adapted from Ina Garten.

I usually double the sauce portion of the recipe and freeze whatever I don’t use. It doesn’t take any more time or effort to make a lot of sauce rather than a little sauce, so I might as well, and it’s so nice to have some tucked away in my freezer for days when I don’t feel like cooking anything. Then all I have to do is thaw the sauce in the microwave, boil some noodles, and grate some cheese. I can have a homemade dinner ready in ten minutes.

Meatloaf mix is a combination of ground beef, veal, and pork. It makes the most tender, juicy, flavorful meatballs you’ve ever had. If your store doesn’t have meatloaf mix, go with 1.5 lbs. ground beef and a half pound of ground pork.

Tomato sauce
• 2 28-oz cans diced tomatoes
• 4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
• 2 onions, peeled and chopped
• 4 carrots, peeled and chopped
• 4 celery ribs, peeled and chopped
• 2 bay leaves
• Olive oil
Meatballs
• 2 lbs meatloaf mix
• 1 egg
• 4 slices of bread (whole grain or white are fine, not rye or other flavors though), whirred through the food processor to make coarse crumbs. Don’t have a food processor? Grate the bread on the coarse holes of your box grater. Trust me, it works.
• ¼ cup seasoned dry bread crumbs, the kind that come in a canister from the grocery store.
• A small handful of parsley, finely chopped
• ½ cup grated parmesan cheese. Not from the green can. If you’re going through all the trouble of making your own meatballs, please don’t ruin them with green can parm.
• Salt and pepper
• A bit of nutmeg, freshly grated on your microplane (Get a microplane. They’re practically free and you’ll wonder how you ever lived without one.)
• A few glugs of the red wine you’re drinking with dinner
Also
• 1.5 lbs spaghetti

Nothing could be easier than this tomato sauce. Coat the bottom of a big pot with a generous layer of olive oil. Once it’s warm, cook the garlic and onion for ten minutes, or until the garlic starts looking kind of brown, whichever comes first. Then add the carrots and celery, season with salt and pepper, and cook for another ten minutes. Add the bay leaves and the canned tomatoes with their juices, and simmer for 40 minutes. Fish out the bay leaves if you’re motivated and then puree the sauce with a stick blender for less mess (best $20 I’ve ever spent) or a real blender for slightly more mess, but still hardly any.

There. You have homemade pasta sauce, with no preservatives or additives or anything nasty. As I said above, I strongly recommend you make it with double the ingredients, ladle half into airtight containers now, and stick it in your freezer for a rainy day.

While your sauce is simmering nicely, knead all the meatball ingredients together until they’re evenly combined and roll them into your ideal meatball size. I like them kind of big, about the size of golf balls. This took me a bit of practice: I was nervous at first about packing them too densely, so I made them too loose instead and they fell apart. Don’t be afraid to squeeze a little to keep them together.

Coat a pan with oil over medium high heat and sear the meatballs in batches, turning them once they’re nice and dark brown on a side. Put them aside on a plate or cookie sheet or something as you finish with them. If my four-year-old cousin could do this, so can you. I promise. Once they’re all seared (but still raw in the middle), deglaze the pan by pouring in a couple glugs of red wine and, as it simmers, scraping up the browned bits stuck to the bottom. Once the wine starts looking syrupy and the pan is clean, pour everything into the saucepot. It’ll enhance the flavor. Also, after you’ve blended the sauce, dunk the meatballs in and let them simmer for another 20 minutes or so to cook through.

While that’s happening, bring a big pot to a boil and season it with a few big handfuls of kosher salt. Pasta water should taste like the sea. Boil your spaghetti according to the package directions, but start fishing strands out and taking experimental bites a minute or two before the box says they’re finished, just in case. Biting into a properly cooked piece of pasta shouldn’t have any crunch, but the chew should feel like biting into a new stick of gum. That’s the texture you’re aiming for.

When the pasta is done, drain it and add it to the pot with the sauce and meatballs. Serve with extra cheese to pass at the table.

Macaroni and Cheese
From The Best Light Recipe from the Editors of Cooks Illustrated and Mrs. Kathleen Homan
My mom always serves mac and cheese with kielbasa, so I do too. We were in college the first time I made mac and cheese for my husband (from a box, thank you very much) and it sparked the first cooking disagreement we’d ever had. I imagine the reason we’d never bickered about food in the seven years previous is because we’d never cooked anything but microwave popcorn. That about sums up our high school and college years.

My husband was suspicious because I didn’t make it the way his mother did, but with his first taste of the spicy sausage with its crispy char against the mild, creamy pasta, I changed his mind.

Anyway, the gist of it was that when his mother cooked kielbasa, she heated it slowly in a shallow pan of simmering water, then drained it and served the slices warm and pale. My mother cooked it by coating a screamingly hot pan with oil and then tossing the kielbasa slices around until they were just shy of burned. My husband was suspicious because I didn’t make it the way his mother did, but with his first taste of the spicy sausage with its crispy char against the mild, creamy pasta, I changed his mind.

Though mac and cheese baked in the oven in a pan lined with thyme-roasted tomato slices and topped with buttered, toasted panko is, of course, the Platonic ideal, to me the dish just doesn’t feel like real comfort food unless it’s made quickly on the stovetop and is not at all fancy or fussy. When I’m looking for something to help myself feel better, I don’t want a recipe with a lot of moving parts. This version is simple and tasty and honestly doesn’t take any longer than reaching for the Kraft, but if you do decide boxed mac is the way to go I promise not to judge. We’ve all been there.

• ½ pound elbow macaroni, which is traditional, or whatever shape you like. I prefer rotini, to tell you the truth. There’s something childishly delightful about it. We can’t be sophisticated epicures all the time.
• 1 12-oz can reduced fat evaporated milk. NOT SWEETENED. Once, my husband accidentally bought sweetened condensed milk for this recipe and I, not wanting to make him feel bad about the mistake, made it anyway. It was revolting. It tasted like cheese candy, and we did our best to choke down as many bites as we could – he, assuming I’d really screwed up and I, knowing he was the one who’d tanked it – until we finally threw in our forks and ordered pizza. Learn from our mistakes: UNSWEETENED evaporated milk, my friends.
• ¾ cup 2% milk
• ¼ teaspoon dried mustard
• a two-fingered pinch each of garlic powder and cayenne
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 8 oz 50% light cheddar cheese, grated. Cabot brand is best, but whatever’s at the store. You won’t go to jail if you can’t find the brand I recommend.
• One package of pre-cooked kielbasa
Boil a pot of water, dump in a handful of salt, and boil the pasta according to the box’s directions. As in the spaghetti recipe, start biting into it a minute or two before it’s supposed to be done, just in case. Drain and leave in the colander.

Put the pot back over the heat and pour in the evaporated milk, ½ cup of the milk, the spices, and half a teaspoon of salt. Boil it and then turn it down to a simmer.

Whisk the cornstarch and the last ¼ cup of milk together, then whisk it into the creamy sauce on the stove. Let that cook, whisking, for about two minutes.

Move the pot off the heat and whisk in the cheese a handful at a time until it’s melted. Fold in the pasta and let it stand for a couple minutes until it’s thickened up.

Use that time to cook the kielbasa. Slice it diagonally. Get a big pan, nonstick if you like, as hot as patience will let you heat it without scorching.

Coat the bottom with a glug of oil, swirl that around, add the kielbasa slices, and cook them, stirring often, until their cut surfaces are a deep, dark brown. Fish them out with a slotted spoon and let them drain for a minute or so on a plate lined with paper towels. Stir them into the finished macaroni and cheese and taste heaven.

Megan Homan is an event planner for a Boston-area non-profit. In her free time, she can be found pursuing new challenges not only in restaurants around Boston, but also in her own kitchen.

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