Simran's chicken biryani

As you may have noticed, I'm crazy for chicken.

I know plenty of people don't like chicken: they think it's boring, or they have an issue with eating it on the bone, something I never understand, since it's usually claimed by people who I've seen gnawing on a pork chop or getting down on a turkey drumstick at Thanksgiving. They say there is something specific to chicken on the bone that gives them the creeps.  Whatever. It is true that chicken is often poorly cooked (i.e. dry) or too often appears in boneless, skinless breast form, which greatly narrows the chances of it tasting good.

Anyway, I eat it pretty much any style. I like it roasted with honey and cherry tomatoes; simmered in coconut milk, soy, and vinegar, adobo-style; and encrusted with macadamia nuts in a Hawaiian plate lunch. I also like it fried, in a creamy salad for a weekday lunch, and of course I adore Marcella Hazan's  roasted chicken with two lemons, which is on the menu once a week at my house.

But even with all this variety, sometimes you still need a new recipe to spice things up...literally.

Enter chicken biryani, courtesy of my friend Simran, who writes this lovely blog with my other friend Stacie. Last summer, Simran's mother came to visit her here in San Francisco, and shared a recipe or two with her daughter, who then kindly shared them with her friends and readers. When I saw her recipe for chicken biryani,  I knew I wanted to make it immediately.

"Immediately" actually took about seven months...you know how things go. But I finally got around to it earlier this month, and it has officially taken its place in my repertoire.

One thing I was very interested in was that the dish is supposed to be layered, chicken - rice - chicken - rice, sort of like an Asian lasagne, Simran notes. I loved this idea, although you can't actually see the layers in the bowls that I used to serve it. However, it was fun to eat, digging through the layers of spicy chickeny goodness.

Making this recipe was delicious and satisfying and reminded me of yet another great chicken recipe, one which also turned into one of my all-time favorite blog posts: Country Captain/Captain Chicken. The two recipes share some similar flavors, and both are easy enough to make, although I do like that Simran's requires fewer ingredients. I suggest you give them both a try. After all, who couldn't use  another chicken recipe (or two)?

Yellow cake, chocolate frosting (cheater-style)

Last Saturday it poured all day long. Since we had all the necessities (food, coffee, food, wine, food, firewood), we opted not to set foot outside the house, something which in retrospect seems a little pathetic, but while it was happening was very nice indeed.

We ate cassoulet for lunch (which had improved overnight) and afterward I was in the mood for cake. But I had not adequately prepared: no softened butter, no room temperature eggs. Nor did I have any of those good cake ingredients, like buttermilk or sour cream, or high-quality chocolate.

I did, however, have this:

I don't think I've made a boxed cake since about 1983, when my friend Rebecca and I would experiment in the kitchen on summer days, making multi-colored (we were intrigued by food coloring) and multi-layered (four rainbow layers--hideous!) box cakes, which inevitably tasted terrible. Bless our parents who let us waste money and time  in the name of being creative.

Cake mixes dropped off my radar a long time ago. I went for decades without thinking of them, until a few months ago I was in Trader Joe's and I spied their new line of cake mixes, as well as frostings, which bore the creepy yet riveting promise that all I had to do was:

I'm a sucker for cute packaging, who isn't? After all, that's why I liked the husband in the first place. It wasn't until later that I discovered how smart, funny, and sweet he is.

So, I made the cake. Putting it together took about 10 minutes. Baking it took 25 (in spite of the directions which said it would take 40-50 for two 9-inch layers--huh? Maybe if you want hockey pucks). I cooled the layers, made the frosting, and took to it with my offset spatula. I have to say, for someone without much cake frosting experience, I think it looked rather pretty.

How it tasted was another matter. Not terrible by any means -- we each put away a good-sized hunk of it (and were then incapacitated for the next hour or so) -- but through each bite we were both aware of a distinctly processed feel. It was also overly sweet, not a big surprise.

We actually didn't eat any more of the cake, although I did enjoy looking at it over the next day or two. There's something iconic about yellow cake with chocolate frosting; it's the quintessential birthday cake. But after this experience, I'm willing to go the extra mile and skip the box. It may be easier, but it turns out there are two excellent reasons people make cakes from scratch: taste and texture.

On one final note, I failed to brag on my last post that it was actually my 200th!! Pretty amazing, to me at least. I started this blog two years ago and somehow it's still going. I like to think I would do this in a vacuum, but like most everyone, I need public validation. I'm insecure that way. So thanks for reading, and thanks especially for commenting. You make the blog world go round. Now go get yourself a piece of (homemade) cake.

"Cassoulet"

After more decadent eating out this week (roasted duck with rabbit consomme here and a fabulous cheeseburger here), I finally decided it was time to get back into the kitchen. Since I've had all things French on my mind these days, I decided to try cassoulet.

Or shall I invoke scare quotes and say, "cassoulet"? Because I'm sure that any genuine French person would scoff dismissively at my attempt. 

I couldn't blame them. There's nothing truly authentic about it. For one thing, the recipe belongs to Mark Bittman, who I like very much, but who is quintessentially American in his approach to food: cook what you like, the way you like it, however that might be. He's no slave to tradition, which I think may be one of the defining French characteristics when it comes to food. It's also probably why so many of us Americans are Bittman fans.

Anyway, I liked the look of this recipe, because it leans more on vegetables than meat (another Bittman hallmark), and as evidenced by my recent eating escapades outlined above, I'm doing fine on the protein side. That said, I did enjoy choosing the meat for the cassoulet, of which I needed one pound, and which according to Bittman could be  "Italian sausages, bone-in pork chops, confit duck legs, or duck breasts, or a combination." I settled on half a pound of sausage and two little pork chops.

So, here's the thing about it being "cassoulet" and not cassoulet, in addition to the recipe's provenance. I didn't really follow the directions all that well, some of which was intentional and some not. I changed a few small things on purpose, like using rosemary instead of thyme, and leaving out the cayenne since I didn't have it, although I think that would have been a nice addition. And I didn't add quite the full four cups of cannellini beans--too beany!-- I reduced it by about a cup.

But I made one big mistake not on purpose which is why my dish turned out more like a soup: I added all the broth at once, because I misread the recipe. Turns out you're supposed to add it a little at a time, as needed. I just dumped it all in, and it never really reduced to the right consistency.

I also noticed a mistake just now that I didn't even realize I had made last night, which is that I forgot the bay leaves entirely. Oh, my. I was really out to lunch.

It looked and tasted pretty nice, though, definitely worth a repeat performance, but this time following the directions a bit better. It wasn't really cassoulet--more like pork chop soup, which, when I think about it, doesn't sound too bad either.